Men will fight you down when you see the light.
Exodus – Bob Marley
Let me tell you – if you’re not wrong, everything is alright.
So we’re going to walk through the roads of creation,
We the generation tread through great tribulation.
Open your eyes and look within,
Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?
We know where we’re going, we know where we’re from
We’re leaving Babylon, we’re going to our Fatherland.
2019 was a harsh year for me. From June-November 2019 I found myself in a severe depressive episode, the likes of which I have only experienced one other time in my life. Any period of depression feels like it is without end. Any period of depression feels hopelessly indefinite. You lose your bearings on time. You come to believe that you have felt this way your entire life. That you have never experienced happiness. That you never will feel happiness. Even if, logically, you remember feeling fine or even happy a short time ago, this logic has little power. Depression beats logic, clarity, the well meaning phrases of others. Depression wins over the hope that things will eventually be better. You have my sincerest empathy if you are able to see yourself in these words. Depression is the worst thing I have ever experienced in my life. There is no contest. The events that have triggered these episodes were painful, bad and long lasting. Dealing with the events themselves would have been enough. Dealing with those events without the benefits of natural hope, light, joy, reason or clarity creates an unyielding foe.
I am proud of myself for how hard I have worked to recover from my depressive episodes. I am especially proud of myself for my recovery from this latest episode, as it affected every part of my life. No area remained untouched. No person in my life remained untouched. I had to change, which necessitated others having to change as well.
It is not my depression I want to talk about today, though. I want to discuss my recovery from it. Both to give others a rough road map on how to heal, and also to celebrate the accomplishments in my past 5 months.
The depressive episodes I have encountered in my life have been largely triggered by grief. Unfortunately, there is no way to escape grief in life. I know I will face it again, in some form. I will face other painful situations. This is an undeniable fact. I can only do so much to prevent the grief I encounter from triggering a depressive episode. While I cannot prevent it, I can reduce my odds. I find myself much better prepared than I was a year ago to face this. I will continue to do everything I can to stay out of toxic or hurtful situations, I will do everything I can to keep myself in the best emotional health possible. I very much hope, as I start to lap the calendar dates of last year (dates that are memorable to me due to the trauma and desperation I found myself in) that I will not experience PTSD or trigger residual feelings from that time. If it does, though, I want this written reminder of the work I have done to heal myself. I am the same person I was a year ago. I will always be me, this will not change. The good news, though, is that I am so much more me than I have ever been in my life. Stronger, smarter, wiser, more comfortable with myself than I was a year ago. Less fear, less emotion spent on things I have no control over. More confident, more hopeful than I was a year ago. More able to recognize the love shown to me, more able to show love myself. I want to explain how these changes took place.
The single most important factor in my recovery was therapy. This was not my first experience with therapy. I have always considered it a place of healing. That is what it has meant to me. Therapy is, at times, very difficult. I have left therapy in tears. Other times feeling really proud of myself. There is a lot of positive support in therapy. One of the basics of it is to recognize the healthy habits and steps you are taking and acknowledging the positive ways you have handled and are handling difficult situations. The things you are already doing right. Therapy is also the willingness to face the tough things and make difficult choices in your own best interest. It is the courage to admit when you take backward steps or outright fail at something you felt you were ready to change. Therapy is not for the weak. There are no weak people in therapy. It is for those who are willing to do what it takes to change in order to live a more authentic life. In order to be at peace.
I have previously written quite a bit about EMDR (Eye Motion Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy, which I have undertaken this past year. The healing I have experienced from this therapy model has been nothing short of a miracle. It is the most effective form of therapy I have ever done. In 90 minutes I have found myself completely relieved of some of the negative beliefs about myself that I have carried since childhood. Even EMDR is not good news every single time, though. I have had to tap into the most painful events of my life. I have had to face the emotional responses these bring. I have had to feel the same pain of these traumas that I did when they happened. I have had to be ready to face whatever else my brain floats into my consciousness. Sometimes other painful traumas are linked together in my understanding. This process means being willing to swim to the bottom of your pain to see what lies there. Sometimes it is having a trauma you will work on week after week without the resolution you want and need. When this happens you feel it between appointments, you try to remember the first time you felt something similar in your life. You face it until it is processed. I’ve shown great courage in this undertaking.
