Sonya
Sonya
I’m going to defeat you, depression
Sonya Maria experienced the stress of a typical teenager. She did well in school, but frequently felt anxious and started seeing a therapist when she was 16.
I told my mom I felt like I was about to take a test and didn’t know any of the answers. But it felt like that all the time.
That anxiety intensified after Sonya Maria found her little sister, Karen, unconscious at home—the result of a suicide attempt. The family was shocked to discover that Karen had been hiding an eating disorder and a deep battle with depression.
Over the next two years, the family tried to connect with the right services—Karen for her severe depression and Sonya Maria for post-traumatic stress.
Though Karen seemed to be doing well in her recovery, she went missing in October of 2013 and was found three days later in the woods, after taking her own life. Sonya Maria was just 19.
After my sister died, all of the dreams, the nightmares about finding my sister after her first attempt, came back full force. There was no peace.
“We need to give people at risk for suicide and mental health conditions an outlet to talk about it, to normalize it, so they don’t feel ashamed and secretive.
Breaking that silence is the only way to end the stigma we currently have.”
Even now, after all this time, the family struggles to understand what happened. But what bothers Sonya Maria most is the societal pressure to keep the cause of Karen’s death quiet as well as the state of her own mental health.
It is disturbing, she says, that somehow our culture does not think of suicide as an appropriate topic for discussion or public dialogue.
We need to give people at risk for suicide and mental health conditions an outlet to talk about it, to normalize it, so they don’t feel ashamed and secretive.
Breaking that silence is the only way to end the stigma we currently have.
Raising awareness about mental health is exactly what Sonya Maria does now as president of her university’s chapter of Active Minds.
She is in her final semester of college and after graduation will be working as mission coordinator at a non-profit, the Global Smile Foundation, helping to fix the smiles of kids born with cleft deformities. She’ll also be taking night classes to prepare her for dental school.
Sonya Maria also enjoys channeling her energy into creative outlets, like singing soprano II in her a cappella group, the Ketones, and exercising by rock climbing with friends at her local gym, something she started as a way to take back her sense of self-worth.
I love it because it has a definitive goal—to get to the top.
When I’m 50 feet above ground, I feel the things I don’t normally feel—strong and validated. I know I can do anything.
