Sara Evans is bravely opening up about her struggles with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), in her upcoming memoir, Born to Fly. After being hit by a car when she was only eight years old while crossing the street, Sara was thrown 80 feet off the road, leaving her with multiple severe injuries. Although she was able to heal from her physical trauma, the 49-year-old says the emotional healing took much, much longer.
“For six agonizing weeks, I remained in that hospital bed,” Sara recalls in an excerpt from Born to Fly (via People). “I’d have a sudden, overwhelming feeling of pain and panic consuming me. ‘I want out of this!’ I’d scream, thrashing around till someone held me down and calmed me. I felt like I was being buried alive.”
Sara weathered plenty of storms since the accident, including her parents’ surprise divorce when she was 12, but it wasn’t until her own divorce, from her first husband, Craig Schelske in 2005, that she felt the full impact of her PTSD.
“I couldn’t get a grasp on who I was,” Sara shares. “It’s a feeling I’ve struggled with my whole life anytime I am stressed. I think it’s PTSD from my car accident. I have this feeling of ‘who am I?’ It tends to creep up on me after I’ve had to do a lot of interviews and be on and play the part of ‘Sara Evans.’ I don’t even like writing about it because I am so afraid of having this feeling.”
The singer recalls one particularly heart-breaking moment, when she realized the depth of her pain, which was starting to affect her children: Avery, Olivia and Audrey.
“For about 10 days I was afraid to leave my house, even to walk from one room to another,” Sara recounts. “All I did was sit in front of the fireplace with the baby girls and read my Bible. I was totally consumed with fear. And for no reason. I remember dreading the hour when Avery would get off the bus from kindergarten, because I would have to pretend that everything was fine, and it most certainly was not. The girls were both babies, so they had no idea. But I was so afraid he would catch on and start being afraid himself.”
Thankfully, Sara’s doctor prescribed her anti-anxiety medicine, which has changed her life.
“It calmed me down,” Sara acknowledges. “Taking it also made me realize you’re not going to be this way forever. I always tell my kids, ‘The toll that anxiety takes on your body and on your mind, I think, is so much worse than if you have to take [medication] to calm down.'”
The Missouri native is now happily married to former professional football player Jay Barker, and has found healthy ways of coping with her ongoing PTSD, although she admits it will likely always be something she deals with.
“I still struggle,” Sara admits. “But I’m so grateful for every second of this life.”
Born to Fly will be released on September 8. It is available for pre-order via her website.