Although I had the choice to discontinue therapy, I never considered doing so. It took a much different tone after this depressive episode started. I no longer had the luxury of talking about the past, in the face of it. We had to suspend EMDR in order to focus on getting through that day, that week. It became the lifeline most crucial to my survival. When the depression finally started to lift, though, I was able to double down, hitting harder on my remaining unprocessed traumas. I will continue to bring the hammer down on them until they are fully processed and cause me no disturbance when I talk or think about them.
When I look back on the past year, I can see a pretty straight trajectory of healing and growth starting Nov 1. There were a few things that took place at this time to made this possible.
I began seeing a psychiatrist to manage my medications related to depression and anxiety. The first thing he did was to run a DNA test on me (GeneSite). The results from this test would show which anti-depressant medications were most compatible for me. The test confirmed I was on the best medication, but showed I was very deficient in folate. A certain percentage of the population lacks the ability to convert folic acid to folate, an important factor in determining how effective anti-depressant medications are. I started a folate supplement, in addition to Omega-3 and noticed a difference almost immediately.
Another addition that accelerated my healing was that my husband and I started couples counseling. Quite a few of the problems I have encountered in my life have come from an inability to communicate. I have always been a person that keeps a lot inside, at least till recently. You can imagine how this can negatively affect a marriage over the course of 20+ years. My husband had traveled frequently during the years our children were growing. I had become more and more independent emotionally from him. I imagine this is not uncommon in marriage after children are brought into it, living different experiences within the same household. Not being uncommon doesn’t make it good or healthy, though. My husband had been front-front line to my depressive episode. We had some scary days. He was very supportive of me taking whatever steps were necessary to recover and find healing from this. He did not hesitate when I suggested couples counseling. He also showed courage in facing what needed to be faced. We were both able to learn better ways of communicating. We were both able to state what we needed from each other and our marriage. We were able to get on the same page in supporting our adult children, which made our family stronger. My home, marriage and family began to stabilize. My healing accelerated.
The timing of this change, in how we related to each other, was not lost on me when our youngest child moved out 6 weeks after. We were suddenly empty-nesters. It was the two of us again, like it was in the beginning. I imagine, for some, the last child leaving can really highlight existing deficits in a relationship. You are faced with what remains, the things that have grown and not grown. Because we had worked on our issues and learned better ways to live together, our youngest leaving was a happy transition. Happy for her, happy for us. Coronavirus stay-home orders doubled down on this considerably. There has never been a time in our marriage that we have spent more time together than we have in the past 6 weeks. I have been thankful, daily, for the healing that has taken place in our relationship. I have been thankful, daily, that both of us now have the communication skills to discuss the bad days, the stressors the pandemic brings, the ability to say I need to be alone or I’m going outside to write. Such small things, yet things I was unable to say or even recognize a year ago.
I have rid my life, as much as possible, of situations that cause me pain or distress, of people who are boundary pushers or toxic in nature. This has not been an easy thing to do. It is uncomfortable to remove yourself from situations where others depend on you. It is painful to reduce your interaction or outright part with people you love and care about. Despite the difficulties of this, I have not been able to deny the positive results it has brought to my life. Instead of using valuable energy to deal with these people and situations I have more energy to spend on things and people who are good and positive in my life. This has resulted in new friendships, deepened existing friendships – both better uses of my time and abilities.
