All My Honesty

TMS Therapy Journey: A Gift to Myself in Time for my Christmas Birthday

Dec 30, 2025

Yes, the above picture is me. Yes, when I was born they put me into a Christmas stocking. Yes, I was born on Christmas Day—in the evening, at 10:47pm—and I was 10 days overdue.

I waited for the right time to make my appearance while my mother patiently worked on jigsaw puzzles. My mother went into labor naturally and called the doctor around dinnertime on December 25, 1981.

”Nahhhh,” he said. “You’ll go at least until tomorrow.”

Wishful thinking, perhaps, as the thought of being pulled away from his holiday dinner echoed through the landline. My mother waited… but ultimately arrived at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida just before it was time to push.

She gave birth naturally. She and my father decided to be surprised at my gender. They had names picked out. I was to be “Sebastian” if I were a boy, and “Renee” if I was a girl.

Oh, how they changed their minds once I came earthside, though! I was named, instead, “Colleen Noelle.”

I was always told by my father I had been named after a famous hockey player’s wife, Colleen Howe. My father might have been dreaming up at that time what would later become one of his more prominent sports-related oil paintings featuring Gordie Howe—or perhaps he had already started on his sketch.

Either way, I feel like my given name does suit me, somehow.

Some of my earliest memories are ones where my father took me in his arms and skated one lap or two around the ice rink after one of his amateur hockey games.

Cycles of Life

I feel like I’ve lived many lifetimes in this just one.

Just one body. Just one mind. Just one cumulative experience. Just one. However, so very many chapters. Many cycles. Very many, many impactful happenings. It almost feels as though how my life has unfolded was meant to bestow me with wisdom—one day.

Recent years have been extremely tough in the arena of mental health, for me—as I am sure is the case for so, so many out there.

I can think of times when I could more easily smile through pain:

But always, since I was very young… there existed for me an underlying, functional depression. Sometimes even my father captured it in his sketches of me as a child:

My father might have drawn my likeness a time or three, but deep inside, whether I consciously recognized it or not—my subconscious knew… I was not chosen.

I was not chosen above his work. I was not chosen to be included in his craft or welcomed to be by his side in his studio.

He did not see me as a protégé, an apprentice or even a helper. I was not even chosen as an endeared child of his, although his blood does run through my veins and his DNA is expressed through me in many ways.

I felt this to my core in a way neither I could put a finger on, nor grasp even if it were apparent to me so young why this might have been. All I knew as his only daughter and the only child between my two parents… Was I felt so, very, very alone.

Test from a Young, Innocent, Heart-Centered Place

Once, around age 7 in our new house back in Florida, I hid once for hours underneath the bed in our spare bedroom—to see if I would be missed at all. It was not for attention as one might assume. I did not consider at the time how my parents would take it if I were, in fact, physically unaccounted for by them.

They thought I ran away. My mother, home from work by then, panicked. Neighbors were alerted. And then I was locked into my test, there with my cheeks smushed up against the carpet below the mattress, hearing almost everything—and became increasingly petrified to reveal myself.

I could hear the door leading to the garage open and close many times, sometimes wildly, as they realized they couldn’t find me. Then, I knew I would be in so much trouble once I showed my face, so I waited just a little while longer before I finally emerged. I do not remember the end of that story except ultimately both my parents were relieved.

I never tried anything quite like that again. But as I think back on it, maybe it was my own way to shroud myself—purposefully, that time—into my daily, ordinary surroundings, to come close to the way in which I had felt “disappeared” every day up until that point.

It hadn’t crossed my mind that I would disrupt my father’s art session for the day. That very fact dawning on my conscious mind—realizing both my parents’ panic to locate me—horrified me most of all.

Anxiety Rearing its Head Even in a Safe Place

It was not too long from then I remember feeling a terrible affliction of anxiety every night after dark that my mother might not make it home after work. I knelt on a couch pushed up against the window of the front living room of our house, looking out the blinds and down the street named Excalibur… watching… and waiting… trying not to think my mother was instead somewhere in a terrible car accident.

Pair of headlights after pair, I knew the exact shape and placement of her Nissan headlights—for in my anxiety that was the only immediate visual sign to satiate my mind. I could breathe out a sigh of relief finally seeing her car weaving slightly left from my perspective, then right, come closer into view and pull into our driveway.

Learning How to Trust a Beloved Friend in a New Home

I had such an internal fear—never outwardly expressed to my parents—that my mother somehow would parish in my youth, leaving me only in my father’s care.

It is not as though he was ever physically abusive. However, the thought of being left only with him to guard me shook me to my core.

I shared this only with my childhood best friend, Amanda, who lived on a farm just outside of my neighborhood. She used to come by bike and pick up letters I left for her on a mound found on one side of my house, and she would leave one in return. We wrote in code and we created our own artsy stamps. But these fears I had to share… I told them to her in whispers once when we took cover from a tornado warning in her bedroom closet.

She told me… my sweet crimson-haired girl… she told me that if my fear came true, she promised she would hide me under the crawlspace her house made as it sat raised on cement blocks. She said even though there were fleas under there, she would keep me, she would bring me food every day… and she would make sure I had a friend.

Amanda showed me what compassion was in that promise. I believed her. She passed away when we were 16 and I still believe she meant all of those words she spoke to me years before when I shared my fear with her.

Tremendous Childhood Loss as a Teenager

My mother came home, though, again and again, each and every night.

