In sorting through boxes of old papers today, I came upon part of a meditation and some journal notes from the period in my life when I was recovering from a cancer operation. I was dealing with depression at the same time and searching for new approaches to healing beyond the physical treatments and medications […]
Searching for a Way Out of Depression
Some Rights Reserved by fdecomite at Flickr In a previous post I started thinking aloud if my stance toward depression could change from hostility toward an invader to the acceptance of a primal force in my make-up, something that was giving me a message I was imperfectly grasping. I’ve found a remarkable book that helps […]
Healing, Butterflies and Hawks
At times, emerging from depression seems like a gift. I’ve written before about a sudden shift, a kind of renewal, that occurred when crossing a shallow stream. In my experience, healing may come from a special place more effectively than from medication. I became sensitized to the power of certain places through years of work […]
Depression Against Life
Anon for Now recently commented on the sense of renewal in life that served as a deterrent to suicide. This struck me as capturing the most baffling aspect of the temptation to end life. For what does the evidence of life on earth point to but the endlessly inventive will to survive? There is no […]
Depression and Suicide – Back from the Edge
Christos Georghiou – Fotolia.com_ WARNING – THIS POST HAS POSSIBLE TRIGGERS. After a tough week with a lot of down time lost to pain of various sorts – as much mental as physical – I’ve been trying to draw on lessons friends have been sharing with me. They have been describing a deeper sense of […]
Lincoln’s Adaptation to Depression
In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln, then a state legislator in Illinois, wrote to his law partner about securing a post for a physician who was then treating him for a nervous disorder called hypochondriasis, or hypo for short, a condition we would call major depression. “I have, within the last few days, been making a […]