I have found a new purpose in my life. I never really knew what this chapter of life would hold for me, after my children left. Over the years I have felt a growing anxiety from not being able to see a clear path for myself. I felt purpose in being a mother to young children, I felt purpose in volunteering at my childrens schools. I felt purpose in volunteering in my community. I knew all these things would come to a natural end, though. At a time others are returning to school to realize their dreams, changing careers to one more suited to them or staying the course they are on, I felt no direction, I had no dreams past seeing my children grown. I’ve been trying to find one for several years.
In my therapy process this has become more clear to me. I have already mentioned that I have been a person who kept a lot of myself hidden. I’d done this as a survival tactic, having had several traumas where those who saw my truest self flipped their feelings for me off like a light switch, and were gone. That or their love was gone even if they were still physically present. I’d also internalized messages over the course of my life that my true self was unacceptable, ugly and needed to be changed. My journey through therapy has neutralized the traumas that helped build this belief/fear in me. It has challenged the beliefs I had long held about myself. As these two things happened a huge weight was lifted off of me. I was able to realize that I really like the person I am. I was able to realize that I am unique, funny, a good friend, creative, merciful, empathetic. My love is a light, my humor makes people happy to be around me.
As this change has taken place I have been able to visualize the positive role I can play in the world. I have felt a new calling to be an example of positive change for others, women in particular. I have recently become a certified fitness instructor. This path took a sudden detour in the Coronavirus pandemic. I have still found ways, though, to be a positive force. I have been teaching virtually on Saturday mornings. Instead of having a local class to teach I have been joined by women all over the country. Family members, friends I have made in the places I have lived, local friends that I have just recently made. Being able to give people some activity using body positive songs and dance has given me purpose in lock-down and it is something I look forward to doing each week. I would like to perhaps go back to school for nutrition to work with women trying to overcome eating disorders and better their lives. This was the first dream I had for myself when I started college. It has felt like seeing an old friend again.
I also was able to built and start this blog, giving my story and life experiences a voice for other women facing the same things I have. My blog is lengthy, my blog discusses uncomfortable topics. It is not for everyone. That’s ok. It reaches those who need to read it so they feel less alone. It says – it is ok to talk about these things. It’s ok to admit those things we feel compelled to keep inside. It is me sharing the information I have learned in 50 years. It is not my uncensored voice, it bu it is my authentic voice. I am no longer mute. I am no longer trying to go unnoticed. I am no longer seek to hide much of myself. In time, I would like to become an author. This is a dream I feel capable of accomplishing.
I made efforts to find activities that have enhanced my life. I have been learning to play a new musical instrument. I practice from the same book 10 year olds do. I have started taking dance classes again. I started meeting socially with women I came to know through exercise and diet. I have added new activities, like cycling. I have a sister who travels extensively. I have committed to taking a trip with her sometime in the next year, we don’t know where. She will find us a good deal and we will go. I have always loved to travel, things like this are bonus points for me and I look forward to the good memories that will be made on this adventure.
Not so long ago I found myself brand new to a place I didn’t want to be. I found myself exhausted from volunteering and putting my time and energies into things that were no longer serving me. Not so long ago I was being half a wife, half a mother, half a friend, half a person. No so long ago I found myself feeling very timid as a new student in a Zumba class. There were a group of women in this class who were dressed in crazy outfits and not even particularly following what the instructor was doing. I looked at them with envy. I remember thinking – I wish I was that comfortable with myself. I wish I was having that much fun.
Well, look who’s wearing crazy outfits and having all the fun now. It’s me! The past year of my life has been difficult and painful. I have done my part, though, to learn from it. To change from it, to grow from it. You can take the pain and disappointment, of course. I’d happily pay someone to wipe those from my memory. I am not a person who believes there is a purpose in these things that happen in life, the things that wound and force us to change. The ability to push through it, learn from it, grow in spite of it is a testament of character. I am thankful for my character. I am thankful for the strength it’s taken to learn and grow in the midst of terrible circumstances. I am thankful for authenticity and my own unique nature. Most of all, I am thankful for that path that lies ahead of me. A path that not so long ago I could not see, but now do.
