Unknown Buddhist

I don’t know Paul Campbell personally, and he doesn’t know me. But when I read that the beloved Hallmark actor had experienced a mental breakdown late last year, something in me stopped, because last Saturday, I thought about ending my life.

I didn’t. And I want to tell you why that matters.

For fifteen days, I had been living under a weight that most people couldn’t see. My team and I were under intense regulatory scrutiny. Management believed we had failed to report a severe compliance issue. Every decision I had made from February 2024 onward was being reviewed, dissected, questioned. Every email. Every action. Every judgment call.

On the outside, I held it together. I showed up. I was professional. I was present. I defended. I had records. I had evidence. But on the inside, my blood pressure had climbed to 185 over 110. Parkinson’s was ripping through my body. My hands shook. My feet cramped. I couldn’t sleep. My mind ran in circles searching for a way out of the pressure — and Saturday evening, it landed somewhere dark.

That’s the thing about silent suffering — it doesn’t look like anything from the outside. You can be someone’s colleague, their manager, their team member, and never know they are quietly drowning. I was drowning. And I reached out to the one person I knew could help me: my health case manager.

That was the bravest thing I did all year.

Wednesday morning came. My team and I were fully cleared. Every action, every decision, every judgment call — vindicated.

I sat with that for a long moment. And I thought: if I had taken my life on Saturday, I never would have felt this.

I wouldn’t have felt the relief. I wouldn’t have experienced the quiet joy of watching my team exhale after one of the hardest professional stretches any of us had ever faced. I wouldn’t have been there to lead them through it, to remind them that their work had value, that they had done the right things. I would have missed Wednesday entirely — and Wednesday was everything.

I think about Paul Campbell because he did what I did — he reached out to people he trusted would make a difference. He let someone in. And in doing so, he gave himself a chance at his own Wednesday. Whatever form that takes for him, I hope it comes. I believe it will.

After we were cleared, I did something else I’ve never done before: I walked out. I called my manager and said, I need mental health recovery. I am the rest this week off. And, I am taking next week as well. Not because I have to, but because I needed to honor what my body and my mind had been through. That decision — to rest, to breathe, to be gentle with myself — felt just as important as every other decision I’d made in those fifteen days.

Taking the rest of the week off wasn’t a hard decision once I made it — Paul Campbell made the same choice. He stepped back. He chose himself. I honor him for that, just as I honor anyone who has the courage to pause, step away, and say: I matter enough to rest and recuperate.

If you are reading this and you are in a dark place, I want you to hear this from someone who was there just days ago: ask for help. Not because it’s the easy thing — it isn’t. But because your Wednesday is coming. Your clearance. Your exhale. Your moment of peace. It exists on the other side of the pain you’re in right now. And none of it is possible if you aren’t here to receive it.

Asking for help is not weakness. It is the bravest, most important thing you can do.