Page 10 - Silver Linings Issue4

10
A Second Take on Life
A Former Silver Hill Patient’s Story
Laura Moran kept thinking it would get better.
It will get better after middle school. It will get better after
high school. It will get better
after college, she told herself.
But it didn’t get better. Laura’s depression got worse with each passing day. It wasn’t until she tried to end her life in her early 20s that Laura finally accepted something was wrong, and she needed help.
Silver Hill Hospital was there for Laura.
“I checked in and that started everything,” she says. “That first night I got there I was so relieved because I was safe. I was a danger to myself and had been for years. I’m just so lucky I’m alive. Silver Hill started my healing in the best possible way.”
Now 40, Laura is a successful television writer. She has written for shows such as Ground Floor, The Dangerous Book for Boys, and The Neighborhood. She has been sober for 17 years. She has never abused drugs or alcohol. For Laura, sober means not cutting or burning herself, something she used to do regularly after college “to match the pain she felt inside.”
It started early
Laura recalls battling depression from the time she was 6 or 7 years old. She would cry under her bed or in her closet to hide the way she felt from others.
Her first thoughts of suicide started in eighth grade. She excelled athletically and academically in high school, but depression remained a constant in her life.
While in high school, a friend of Laura’s died by suicide. She saw the pain that the death caused her friend’s
loved ones and she told herself she couldn’t
put her