Just when you though Kaitlyn Bristowe revealed everything one could know about her, she does it again.
When she joined Chris Soules' season of The Bachelor she let people in on her dry sense of humor, before revealing a more emotional side as the lead in the next season of The Bachelorette. Afterwards, she stayed a constant figure in the lives of Bachelor Nation fans through her podcast Off the Vine, where she talked about anything and everything under the sun. And now, in her latest endeavor, a YouTube show called 9 to Wine, the 34-year-old got candid about the ups and downs made her the person she is today.
In her inaugural episode, the podcast host delved into her entire life story, starting with her childhood. She recalled being a "drama queen" from a very young age, which was one of the first signs that she was destined to do "big things."
From her teens onward, the star tried to make it as a dancer in Vancouver, all the while working small jobs as a waitress. Kaitlyn said she had "no idea" what kept her going, but eventually she had her big break when she landed a gig as a dancer for the Canadian Football League.
Kaitlyn joked that she thought she "peaked" with her job in the CFL and it was all "downhill" from there.
Little did she know that in the next few months she'd give up on her dance career to live with a hockey player in Newfoundland, away from everyone she knew and loved. "I didn't even realize I was a hopeless romantic that would do anything for love. That's what got me onto The Bachelor, maybe that was my path and didn't even know it yet," she mused.
While her new life in the somewhat foreign country was "very hard," she agreed to move even further when her boyfriend was signed to a team in Germany. She said, "Everything in me told me to follow my heart... but a small part of me was dying everyday that I wasn't doing what I loved to do. And I think that was really hard for me and I think that would be really hard for anyone to lose that part of passion in your life, just to follow somebody else's dream."
She eventually realized that life in Germany with her hockey-player boyfriend wasn't meant to be, because she felt that she had "completely lost" who she was by being there.
She moved back into her parent's house when she was just 27-years-old and then sought treatment for depression. Kaitlyn revealed that when she went into the doctor's office she felt like she "had nothing and that life was over for me."
"I've given up all my hopes and dreams and that the love of my life has now gone," she said of her state of mind at the time. Upon revealing these thoughts to the doctor, he placed her on Valium, although she said wasn't unaware "what it would do to me."
At first, she said the medication was "great," but she soon started showing alarming behavior. "I had become addicted to Valium and I was about 93 lb and that is when somebody had to shake me and say you can't live like this, this is not you," Kaitlyn remembered. "I'll never forget my mom coming into the room middle of the night with YouTube videos of hypnotizing people saying, 'You're happy, you're going to be okay,' and she just played it in my ear as I slept."
Years have since gone by and Kaitlyn can now say she came out of that dark moment in her life having learned an important lesson: "You cannot make somebody else responsible for your own happiness."
Not long after, she would be introduced to the world on Chris Soules' season of The Bachelor and the rest is history.