Chap­ter 25 rep­re­sents one of the dark­est peri­ods in my life, filled with the over­whelm­ing weight of being a new moth­er while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly fac­ing intense pub­lic scruti­ny. The love I felt for my chil­dren was unde­ni­able, and in many ways, they gave me a rea­son to keep going. Their pres­ence brought a sense of pur­pose and ful­fill­ment that I had nev­er expe­ri­enced before. How­ev­er, being a moth­er dur­ing this time, while also deal­ing with exter­nal pres­sures, was more chal­leng­ing than I could have ever imag­ined. I was iso­lat­ed from my friends, and despite the love I had for my chil­dren, I felt con­flict­ed about my abil­i­ty to ful­ly embrace moth­er­hood. Every day, I was caught between the desire to focus on my chil­dren and the intense pres­sure of being con­stant­ly in the pub­lic eye, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to find peace. I strug­gled to under­stand what I was sup­posed to do next in this new phase of life. Should I retreat to a qui­et life in Louisiana, away from the media cir­cus, and try to find some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy? Or was I sup­posed to con­tin­ue push­ing for­ward in a world that seemed increas­ing­ly hos­tile and out of con­trol?

The real­i­ty was that my life had been com­plete­ly altered, and I couldn’t even do the sim­plest things with­out attract­ing unwant­ed atten­tion. I couldn’t leave my house with­out pho­tog­ra­phers fol­low­ing me, cap­tur­ing every moment and turn­ing even the small­est mis­takes into media events. This con­stant scruti­ny made it almost impos­si­ble to focus on being a moth­er in a healthy, bal­anced way. At the time, I couldn’t rec­og­nize that I was suf­fer­ing from post­par­tum depres­sion, but now it’s clear that I was strug­gling emo­tion­al­ly and men­tal­ly. I felt iso­lat­ed, trapped, and unable to escape from the pres­sures that were con­stant­ly being placed on me. While the peo­ple around me—such as Kevin and Justin—seemed free to live their lives with­out con­se­quence, I was con­stant­ly under the micro­scope. Even some­thing as sim­ple as going out for a night of fun became an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to crit­i­cize and judge me. After a night out, when I came home, my moth­er scold­ed me for hav­ing a good time, fur­ther rein­forc­ing the idea that I was being watched at all times. I began to feel that there was no way I could ever please any­one, and the emo­tion­al toll of this was enor­mous.

As I con­tin­ued to deal with this suf­fo­cat­ing envi­ron­ment, I start­ed to turn to peo­ple who seemed will­ing to help me escape the con­stant scruti­ny. For brief moments, these peo­ple pro­vid­ed me with the dis­trac­tion I des­per­ate­ly need­ed. Some of them weren’t the health­i­est influ­ences, but at the time, I was so starved for con­nec­tion and relief that I grav­i­tat­ed toward any­one who could offer a tem­po­rary reprieve. Dur­ing this peri­od, Kevin was relent­less­ly try­ing to secure full cus­tody of our chil­dren, mak­ing it clear that he want­ed to por­tray me as unfit to be a moth­er. His actions only served to inten­si­fy the emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal strain I was under. The fear of los­ing my chil­dren was unbear­able, and I began to ques­tion whether or not I would ever be able to regain con­trol of my life. The idea that Kevin could take my chil­dren away from me was a con­stant source of anx­i­ety, and even though I hoped it was just a tac­tic to gain lever­age in our cus­tody bat­tle, the real­i­ty start­ed to set in. My pain was com­pound­ed by the loss of my Aunt San­dra in Jan­u­ary 2007. Her pass­ing from ovar­i­an can­cer added anoth­er lay­er of grief to the already dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion I was fac­ing. This loss, cou­pled with the intense media scruti­ny and my strug­gles with my fam­i­ly, made every­thing feel over­whelm­ing­ly dif­fi­cult. At the time, I felt like I was drown­ing, unable to find an escape from the relent­less pres­sure.