Rachel Slawson

When I was 19 years old, I tried to end my life after competing at Miss Utah USA and it was the second time I tried competing. I was already struggling with my mental health. But I had spent so much of that year really trying to become something that I wasn't. I had gone and gotten plastic surgery, my eating disorder was at its worst and I was just not in a good place. And when I still didn't win after trying to become something I wasn't, it crushed me. I just didn't want to be here anymore. Show less «

They were obviously more in a place of fear than understanding. I think I really just had a moment where I realized that no one was coming to do this for me. That's why I started the I Am Why project. It's this reminder that I am why I'm here and it's I am why I do the things that I do and that is a good enough reason. Show less «

I was a private flight attendant at the time and I walked down in the hotel to meet my pilots and I told them I wasn't getting on the plane, I was throwing a Christmas party at the hotel. They called a family member because they obviously felt like something was odd. And then from there, I tried to jump in a lake because I thought that someone I had been dating who had rejected me a month prior was waiting for me in the lake and I almost died. It took a team of firefighters to convince me not to jump in the lake, to put me into an ambulance and to take me to a hospital where I basically was sitting in a hospital for what was only like I think eight or nine hours, but in my world it was like seven years. Show less «