In this episode, I sit down with Kasia Piascik—HR professional, fellow author in the Reclaiming Mental Health anthology, and someone who has done the deep, unglamorous work of coming home to herself. Kasia's chapter traces her life from a gifted kid in a Mississauga classroom through depression, anxiety, addiction, and the labels that tried to define her, all the way to sixteen years sober and a life she actually recognizes as her own.

We talk about what it felt like to ask for help as a child and be turned away, the diagnoses that accumulated over the years and what she eventually made of them, and how addiction became the way she drowned out pain she didn't have language for yet. We also get into the DSM, Gabor Maté, and why finding the root matters more than naming the symptom.

There's also wonderful synchronicity with Kasia ended up writing in this book also—a thread that runs all the way back to her grade five classroom and her very first teacher. And yes, she posted about all of this on LinkedIn. She works in HR. That took guts, and we talk about that too.

Resources Mentioned:
Reclaiming Mental Health anthology: https://a.co/d/0dvGcfuS
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Maté
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle

Connect with Kasia:

Instagram: @kasiapiascikreclaims

Connect with Darrel-Lynne:

Instagram: @dee_ogsoul

Website: ogsoul.ca