My Pandemic Surprise: I'd Been Living With Mental Illness My Whole Life

Something I'd always secretly suspected finally became something couldn't ignore.

- NATASHA BOWMAN

You name it and I've Y likely done it: started a business, spoken. at TEDx, written two books. Right before the pandemic, I was even an HR executive at a New York City psychiatric hospital while my leadership development company, Performance ReNEW, worked with some of the biggest brands in the world. I was Natasha Bowman, the goal conqueror.

People would ask me, overwhelmed on my behalf, "How can one person do all these things while also being a mother?" I'd shoo away their disbelief, saying I was fortunate to have been gifted with some sort of unexplained superpowerone that allowed me to need very little sleep, be highly creative, and believe that I belonged in any room I chose to be in. Privately, I had a feeling something wasn't right, but for years-decades, even I was too afraid to confront the reality that my mind may not be "normal," that it was sometimes flooded with unusual thoughts.

Then COVID-19 put the world on pause. My client contracts hit a standstill; my speaking engagements evaporated.

I still had my job at the psych hospital, but HR issues were the least of our problems. For the first time in my adult life, my expertise wasn't needed. I wasn't breaking through some glass ceiling, I wasn't chasing some big, audacious professional target. My work suddenly felt secondary, hardly the most pressing thing happening in my world, much less anyone else's.

Weeks of quarantine went by, and my emotions started to feel out of control: I'd go from being easily agitated and angry to feeling overconfident and on top of the