I am in Vermont on our annual vacation. You can either say: “She is not walking her talk, working on vacation!”  or you can say what is true for me: “She is SO inspired by being in nature that she HAS to create something so she might as well do it through writing!”  Cause, that’s it.  My feet are in the earth (literally) and my head is in the clouds (kind of figuratively–we are at a high elevation!)

Yesterday, we got a little lost in the woods and ended up trekking a very roundabout four and half miles with the entire family.  The kids were dubious of my husband’s ability to get us back to our car and frankly, I was too but I knew we’d eventually come out someplace safe before dark.  We were all exhausted by the time we found our way back, but upon seeing the lake and the opportunity to fish and swim, the kids’ energy was instantly restored.  Mine was a little slower to catch up, but I had a moment on a rock where joy overtook me.

My feet were not happy although I had been wearing the right footwear for a trek, but once I peeled off the shoes and socks, they got very happy when they touched the cool grass.  It wasn’t even nice grass, more like crabgrass and weeds, but just touching the earth directly as I stared out over a big lake with a clear view of the dam that created it—a massive man-made reminder of our tenacity to harness nature—I felt as happy as my feet and filled with wonder.

As I absorbed my ‘moment’ I looked at three healthy kids fishing with their dad.  That crew was MY family.  The family that my choices and love had created with the help of great luck, circumstances and fateful universal energy.  I felt powerful, but not in an ego-driven way.  I felt connected to the energy that creates life.

Being in nature all week with two more weeks to go almost scares me a bit as to what I’ll do when I get home.  I feel such creative surges while I am here that I can barely sleep at night because I have so many ideas swirling through my head.  I am not complaining, but WOW, I feel like I could blow the roof right off my suburban home if I don’t funnel this energy into something specific.  I know I will but I think I’ve finally assimilated something I’ve known intellectually for a really long time.

It’s not a bad idea to put our feet in the earth daily and yet how often I forget even when my office’s back door leads right out to the grass.  Feet in the earth; head in heavenly bliss.

I am not depressed.  Right now.  I suffered one, huge, three-year clinical depression in my twenties which I wrote about in my new book and I’ve lived with mild, recurring depression ever since.  Except for the occassional need for a nap, it really does not stop me.  I manage it and usually, my  skill set is strong enough to thwart it before it can embed itself for any long haul. And truly, most of the time, I can follow my own best advice and have the purest outlook that does not even allow it to register as a possibility in my psyche or body.

What pains me most, however, is to see other people suffer with depression or to see that someone has the mental habits that set them up for a fall into the pit of the Big ‘D’.  In the medical community, depression does not register as an addiction, but when I see someone headed into ‘the pit’, it’s like watching someone with a drinking problem who doesn’t think they have one and whom you cannot get through to to warn them of their eminent downfall.  The mental rigidity that allows depression is a fortress of its own.  It does not want to hear that it can be threatened.  It does not want its walls to come down.  It is cemented and going to do its job.

I am not a doctor or psychologist, but from my point of view as someone who has disentangled themselves from the sticky web of deep depression and who encounters less than productive mental habits in coaching clients and has for almost twenty years, I can tell you that depression does not hit someone over night.  It’s been building ever so clandestinely in the form of a belief system about yourself or life in general.  That’s one way.  Certainly, there is the kind that comes from sudden trauma or tremendous loss.  After proper mourning and healing, those that bounce back do so because they have not made up their mind like a soldier’s bunk, tight and rigid.  They have refuted mental patterns and beliefs about oneself that keep the brain firing neurons down the same paths that suffered the trauma.  They recover when they can mentally  put their attention somewhere other than the pain, the event, the negative beliefs about what is happening and more.

Depression feels bad.  And when we feel bad, we don’t want to do anything.  But very important to getting out of the dark is moving toward the light.  Literally, moving is key.  Exercising, walking, dancing, stretching—anything that allows the body to start dictating to the mind instead of the other way around.

Depression requires focus.  It wants you to focus on it so it can keep growing like ‘the blob’ in old “B” movies and take you over.  What we focus on, we get, and depression is very good at getting you to focus on it.  Beating it back requires focusing elsewhere, even if it is only for a minute at a time.  Notice something else—something positive, something life-affirming.  Read something positive to start getting the mind to focus on something else.

Depression is often the derailment of your spirit.  It was hijacked by your psyche (or mind).  Your soul and the joy it holds want desperately to come through, but decisions and sometimes circumstances will hold it at bay.  It requires a bit of  surrender—not to lie down and let the blob get you, but to surrender to whatever you are trying to scare away—most likely you are resisting love or self-love.  You’ll need to surrender to your wholeness and surrender to the fact that you are a spark of divinity.  Surrender to the fact that you are loved even if you have or do NOTHING!!!!  If you can allow that truth to permeate your being and your brain cells, you will be on your way to pulling yourself out of the vortex of the dark side.

Forgiveness is a major factor in healing a depression.  Forgiving yourself is probably paramount.  Furthermore, forgiveness is a tremendous opportunity to reprogram your mind to feed you better fuel.  Fuel that will allow you to accept love and be loving towards yourself.  Any fuel that feeds your insecurities or negative self-talk has to be avoided.  Sometimes, the very people you hold most dear are the ones that echo your greatest fears.  Many of those relationships may need to be renegotiated.

It seems that without doing so consciously, I have written a quick prescription for healing depression.  That isn’t my intent.  It is simply to share something I know about. However, I speak only from my personal experience and observation and ask that you use what resonates with you but not consider it a proven remedy.  My ideas are only one way.  There are many more— medical and spiritual.

I care about this topic deeply.  I care about the end of suffering for all.