Achea Redd is smiling now, but finding that happy place has been a journey.
- Wife of former OSU, NBA star Michael Redd and a mental health blogger
- Book focuses on her journey with mental illness
- Wants women to gain their own emotional freedom by being authentic to who they are
“Well for years I had struggled with trying to meet everyone else's expectations, which resulted in me being unhappy, anxious, depressed...and so I decided to take it into my own hands and learn the lesson,” she said.
That lesson?
“Everybody's not gonna like you, and that's ok. And you don't have to be everything to everybody.”
It's just one of the messages the mental health blogger has put into a new book – Be Free Be You, released this summer.
“So many women that she's touching...all around the world. And she really is a trailblazer in what she's doing,” said Michael Redd, Achea’s husband. “But it takes someone to be vulnerable, and be authentic, about their story to set someone else free.”
Her husband, former OSU star and NBA player Michael Redd, celebrated the release of the book with dozens of friends in central Ohio earlier this month.
“A lot of people go through trauma just by being born in life,” said Michael Redd. “So, for her to do what she's doing right now is to allow those conversations to be more prevalent. Especially within our culture, the African American culture, where we tend to sweep things under the rug that are really bothering us.”
She says the pressures throughout her life, whether being an NBA wife, the kid of a preacher, or a black woman in America, drove her to have a panic attack— leading to a diagnosis of general anxiety disorder.
“As black women we're taught that we need to be strong, that vulnerability is not beauty, that it's weakness,” said Achea Redd. “And so, as a community of women, we need to understand that these conversations need to be had, so that we can heal and so that we don't have another generation that is traumatized."
She's chronicled her struggles with mental health in a popular blog called “Real Girls F.A.R.T.”
The eye-raising acronym stands for fearless, authentic, rescuer, trailblazer.
The book, now on sale, shares Redd's journey as she worked through her disorder, and also encourages readers to do their own self-discovery.
She wants women to gain their own emotional freedom by being authentic to who they are.
“I want them to understand that they can evolve to their highest self, and that they can take life as a journey. It's not a race, it's not about how fast you get to the finish line... it's how you get there,” she said.