Living

From Agoraphobia to a Full Life: What Getting Better Actually Looks Like

by Donna Kelliher Photography 0 Comment

I have never been quiet about my mental health journey with the people in my life. If I meet someone who is struggling, or who loves someone who is, I will talk about it as openly as they need me to. Destigmatizing mental illness matters to me, genuinely and deeply. I want everyone to find their way to the other side and live the wonderful, full life I have now.

So when Bold Journey Magazine asked me to share my story, I said yes without hesitating. I talked about living with severe clinical depression since middle school, about panic attacks and agoraphobia and the years I could not imagine having a normal life. And I talked about finding my way through to something real and full and genuinely happy.

I also talked about dogs, because of course I did. The way I came through my own fear quietly shaped everything about how I work with the nervous, reactive pups that nobody else knows what to do with. It’s all connected.

If this might mean something to you or to someone you love, I hope you will read it.

Read the full Bold Journey interview

living my best full life
From not being able to leave the house for almost a decade to white water rafting. It’s a wonderful life 💖

Warmly,

Donna

DonnaKelliher.com ~ Pet Photography for the best loved dogs of Greater Boston, the North Shore and beyond.

Because YOUR dog isn’t “just a dog”

Donna Kelliher Photography

Website: https://www.DonnaKelliher.com

Donna Kelliher is a fine art pet photographer and Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT-KA, certified through the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers) based just outside Boston, serving Greater Boston, the North Shore, and beyond. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and has spent more than twenty years behind the camera, her career beginning in dog sports photography before she shifted her focus to fine art portrait work. Her photography has appeared on the covers of Clean Run, Dog World, and Dog Sport magazines many times over, along with interior features in each, and her images appear in three books: The Everything Dog Training and Tricks Book, 2nd Edition, The Science Behind a Happy Dog, and Do More With Your Dog. Her work is also currently on display in a gallery exhibition celebrating dogs in art. What sets Donna apart is a rare combination: a trained fine art photographer who is also a hands on dog trainer with real experience working with every temperament, from timid and fearful dogs to high energy and reactive ones. That expertise was hard won. Donna spent years afraid of dogs herself after being bitten as a child, and worked through that fear so completely that she now trains and rehabilitates dogs with serious behavioral challenges, and competes in agility with her own dogs, Believe and Asher.

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