With humor and Xanax earrings, she fearlessly puts Latino mental health on display
LOS ANGELES -- “I felt anxious before I came here today,” Rosa Valdes said as she arranged her Educated Chola T-shirts, totes and mugs inside the Cafe Girasol coffee shop in Boyle Heights. “Just because I take anti-anxiety medication, it doesn’t mean it’s gone.”
While friend and colleague Beth Guerra, a brand strategist she met at the Los Angeles Economic Equity Accelerator & Fellowship program at Cal State L.A., offers support and helps soothe her nerves for a photo shoot, Valdes takes a deep breath and forges ahead.
Valdes is used to living with anxiety. In 2018, the 33-year-old entrepreneur was diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder that left her with insomnia, little appetite and migraine headaches.
“When it’s bad, I ruminate in my thoughts more and I develop depression,” she said. “I don’t think non-neurodivergent people understand how much one has to fight with their own brain when they have a mental health condition.”
