Some rights reserved by Hamed Saber at Flickr When my mother died, I didn’t know what I felt. Throughout my life, I had been struggling to shed the influence of her searing and shaming words, her anger, at times rage, above all, her depression during my childhood. How many of us spend adult years still […]
depression
Acting, Depression and Work
I was reading Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, Blonde, about the life of Marilyn Monroe, and was stopped by a line spoken by the character known as the “The Survivor.” Norma, he said, was a natural actor because she didn’t know who she was and so was driven to try to become the character completely. That […]
The Longing to be Close – 2
It was more than a decade ago when I stopped believing my own fantasies of finding happiness by leaving my marriage. I could see that those dreams were only substitutes for taking a hard look at who I was. Depression, though, made that difficult task even harder by convincing me there was no one worth […]
The Longing to be Close – 1
In reading over the many responses to The Longing to Leave series, I realize those stories only get at part of the picture. Like many in the midst of depression, I wanted to blame my marriage for what I was going through and fantasized about leaving. But at the core of that fantasy was an […]
Depression and Stress
Part of my recovery consists of putting two and two together, in this case, connecting depression and stress. I’ve learned to see links between things I’ve done and felt that I never knew were connected to depression. Blowing up in rage, feeling extreme anxiety, even panic at meeting a group of new people, deep fears […]
Hope, Love, Depression and House Repair
A four-word comment from Stephany has set my mind going. “Hope is not love.” she writes in reference to my last post on the difficulty of sustaining a marriage in the midst of major depression. At the end of that brief story I used a house-building image in talking about hope, and I think that’s […]
