Leaving the military, it was very hard. I hit the lowest points of my life. I wrote a suicide letter to my spiritual teacher because I went from being relevant to being completely irrelevant and not knowing where I stand. I took a really big hit on my mental health regarding that.
I'm Vaishali. I served in the United States Air Force as a Data Maintenance Management Analyst. I served from 2017 to 2024. The one thing that I will say that has affected my mental health the most is trying to pave a way for South Asian females in the military. So my religion and my spirituality, we don't eat onions. We don't eat eggs. We don't eat garlic. We don't eat meat, right? So we're vegetarian. Eight weeks at basic training, I lived off of peanut butter, little cups of peanut butter for every meal, little things like that where something that I've done my entire life. Eight weeks shifted everything for me.
While I was transitioning out is also when I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And at that same time, I had undergone surgery, a full hysterectomy. The hormone imbalance with that, and then the mental health issues combined. I felt like I was in this blurb and this dark bubble, and I was pretending to be okay. So everything just kind of hit at the same time and it felt like I was drowning. A lot of anxiety attacks, a lot of just crying, a lot of crying, a lot of anger. It's like no light was bright enough.
Husband gave me an ultimatum that either I had to go seek help or we were done, but it was the perfect push that I needed. We ended up doing therapy on our own selves and then also couples. It was a year long of different therapists. The VA helped a lot. Diagnosed with anxiety, PTSD, and borderline personality disorder. When I learned that, everything made sense because I understood my actions and I understood why, and I understood like, you know, things have changed a lot for me. I'm more present. The things that bothered me are not an issue anymore.
Mental health in the Indian community and the culture, that's not a thing. So for me, getting that space to actually just talk about things that I always thought was normal and realizing that it isn't and changing my ways? Brilliant.
I pour resin and the reason I pour resin is because that is the one thing in my life that I don't have to control because it is just a mind of its own. It's like a river. It just flows in the way that it wants to flow. And I love, I love that. I do a lot of cooking. That is my love language to everyone. I'm proud of me today, and I'm proud of me every single day that I get up. Being who I am for my kids, for myself, my husband, and being here, right? Talking about it on a platform like this, even if your life is just, you’re content, talk to someone. If anything I have said today can resonate with anyone that listens, that's all I'm doing this for, is just to make the difference.
