Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kristal Hoeh. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kristal, We sincerely appreciate your selflessness in agreeing to discuss your mental health journey and how you overcame and persisted despite the challenges. Please share with our readers how you overcame. For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.
Mental illness runs in my family. My mom is diagnosed with paranoid delusional schizophrenia. Many of my siblings and cousins struggle with anxiety. In high school, I was first diagnosed with depression. At that time, all I knew was that my family was dysfunctional and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was ready to speak up after 6 years of pretending things were normal and okay. We never talked about the trauma we went through from relocation across the country, divorce, financial difficulty, and parental abandonment. My 4 siblings and I lived with my emotionally unavailable father after my mother walked out of our family when I was 13 years old. We had moved from Utah to Florida a year before, leaving behind all extended family and friends.
My high-demand Christian religion seemed to be the only constant in life. I clung to it with hypervigilance with its prescribed rules. I was to show my faith by only wearing modest clothing, shorts always to my knees, no sleeveless shirts, all which made me feel like a pariah in my central Florida public school. I didn’t swear. I fasted every month. I paid 10% of my meager babysitting money. I attended early morning religious classes before school, even after a late night at a school track meet or basketball game across town. I figured, if anyone needed blessings, it was me. It wasn’t even that my immediate family adhered to all these tenets. In my mind this was part of the reason the universe was punishing us. I was going to fix our family through my obedience.
My mom, who popped in and out of my life sporadically, had been forcibly admitted to a mental hospital in Florida during my senior year and moved back to Utah to live with her parents she always hated, in a cruel twist of fate. I was having overwhelming feelings of anger well up inside of me. Despite my efforts to do everything I thought God wanted me to do, I couldn’t earn enough of God’s favor to save my mother. All of this was in addition to in addition to getting straight A’s, participating in sports, clubs, youth group, having no social life, being emotional support for my little sister, and cleaning my entire house on the weekends. Ironically it was during my AP Psychology class that I felt a nervous breakdown coming on. I told my teacher I needed to go home because I wasn’t feeling well and called my dad at work. He told me that the one thing that wasn’t a problem in his life was now a problem. That, of course, was me. How dare I make him leave work for me! He dropped me off at a church member’s house and went back to work. I quickly was put on medication and assigned weekly visits to a church member who had some training in mental health. These visits consisted of me laying down on a couch and listening to church music. I was told that I would be blessed for my efforts for my family. Her reassurances were falling on deaf ears.
Luckily, my toxic perfectionism had propelled me to the top of my class and I pulled myself together enough to apply to one college in Utah. I got in, and the next 5 years I got my tuition money’s worth out of the Counseling Center. I told myself that since earning A’s seemed to be twice as much work as earning a B, I should shoot at earning B’s. I was also told by a psychologist that most people work at 80% and they get by just fine. I graduated college with a 3.5 grade average. It was a good effort.
While at college, my family lost track of my mother as she wandered around homeless, purposely trying to get away from her parents. One dark, frigid, snowy Utah night, as I was climbing up the few steps onto the public bus with my grocery bags cutting off the circulation to my hands, there she was, sitting at the front of the bus, in a ratty old fur coat, smiling at the floor, black holes where teeth used to be. My heart began to pound from my chest up to my ears, and I quickly scurried to the back of the bus, turning toward the window so I could watch the reflection of the window for anyone approaching me. For the next 15 minutes I was frantically trying to devise a plan. How much money could I spare? How would my roommates respond to me bringing a homeless person to stay in our dorm? It was all too much to take in. I just knew I didn’t have the resources emotionally or financially to do anything. I slipped off the bus at my stop out of the back door and ran, groceries bouncing with every step to my apartment to warn my roommates and lock the door. She was soon picked up by the police for being loud and disruptive and put back in the hospital. She was discharged, once again, to my grandparents.
Through all of this, I continued to work on seeing a therapist and getting my degree. I would often write in my journal. I would tell my journal how much mental anguish I was in, watching those I loved flounder, but knew I had to save myself. It turns out that my official diagnosis is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I get really anxious when things don’t turn out the way I think they should be, or are told they should turn out and blame myself. I continue to take a low maintenance dose of meds and try to surround myself with people who lift me up instead of suck me dry. I make boundaries to protect my mental and physical health. I give myself permission to take breaks and be lazy. I continue to use positive self-talk and remind myself I am worthy of the life I want.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am an artist and art educator from Denver, Colorado. After teaching for 15 years at all levels from elementary to adult enrichment courses, I decided to focus more on my personal art creation. That was 5 years ago. I continue to teach online art history, but I also submit my work into local and national juried art shows.
Currently, I have artwork at the Aurora Community Library and Superior Community Center, both here in Colorado. I am half-way through earning my Master’s Degree in Art Education through a hybrid program at the University of Florida. I moved to Colorado from Arizona 3 years ago and left behind elementary school murals and artwork in the City of Maricopa permanent collection. I am a member of the Littleton Colorado Artists’ Guild. I have been a demonstrating artist at the Town of Superior Plein Air Festival in September for the last 3 years. During the summer months, I hold acrylic painting workshops in my hometown.
My main areas of focus are watercolor and acrylic painting. My subject matter is nature and landscapes.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Three qualities and skills that I have leaned on to get me through tough times are hard work, perspective, and kindness. There are so many factors that go into happiness and success, but we only have control over a few of them.
One of the things I can control is how hard I work and how I spend my time. I want to put my time towards activities that have the most fortuitous outcomes. Whether I see it benefitting me monetarily, gaining personal satisfaction, or building relationships with those that build me up, I think in terms of long-term consequences. Time is something we all have. We all only have 24 hours in a day. It is how we use our time that determines what our futures will look like. To use an old adage, “We reap what we sow”. At times, I have taken this too far and worked myself to burn-out, so taking time to do things I enjoy, like going to the gym, watching a show now and then, or making time for art fills up my cup to do the other things I have to do.
I tend to think existentially on a daily basis. This can be exhausting or annoying to those around me because I tend to take myself too seriously at times. However, I figure I have to live my life so when I look at myself in the mirror I have self-respect. I have to live with myself now and in the future. I ask myself often if I am living my life in a way that will accomplish my hopes and dreams. My hopes are to feel safe and at peace with myself and those around me. Will my kids see me in 10 years as a mother who was emotionally available for them, but help them build and maintain boundaries? Will those I associate with see me as a person who is kind, humble, helpful, and honest? Will I put my dreams of getting myself and my message out there through my artwork? This last one is a lifelong pursuit that is accomplished in small, incremental steps of picking up my paint brush weekly, and, aspirationally, daily.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
The number one challenge I face on a daily basis is limited time and energy. It is my son’s last year in elementary school, and I want to make the most of cherishing him as a child while I can. Even though I have been teaching for almost 20 years, I decided to take a paraprofessional job so I could work at my son’s school. There was no opening for an art teacher. It gives me a schedule to get me moving in the mornings, get me in the classroom, and keeps me on-top of school events. I come home and work on graduate work and online art history teaching. Along with walking our dog, household chores, and driving my kids to their various activities, time to work on art is limited. Doing art is currently still a luxury, though I feel it should be a necessity. It renews my soul and adds purpose to my life.
I am inspired by other artists at local artist workshops and at my local artist guild. I scope out upcoming shows to enter and put the application dates in my calendar. It continues to be a struggle, but I give myself grace and know that I eventually will have more time as my kids grow, I get my master’s degree, and settle down onto one job. I hope to move on to teach art full-time on the college level.
Contact Info:
- Website: kristalmelodyart.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kristalmelodyhoeh
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristal-hoeh-a1a62b96
