Mental Health Capsule: Nani on OCD, Motherhood & Breaking the Silence

To me, being a Savant means using my lived experience, both from my mental health journey and as the mother of my autistic daughter, as a way to bring awareness and advocacy. I believe vulnerability is a powerful tool to educate, uplift, and create connection. Being a Savant isn’t about being an “expert”; the journey of learning and unlearning is ongoing, but it’s about sharing your truth. Especially when it comes to mental health, where so many still carry shame or stay silent, I want to remind others they’re not alone.

I didn’t realize it at the moment. I was in middle school, about to transition into high school, and I had started doing certain rituals I didn’t fully understand; I just knew they felt necessary. At the time, my parents didn’t recognize what I was doing.

Coming from a Latine household, mental health wasn’t something we talked about. Not because my parents didn’t care, but because they lacked the awareness, access to information, and language to understand it. And even when you do begin to understand, mental health is still so heavily stigmatized in our culture. It’s often viewed as something shameful or as a sign of weakness. So many of us learn to keep it to ourselves. To cope. To survive. To endure.

It was my older sister who first noticed something was going on. She was the one who told my parents that what I was experiencing had a name: OCD.

But even then, I didn’t fully understand that what I was going through was related to mental health. And I didn’t realize I deserved support for it.

That was the beginning, even if I didn’t know it then.

For me, it starts with honesty and showing up as I am—sharing my own story and talking about things I never saw growing up, like anxiety, OCD, burnout, and the emotional weight that comes with parenting, especially as a Latina mom to an autistic child. I challenge stigma by naming the things that are kept quiet in our culture and reminding others that struggling doesn’t make you broken or weak.

I don’t try to come off as someone who has it all figured out. I’m learning and unlearning all the time, and that’s part of how I challenge the idea that you need to be “healed” to speak. Healing isn’t linear. I also try to center culture in the conversation because I know what it’s like to grow up in a home where mental health was never talked about—not out of neglect, but out of a lack of awareness and access.

And now, as a mom, I do it differently with my daughter. I want her to grow up knowing that her feelings matter, that needing support is okay, and that mental health is part of overall health. I use my voice, in both English and Spanish, to reach those same people who, like my parents, may not have had access to this information, people who might not see themselves in these conversations, and to remind them they’re not alone.

Healing right now looks like allowing myself to continue on my journey.

The same day I was invited to be part of this spotlight was the day I reached out to find a therapist again. I had put myself on pause—not because I didn’t care about my mental health, but because I was carrying so much. Between showing up for my daughter and just trying to keep everything afloat, I stopped checking in with myself.

But I hit a moment where I realized I couldn’t keep pushing my needs aside, not if I want to be the best version of myself for my daughter, for my family, and for me. I also started to notice that I was still living with agoraphobia, something I didn’t recognize at first, because I thought it only looked like being completely homebound. Learning that it can show up in different ways was a big moment of awareness.

So healing for me right now looks like returning to therapy, asking for support. I’m showing up for myself, just like I show up for my daughter. And when I made that call, as small as it might seem, I was proud of myself. It felt good.

Like I mentioned earlier, I had a big moment of awareness when it came to agoraphobia. Early in my journey, there was a time when I was completely homebound—so much so that I had to be homeschooled because just walking out the door created intense panic. That’s when I first heard the word “agoraphobia” and learned that it was what I was experiencing, alongside my OCD.

For anyone unfamiliar, agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder where a person fears and avoids places or situations that might cause panic or make them feel trapped, helpless, or embarrassed. It’s commonly misunderstood as just “fear of leaving the house,” but that’s only one part of it.

When I started to feel “better” and could leave the house again, I thought I had outgrown agoraphobia. Because I wasn’t homebound anymore, I assumed I no longer had it. But recently, I came across a post explaining the many ways agoraphobia can still show up even if you’re “functioning,” and it honestly stopped me in my tracks. Everything it described matched how I was still navigating the world.

That moment made me realize: I hadn’t “healed” in the way I thought. I was still living with agoraphobia, just in a more “functional” way.

You can hold a job, appear social, and show up for your family and still be managing agoraphobia behind the scenes. That’s something I wish more people understood. It doesn’t always look obvious. It can live quietly inside routines and limitations that others don’t notice. But it’s still real. And it still deserves support and understanding.

Staying grounded doesn’t mean having it all figured out. Sometimes it just means showing up, especially when things feel heavy.

There have been so many things to navigate: postpartum struggles, anxiety, therapy, my daughter’s diagnosis, and cultural misunderstandings around mental health. And I won’t pretend it’s been easy. But I’ve learned that I don’t have to carry it all at once. I can sit with the hard moments and still find a way to get back up for myself and my daughter.

