Outskating Your Demons
/How a skateboard trip redefined one woman’s relationship with mental illness
Molly-Anne Dameron sought to find mental healing by skateboarding from Maine to New Jersey (Photo courtesy Molly-Anne Dameron)
“In the two years I’ve been clean, I hadn’t done something that really meant something to me. It was two years of just trying to survive. ... And I needed to find some meaning in that.”
Molly-Anne Dameron had struggled with severe mental illness her whole life. And, after years of drug addiction, she had recently gotten sober. But — as she puts it — getting sober is "not always f*cking rainbows." She wasn’t sure she was going to make it in sobriety, with the added isolation of the pandemic.
So she set out to skate from Maine to New Jersey.
On this episode, journalist Ilana Strauss brings us Molly-Anne’s story. It’s a story about trying to reclaim the good in yourself, and figuring out who you are, after giving up something that has defined you for years.
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