As a working class city girl I was brought up thinking that no matter what happens you, put on your lippy and your best smile and press ahead.

In much of life that’s fine. As a model in New York, when photographers’ creative imaginations rarely stretched further than covering me with baby oil and slapping on an Afro wig, I would just get on with the shoots.

Likewise, in TV Soaps like Footballers’ Wives and Hollyoaks, this stoic, practical, female approach got me through all sorts of ups and downs.

But after returning to Liverpool and becoming a mum things happened that changed everything, plunging me into personal disasters, and ultimately prompting me to create the show I am staging at the Fringe called Identity Crisis.

The show is a recognition that huge numbers of us are battered, bruised and confused about who we are and our place in the world. And recent political events like the Brexit vote suggest that dislocated identity is a national as much as a personal matter.

One source of stress was that as the host of a radio show I had attracted the attentions of a racist stalker, who was eventually jailed. I was also trying to resist moves by the BBC to shift talk shows around, based on colour, and type.

But then in September 2011 I went to work out of town overnight and left my beautiful cousin to babysit my toddler. When I returned my cousin was dead. A brain aneurism at 19.

Have you ever heard the words “mad with grief”, because that was me; my head fell off and rolled into a crevice. That’s when I learned about depression; that’s when I learned about human fragility and fallibility, my own. That’s when I saw just how many people are struggling to put on a brave face and carry on regardless, largely because as a society we are so poor at facing up to mental illness and grief.

I got obsessed over whether my little boy was safe – something I suspect many mums will recognise – and just wanted everything to be normal for him. I tried so hard to keep smiling that I remember, after 14 months, thinking that my face hurt.

None of us want to believe we are losing our minds, but depression and grief must be dealt with or they will destroy you. I could have one dark thought going round all day in loop. I was convinced everybody hated me, I could only do exactly what I had planned for my job and my child, and the second he went to bed so did I.

One day I said “stop” and I went to the GP. The doctor did not shame me, but said: “Phina after one of these events you would have been depressed but four or five in a row, wow, your serotonin will not have had a chance to recover.” Sadly the old “lippy on” mentality kicked back in and I refused help for a while.

I could have saved a lot of heartache if I had told my husband and friends what I was going on with me earlier. There isn’t a time limit on grief or depression; they don’t visit for three weeks then head home. People’s eyes glaze over when you have not got over it yet.

I came off the radio, gave up my newspaper column and abandoned social media. It was tough letting go. And there I was in a full-blown identity crisis. Without all those glossy media involvements who was I, what was left?

Eventually I took help and got my serotonin levels back where they should be. Then I put pen to paper and wrote what I hope audiences in Edinburgh will find a very funny play.

In it I cross many boundaries: I’m a middle-aged mother of Nigerian descent portraying nine different people – young, old, male, female, black and white.

This was partly because I wanted to show black women can play any role. And perhaps that gets to the essence of what I’ve learned. We when it comes to struggles of identity, depression and grief we must not expect ourselves or anyone else to survive on lippy and a false smile.

Phina Oruche is starring in Identity Crisis at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Spotlites, veune 278) until Sunday.