The Gift of Joy
Written by Alecs Kakon
Photos by Jen Fellegi
I remember my first encounter with anxiety. A friend came to me in desperate need of support, someone to sit with her and tell her it would all be ok. I brushed it off and told my friend that it was no big deal, it was all in her head, and that it would pass. Cut to two years later, curled up in fetal position, in the darkness of my room, petrified that my breathing would suddenly stop for no apparent reason (lest the constant aching, of course). I had this irrational belief that the world was closing in on me. Little did I know, all those years back, how real it all felt; how it was the scariest feeling in the whole world compounded by the fact that I had no clue if the feeling would ever stop. The first throes of anxiety, when control is all you want yet not yours to have, was a hard pill to swallow. The truth is that my paralytic fear (of basically everything) was based on what most people logically know to be nothing. I understand anxiety now, and it’s a spectrum – there are highs and there are lulls, but one thing I know for certain, having dealt with it for a good portion of my life, is that even though the something is nothing and it’s all in your head, that something is the most real feeling, and if you haven’t ever had anxiety, then you’ll never really know how real it feels. It’s valid that people don’t get it, perhaps it takes experiencing it to truly know how debilitating it is. I spent what I call “the dark years” of my life quite isolated. I slowly removed every friend I had from my life, I stopped doing all of the things I loved to do, and I pretty much held up in my basement bedroom and slept days and nights away. My anxiety submerged me in depression and it felt like the longest year of my life. When I was finally ready to emerge, I had to start my life all over again. With the limited awareness we have about mental health, my friends were mad at me for dropping them and I was often made fun of for my ungrounded fears and how they manifested into strange behaviours. No one knew how to help me. The lack of understanding only worsened the gravity of my situation. What no one realized was that I wasn’t choosing to live in flux of a constant fit of phobias, stress, and depression, I was a prisoner in my body and I didn’t have the coping strategies to negotiate my way through. Without the proper vocabulary to understand and articulate what was happening to me, I suffered not only from my condition, but from social stigma as well. I was not me, Alecs, a person who has anxiety. I became my disease, I was Anxiety. Sitting down with Nancy, we fleshed through so much of what makes mental illness the blind spot of our socio-cultural world. We talked about mental health, cultural barriers, social limitations and the ongoing process that she integrated into her life that helps her live a life filled with more meaning than she ever imagined possible.
Nancy lives a colourful life complete with a large family, multiple cities to call home, and the joy and abundance of a religious upbringing. Whether she was living in North Carolina for undergrad, working in New York City as a financial analyst for a leading investment banking firm, or when she finally returned to her birth place of Montreal to attend McGill University Faculty of Law, Nancy always identified with her Ivorian identity, the place where she was raised, where her family resides, and the home she ultimately dreams of returning to one day. Nancy’s formative years were spent in the Ivory Coast, however, when her family immigrated to North America, Nancy’s life of bounty in Africa saw desolate beginnings. “It was hard when we left because we were wealthy in the Ivory Coast, we had chauffeurs and went on lavish vacations, and when we moved to the U.S., we had to start from the bottom.” The lesson that stuck with her at 14 years old was that materials are not ours to possess, but rather something of a more ephemeral nature. She realized her passion was participating in the economic and political development of both herself as a person as well as her country, and her voice would put that promise to task. The desire to contribute to the welfare of the people was instilled in her through her move in tandem with the living example she had in her grandmother: “She was incredible. She imparted in us a Protestant work ethic, and she always worked for as long as I knew her, which in her time was not the norm,” she explains. “She was never limited by what society said she should be or do. I want to be half the woman she was.” Nancy drew life lessons from her grandmother, and the teaching of joy is one that stands out most to her. “My grandmother taught me that joy is something you have and something you give.” To pay homage to her legacy, she started the not-for-profit Fondation Esengo (Lingala for joy), a space to honour her grandmother’s moral teachings. Teaching yoga and meditation to people who have instances of mental health, Nancy imparts unto her community the gift of movement and yoga therapy. “Yoga is a gift given to me. It helped me and continues to help me. A lot of people in my situation are alone and left to navigate their new world all by themselves. I had a plethora of tools at my disposal and a family that supported me. It’s my joy to give that back.”
In her early 20s, Nancy was living in New York City when she felt that something was off in her body. She was concerned and went to see a doctor. After being put on the wrong medication for a misdiagnosis of ADHD, an episode was triggered and thus began Nancy’s first mental health episode. Falling down that proverbial rabbit hole was not an option for Nancy. She turned to her faith and found safety and stability from her devotion to her God. “It helped to take some of the uncertainty away, I don’t know if I would’ve fared so well if I didn’t have faith.” Alongside her resurgence, Nancy had turned to art therapy, the Brazilian tradition of Capoeira, and carving out intentional time to laugh and play. “It took me a year to stabilize. I left NYC and moved back to the Ivory Coast to be with my family,” Nancy explains. “But, mental illness is a taboo in Africa, especially in a Christian home. It is believed that because the joy of the Lord is in your strength, you cannot be depressed. So that was something I faced.” Although her family was where she sought solace, Nancy also knew that her hometown was fraught with cultural misunderstanding of what mental health truly is. In society, people who suffer from any sort of mental “disability” (for lack of better words), are no longer seen as individuals, but rather are seen as their diagnosis. “People lack education about it. But when I accepted that I had a mental health condition, I also accepted that it would never be my limitation,” Nancy declares. With an incredible support system set in place, Nancy moved past her crisis point and lives a meaningful life as a yoga instructor. Open to sharing her story, she shatters the stigma surrounding her own personal experience with mental health through education and awareness by showing her vulnerability, showing her humanity and hoping to change limiting attitudes toward such a pervasive issue. “I am amazed at all the things that my younger self has done, and I am grateful to myself because without everything I’ve been through, I wouldn’t be where I am.”
Deciding that for her, descending into the darkness is the path of least resistance, Nancy uses her education, her drive, and her empathic heart to create a safe space for those who suffer from mental health conditions in hopes of teaching them coping strategies that will guide them toward the light. “One day I will return to the Ivory Coast and I hope to practice law for the African Development Bank. Alongside that, I wish to teach women to become yoga teachers so that they might become entrepreneurs and find financial independence.” Choosing to never limit herself, she has removed the label “disabled” from her vocabulary, “I attach no label to my situation, because then it would be too difficult to transcend. I accept who I am, I am a person who is always in process. I live in the present, and I always believe that the best is yet to come.” A message that resonates deeply with my condition, as the anxiety I have is not something that can be overcome in my case, it is something I live with and negotiate daily. Rather than dissolve into a loop of unsubstantiated fear, Nancy has shown me that linear is not the only option, we can also choose now: the moment we live in, the breath we take and the beliefs we fight for.
