Who am I ?
My name is Ana, and I was born into a life that felt fragmented from the start—marked by childhood abuse from my mother—I struggled to connect with others and often left friendships feeling confused why I couldn’t maintain course. With few people close to me, I had no way to attune to harmony—I lived in an echo chamber of my own un-wellness.
I was guarded, and forever searching for safety. Despite living in a broken home, I benefited greatly from the material stability of my adoptive father.
I spent my academic years performing well and upon high school graduation, I received a scholarship to attend Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.
In my late teens and early twenties as I landed at Dartmouth, the search for safety became a desperate scramble to soothe the ache of living in a body that never felt quite steady. I was chronically ill, recently diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and chronic Lyme disease—a storm that left me in and out of the hospital, feeling fragile and untethered.
My early twenties were a blur of autoimmune complications that left me fighting for breath, for clarity, for a sense of control. In the haze of bodily complications and worsening OCD and anxiety, I turned to drugs—primarily cocaine and amphetamines, anything to keep numbness or keep the chaos at bay. For six years, I was caught in the tangle of heavy psychiatric medications, disordered eating, and reckless decision-making that kept me cycling through crisis and collapse.
I’ve lived the bone-deep loneliness of malnourishment, the hidden and the very visible scars of self-harm, and the heartbreak of abusive relationships that mirrored my own unhealed places. I gave away my life savings again and again, believing that if I just gave enough of myself, I might find some sense of worth in the drugs I was spending it on.
But those days are behind me now.
Today, I am clean—free from the substances that once dictated my life. I have a healthy marriage, a beloved daughter, and a body that feels more like home than it ever has. My journey has taught me that healing is not a straight line—it is a circle, a spiral, a thousand small moments of saying “yes” to life again—and being deeply accountable to the process.
I have learned that I am not defined by my past, but by the choices I make in each present moment—to slow down, to breathe, to keep tending to the seeds of balance and wholeness that live within me.
This is the heart of Seeds of Sattva—a place where I can share not just my story, but the wisdom I have gathered along the way. A place to honor the possibility of transformation—no matter how tangled the roots, no matter how dark the night once felt.
