LIFE WITH PURPOSE

MODEL CAROLINE MINER SMITH OPENS UP ABOUT HERONGOING BATTLE WITH ANXIETY AND HOW SHE HOPES TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE AS A MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATE

Long before she was featured in campaigns by Urban Decay and in the pages of this magazine, model Caroline Miner Smith was afraid to step outside her front door. “Growing up, I don’t remember a time that I didn’t struggle with severe anxiety,” Smith shares. “I remember it became very apparent when I was in second grade. I felt an overwhelming fear of going to school and got stomach ulcers because I was so stressed about it.”

Smith grew up on a small farm in North Carolina, hundreds of miles from the glitz of Hollywood and the grit of NYC. From a young age, she struggled to assimilate into the conservative community she called home and by adolescence, her anxiety manifested into agoraphobia and she struggled to maintain a normal life. “By high school, [my anxiety] turned into this massive fear of leaving the house,” Smith explains. “It put me in a state of literal starvation and starvation of life experiences. I was immersed in extreme depression.”