Writing is a way of reclaiming my mind from depression, but there is a darker side to it called resistance. I won’t call it writer’s block because the same thing stands in the way of any purposeful activity or major life commitment, including the process of recovering from depression. It usually begins only after I […]
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5 Comedies about Depression
Yes, there are such things as comedies about depression. Sort of light, often romantic, oddly funny, definitely quirky, and probably not for everyone. Perhaps depression has given me a strange sense of humor, but laughing at a deadly serious illness helps me from time to time. You need to have a pretty good imagination and […]
A Brief Story of Pablo Neruda
Some Rights Reserved by capsicina at Flickr A friend sends out a poetry email every Monday, and here’s what he sent this week. Pablo Neruda, toward the end of his life, was invited to read in Caracas, Venezuela, in the great national theater there. The theater was filled with people celebrating him as the icon […]
Work, Identity and Recovery – 1
Understanding what work means for my sense of personal identity, for a basic acceptance of who I am, has been a central issue in making progress in recovery over this past year. Yet it seems strange that both my identity and feelings of self-worth should so depend on what I do. I spent a long […]
A Me to Hold Onto
Reading Catatonic Kid’s post, full of poetry as all of hers are, about how she experiences the disparate parts of her mind, I started thinking once more about what it is that holds me together when so much within seems to be breaking apart. I work every day to keep myself in a mindset of […]
Forgiveness & Recovery from Depression
Recently, Melinda wrote a post about the role of forgiveness in her recovery and the difficulty she has had in forgiving her unrepentant father for abusing her in childhood. Reading this made me aware that I wasn’t very clear in my own mind about the meaning of forgiveness. It is always mentioned as an obligatory […]
Healing Sound and Depression
Have you heard it, felt it? In the sound of a human voice there may come a wave of healing. Of course, it could also be a scarring knife edge or shriek of pain that can hurt or terrify, but here I want to talk about the power of voice to restore lost harmony. Let’s […]
Creating a Way Out of Depression -1
Some Rights Reserved by KayCey97007 at Flickr WARNING: IDEAS UNDER CONSTRUCTION Thanks to a series of compelling posts on creativity by Isabella Mori at changetherapy (part of an exchange with Psyblog), I’ve been trying to understand more clearly what happens when creative work takes place. I haven’t gotten there yet (can’t say I expect to […]
