Trigger Warning: This story contains references to rape, suicide, and abuse.
“I was abused throughout my childhood.
My father was an egotistical maniac, self-absorbed with his government conspiracy theories and hatred of anyone with a different color of skin. My mother was an abusive alcoholic and an apathetic caregiver who had tried to kill me on more than one occasion throughout my youth. My sister, the perfect offspring representation of my parents’ vices, became a bigoted, bloodthirsty psychopath infatuated with murder.
To call my family “dysfunctional” wouldn’t even come close to describing it.
We became homeless when I was around 10 years old after my father had spent our entire lifesavings on useless doomsday supplies for the “impending apocalypse”. Despite my housing instability, my lack of any formal education, and the plethora of other issues which plagued my upbringing, through sheer determination and a desperate need to escape, I somehow managed to receive a full-ride military scholarship to attend college.
I started college in Fall of 2020, and even with it being during the pandemic, I was still able to make close friends in our socially distanced world. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was safe and surrounded by people who genuinely cared about me. Or at least, that’s what I thought at the time.
During my first semester of college, I was raped by my best friend.
My entire world came crashing down. I thought I had finally gotten out, but my past just wouldn’t let me go. I felt so used, and alone, and like I’d never be able to make all this pain go away. These feelings of hopelessness led me down a dark path of depression, and in January of 2021, just two days after my 19th birthday, I attempted to take my own life.
What followed became a blur of overwhelming trauma. I was hospitalized, kicked out of school in retaliation for my attempt, my car exploded on my way home, and my parents punished me for everything I had “selfishly put them through”, cutting off all contact I had with the outside world. Less than a year later, my family disowned me, forcing me out during Christmas.
The worst part was, I still loved them.
I was used to not having a home, but not having a family was new and that much harder to process. I slowly started to pick myself up, dedicating myself to my studies and my future career in the military. That summer, I piloted a multibillion-dollar nuclear-powered submarine just weeks before getting my driver’s license and was later accepted into the Navy Nuclear Reactors program. I kept pushing, vowing to not let anything hold me back.
My family, however, could not be content with the idea of me having made a life for myself or being happy on my own without them, so they attempted to file a restraining order against me. After a year-long legal battle, the entire case was thrown out and their request for the order denied.
Following this, I legally changed my name to Taylor Iris Locke, severing ties with my biological family once and for all and embracing my new family who have effectively adopted me and have since shown me that love can and should exist without fear or pain. I was ultimately medically discharged from military service due to my attempted suicide and continued struggles with mental illness, but just like all the other major obstacles in my life, this was barely a small hurdle.
Although I could have pursued a lucrative career with my college education and military experience in the civilian sector, I realized this wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. My passion, my purpose, has been to support others and help them to know they are not alone.
My advocacy journey has awarded me so many incredible opportunities. I currently oversee New York State Mental Health Week, a program I had originally started while still in college. Last year this youth-led community-based initiative was hosted in collaboration with 11 universities and over 100 health and human service organizations to host more than 65 individual events throughout the local region. I am now partnered directly with Active Minds and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to host even more events for this year, to include a screening of the award-winning mental health film Good Side of Bad, followed by a live Q&A session with the filmmakers.
Last September, I was appointed to the Global Mental Health Peer Network (GMHPN) Country Leadership Committee. Through GMHPN, I have helped plan their first international Youth Agents 4 Change Summit on mental health, and I will be presenting at the 7th Global Mental Health Summit in South Africa this November. I have also been appointed to the NAMI New York State Youth Advisory Committee, am a Lived Experience Focus Group Member for the PLOS Mental Health Journal, and most recently, joined the Yellow Tulip Project as a Youth Ambassador.
Four years ago, I wanted nothing more than to end all the pain and suffering I endured. I felt abused, unloved, forgotten, and hopeless. Last year, I graduated college with honors and have since become an acclaimed public speaker and an award-winning mental health advocate. My work in the field has quite literally taken me around the world.
I still live with my mental illness, the decades of trauma are never going away, but I have learned to accept that is a part of who I am without letting it define who I am. Recovery is possible, and I am here to tell you that people are so much more than their mental illness, their diagnosis, or their childhood trauma. People are people, and when we learn to rise above the stigma, I can promise you that anything is possible.”
