Getting Started
The day has finally come, my first blog post! I can not express to you how excited I am to finally be writing and sharing about something that is so special and important to me. Thank you for taking time out of your day to support me and my new adventures. My biggest hope for LEMONS by tay is to help people realize how important it is to prioritize your mental health and to be a resource for all things self care. I figured I’d use this first post to share a little bit about why mental health and self care are such a big part of my everyday life, and why I created this space.
My first introduction to mental health struggles was at a young age. Throughout my childhood until now, I have witnessed multiple family members struggle with addiction, from alcohol, to heroin, and everything in between. At age ten I watched my cousin, who was someone I looked at as a brother, lie lifeless in an ICU bed with tubes and machines all connected to him, the aftermath of an accidental overdose. I remember going home and crying, being so confused as to why he couldn’t just stop doing drugs. Over time, I watched him, and other family members, get sober… then relapse.. over and over again.
In highschool I had a lot of “friends,” but only a small circle of close friends. In that circle was one of the kindest people I have met to this day, Jared. We became close our freshman year and continued to be by each other’s side all through highschool. Jared would have my back in any situation. He always made me laugh and would tell me how beautiful I was when I went to vent to him about boy problems. He was so thoughtful and constantly put others first, never expecting anything in return. Two birthdays in a row he brought me my favorite Starbucks drink at 6:30am before school started. He was warm, caring and would light up any room he walked into. But not many of us knew that Jared battled bipolar disorder. In 2017, my dear friend took his own life. I remember that day so clearly as it still brings tears to my eyes writing this today. I was sitting at the kitchen table making flash cards for my anatomy class when I heard the news. All I could think was “Why?” or “What could I have done to help him.” I felt so much guilt, confusion and sadness.
In the fall of 2020 I started my nursing career as a Cardiac Nurse at a hospital in LA County. A couple months after I started, the second surge of COVID hit. The unit I was on became a COVID unit. At its peak in January, my unit looked and felt like a war zone. We were doubling patients in rooms to be able to take every patient we could. Between the doubled rooms and all the layers of PPE I had to wear, I would find myself running out of a room in a panic of claustrophobia, trying to rip off my PPE as fast as I could. We were SO severely understaffed that the night I started on my own, my charge nurse, who would normally be with me on my unit, was desperately needed elsewhere and I had to keep five patients who were on the edge of life and death alive all by myself. I was constantly being called in for extra work and asked to pick up multiple shifts beyond my workload. There were nights when a patient would ask me, “Will I survive this?” I had to look them in the eyes and make up some encouraging answer, when deep down I wasn’t sure myself if they really would. This continued for several months, until our schedule slowly started to calm back down to normal, but following that, I was anything but.
After experiencing all that I did in the hospital, I now find myself struggling with depression, anxiety and PTSD. For the past year, I have not been able to go to an appointment, as simple as a hair cut or to get my nails done, and not get anxious. I find myself sitting in the chair starting to feel my heart racing one hundred miles an hour, nauseous, shaky and in a panic. I also have days where I don’t even want to get out of bed, or feeling sad and alone even though I am loved so well by my fiancé, family and friends. It was all of this that made me realize, even if one does not have a history of struggling with a mental illness, it is still so important to prioritize your mental health.
Since I left the hospital, thoughts have been on my heart about how I can incorporate the things I am passionate about with the platform I have. Over the last few months, it has become abundantly clear that as I did in nursing, I want to continue to use this platform to help others, specifically when it comes to the topic of mental health. My hope for this space is that it would be a resource for you to find helpful advice and tools in caring for yourself. Whether that be an open and honest conversation, or just a fun recipe or routine that will provide you with extra self care. Regardless of how often you use this resource, or what you take away, I hope that it spurs you on to actions of greater self care, and above all, that you leave knowing you are not alone.
Every week you can find a post on this platform by me, for you. I plan on sharing a variety of diverse topics from focusing on mental health, to updates on my own life, light hearted content like my favorite recipes, topics of the moment, and even products I love.
I hope you enjoy this space as much as I have enjoyed creating it for you, and above all, I hope you know that all of these life experiences have led me here today, bringing you LEMONS by tay.