I ground myself in the small things that bring me back, like going on walks, listening to music (which I love), dancing, taking space to recharge, and letting myself feel without needing to explain it away.

Being a Latina mom to an autistic daughter has taught me that regulation isn’t just for her, it’s for me too. So I model that in real time: asking for help, showing emotions, being honest when I’m overwhelmed, and giving myself permission to step back when I need space. That’s part of breaking cycles and healing generational patterns.

And to be honest, some days I just survive the day, and that’s okay too.

Therapy has been part of my journey on and off, and it’s helped me more than I can explain. I truly don’t know where I’d be without having that kind of support early on and throughout different stages of my life.

So does talking to other moms and friends who get it. And sometimes, grounding just looks like playing with my daughter, watching her stim freely, and remembering why I’m doing all of this in the first place.

I would say that acknowledging you need support is the first step, and it’s a powerful one. Because after that comes reaching out, finding ways to care for yourself. Those two steps might seem small, but they’re huge.

There’s so much shame that can come with struggling, especially in cultures where mental health isn’t talked about openly. In our society, struggling is often seen as “not having it together.” But the truth is: nobody has it all together. Everyone carries something, a story, a history, that needs to be unpacked and navigated.

Healing doesn’t look one way. It can be messy. It can look like showing up to therapy or taking a break from therapy. It can look like simply deciding you don’t want to live in survival mode anymore.

So I’d tell you this: you’re not alone. You’re not broken. You’re not weak.

And acknowledging your need for support doesn’t make you any of those things. It makes you human.

And if you’re a parent, especially a mom, I want you to know that taking care of yourself is taking care of your family. That’s something I have to remind myself of, too. Because in the middle of holding so much of the mental load, we often put ourselves last. But we need to be on that list. We need to be at the top.

Because language is access. Language is inclusion. Language is culture. Language is representation.

My whole journey changed the moment I found Spanish-speaking mental health professionals. I was able to truly communicate. To be understood. And that made all the difference in my healing.

But I know not everyone has that access. I know that for some families, seeing content or resources in Spanish is the first time they’ve felt like they belong in these conversations. And I want to make sure they know they do.

When I shared my Mental Health Awareness post, I thought about all the moms like mine—who would only get the message if it was in Spanish. I thought about parents and abuelitas and tíos who might not hear these things otherwise. I thought about younger versions of myself.

So I posted both. Because we deserve both. We deserve content that reflects our lived experience, our language, and our needs. It shouldn’t just be an afterthought.

I didn’t have the language to even begin identifying what I was feeling. Mental health simply wasn’t something we talked about in my family; it wasn’t recognized, understood, or named. So I carried it in silence, believing the rituals I did were just something I had to do to keep things “okay.” I didn’t know it had a name. I didn’t know it was OCD.

It wasn’t until my older sister noticed what was going on and brought it to our parents’ attention that everything began to shift. At the time, I didn’t even realize she had done that because when you’re surviving, everything feels like a blur. I couldn’t remember every detail of how things unfolded. But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that she told me she was the one who spoke up. And I’m so thankful she did. Thank you for seeing me when I couldn’t see myself, for naming what I couldn’t, and for being the start of something I didn’t yet know I needed.

Even though my parents didn’t understand mental health or know how to navigate it, they showed up. They loved me, and they took action. Every weekend, they drove two hours from our home to Tijuana just to find access to Spanish-speaking mental health professionals. They found me a therapist. A psychiatrist. Support.

It wasn’t easy for any of us. But it was the start of getting me the help I needed.

I’ll forever be grateful to my sister for speaking up and to my parents for doing the hard thing, even when they didn’t fully understand it.

Right now, I don’t have a specific word, phrase, or song that stands out. But lately, I’ve been singing a song I made up for my daughter that goes:

“I can do it by myself. I can do it by myself. I can do hard things. I can do it by myself.”

While I’m learning to balance understanding that some things can be hard for her, I also want her to know she can do them. So I sing this song to encourage her and remind her she’s capable.

And even though I made it for her, sometimes—as cheesy or cliché as this might sound—it’s a reminder for me too. Whether you’re a child or an adult, sometimes you just need to remind yourself that you can.

Kathryn:
Every morning, I ask the kids, “Hey, do you love yourself?” And now—my favorite part—they’ve started asking me the same thing: “Hey, do you love yourself?” It’s become this simple, beautiful way to start our day grounded in self-love and connection.

Right now, I’m looking forward to continuing therapy. Now that I have a clearer understanding of what to look for, I feel ready to find the right support and keep growing and healing.

And of course, I’m looking forward to some rest, because honestly, there’s nothing like a good rest, and every mom needs that.