As for Amanda… I thought I would need emotional support at the wake held after her death—but instead I found myself being strong for my mother. She saw Amanda’s father at that somber gathering, embraced him without any words, and tried her hardest to hold her composure.

At Amanda’s funeral I promised her with a prayer to myself how every new chapter in my life, every new threshold… I would consider her. What she might say, what she would think… And I would bring her with me through all the years left in my own life.

When I moved into adulthood and began to experience distinct tribulation, I am convinced she is the one who, then and now, shows me the doors and delivers me to the thresholds I am surely meant to walk through in order to better myself or my situation.

It may take quite some time for me to get the message, to see the door, the theshold—or it could be as simple as a phone call I am motivated from some other realm to immediately answer. At times messages have even come to me in seconds-worth of time and saved my life in the most crucial moments when otherwise I could have easily not lived to see another day. I am so, so grateful.

Right up until even now... I do have not just one guardian angel, but an entire team of those who meant so much to me in their living years now supporting me from beyond.

Medications versus Medicine Journeys

All my life I have experienced depression and anxiety. And now also—not just PTSD but complex-PTSD. And to add to the list, very commonly, rumination of thought.

I have tried many treatments. Anti-depressants when I was in my late teens and again once I experienced post-partum depression after the birth of my first son. Anti-anxiety medications, too.

I have tried putting all medications behind me and veering toward a more holistic route. I have tried Ayahuasca. Sat with that process over 40 times on the mat. Even made a life for myself around it for many years as a facilitator, as a self-taught singer and in service.

I have worked with Psilocybin mushrooms. I have tried Kambo on several occasions. I have tried breathwork. I have tired Bufo. I have tried many, many undertakings to dig deeper, to uproot the patterns.

It is not to say that my time with any of these modalities had not been useful in some very deep way—they have. However, there is a common denominator with all of the latter-mentioned undertakings: the way in which my emotions are released (when they come to a certain height) with each one. It has been at times like an explosion of a million broken hearts.

Over time I became so very careful and wary who I choose to surround me during such processes. It is a lot to ask for anyone to hold such space, the weight of such an emotional bellow of unexpressed sorrow. A haunting song of its own kind that might even be hushed prematurely depending on the space… or the company.

Were these kinds of ceremonies the answer? For me—not entirely, I now feel.

These processes were tools. It has taken me this long to see it all much more clearly.

The spirit of those medicines (and the spirit within me) were trying to tell me something, all along. Profound as those experiences were and are in my life… They all have pointed to how there is something much, much deeper about my lifelong experience... About the way my brain was rewired when left to cry it out daily as an infant by my artist father.

Those medicines did their job as far as they could—but they cannot fix me. They cannot do the work for me. It is not for lack of trying, lack of introspection or lack of integrative skills that left me boomeranging back into the deepest yet high-functioning depression of my life after having to leave the ayahuasca community in 2023.

Threshold and Opportunity of a Lifetime: TMS Therapy

I have made it through nearly two and a half years in a dark cloud of high-functioning depression and anxiety.

Finally… my primary care physician is taking my suffering seriously. They finally hear me. My doctor referred me last month for something called TMS therapy.

When I received the call and read “TMS Center” on my caller ID, it was as though Amanda had patched the call through to me, herself. I hardly ever answer my phone. This time… I answered with my jaw nearly on the floor. Through the intake call, I felt in total awe and disbelief. YES. This is absolutely a threshold that is next for me.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation therapy. Magnets are used to interact with part(s) of the brain that have long gone dark and have stopped functioning perhaps, altogether. It may seem strange. It may be awkward to feel the zapping sensation inside my brain… But I am moving ahead with this prospect.

I have a new beacon of hope right now that my depression and even my anxiety may go into complete remission with this therapy. Up to 70% of patients utilizing this therapy see that kind of efficacy. A major difference by treatment 12-15, and even total remission of depression, anxiety, OCD and/or PTSD by completion. The word “cure,” was used to describe it to me if I do end up a part of that 70%.

“Cured,” is a very, very strong word and even more of an outstanding concept when considering a diagnosis of not only Major Depressive Disorder but also Treatment Resistant Depression.

When my insurance authorized me for TMS therapy without requiring me to jump through the usual hoops of at least 3 rounds of differing anti-depressants before I could begin, I was absolutely elated about this opportunity open to me.

36 treatments. As consecutive as possible within a Monday through Friday schedule.

Last week on Christmas Eve was my brain mapping appointment and first treatment, really just to get me acclimated. Happy Birthday to me.

The next day—after Christmas morning with my sons—I slept for at least 15 hours. I can’t remember the last time I achieved more than 5 hours of actual sleep inside of a 24-hr time frame.

Today, Monday December 29 was my 2nd treatment during which the dose was eventually turned up all the way to 100%. I tolerated the session very well. It felt kind of like a tiny, benign ice pick one specific location inside my brain, to the left of my forehead.

My initial thought was to create an entirely separate Substack to document and even video log this TMS therapy journey. I made my first video before my brain mapping. I really, really did not like the way it came out as I recorded it in my car… and perhaps the angle of my phone camera. But maybe… that is the point?

What do you think? Should I simply document this new journey right here on

ReCollections of One True Artist's Daughter (This post is public so feel free to share it.)

…Or does this subject of TMS therapy deserve its own place to live? Would I be veering too much off-course from my father’s art? Or this new part of my life as his daughter (and my striving to heal in my life) exactly relevant to be here, too?

ReCollections of One True Artist's Daughter

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