This past week has been a difficult one because my mother had a severe anxiety attack last weekend.  As a family, we have dealt with the fact that she has suffered from depression and anxiety disorder for over thirty years.  We are not ashamed of talking about it whatsoever because it is an illness just like any other illness and she has no control over it.     As far as we know, it began right after my birth when my mother was eighteen years old.  She suffered from postpartum depression after giving birth but was able to recover from it after a few weeks.  Unfortunately, four years later after giving birth to my brother, she again sank into a depression but was not able to feel better on her own.     This is the way that depression and anxiety presents itself in the lives of many people.  It is brought on or awakened by a traumatic or stressful experience in a person's life.  In my mother's case, the stress of giving birth to three children in four years, at such a young age, … [Read more...]