love

I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary that evening, but I wound up in the hospital with a burned hand and, at least in retrospect, a little insight about compassion. It started after work one day when I had just sat down at the kitchen table with a glass of water to stare at […]

I’ve written about emotional abuse in my boyhood and a family history of depression as big contributors to my own illness, but recently I’ve spent more time reconnecting with the things that went right all those years ago rather than dwelling only on what went wrong. The positive side is simply the love that has […]

A family member’s care-giving for depression can shift from hope to frustration if the initial expectations are unrealistically high. The film Phoebe in Wonderland is about a young girl with a compulsive disorder and also about the mother who tries to cure her with love. The mother, brilliantly played by Felicity Huffman, blames herself as […]

Posts reviewing movies about depression are consistently among the top pages visited on this site. That fact surprised me, though I suppose it shouldn’t have. For all the insight I gain through reading, I connect instantly with a good dramatic portrayal of someone struggling with emotional pain and dysfunction. It’s encouraging to discover more and […]

I keep coming back to the stories of Rachel Naomi Remen, and this video of one of her lectures reminds me what I value in her work. While advocates of the new medicine have been revolutionizing the paradigm of medical practice, Remen is one of those physicians who has changed many lives by applying these […]

Depression isn’t a one-time disaster in a life relationship. You think you’re through the great crisis, but little by little you feel the weight pressing down again. The stone face that wordlessly says “I can’t let you in” is back. It kept coming back to me and my wife for decades, and each time it […]