Cure for the Common Depression

My first bout with depression was during my senior year of high school. I was in a zone/funk/episode of life that was really all-encompassing. I was trying to figure out my next step in life; where to go to college, what to study, who to be. I was so low and so down, I knew I was officially depressed. I was busy and I didn't have time to do anything about it, but just wait it out.

I eventually broke out of it and got back on a better path. Since then I have graduated from college, started my career, gotten married, had two kids and moved 5 times. I have suffered major illness, deaths in the family, and the challenges of motherhood and career. And though I switched to waterproof mascara during my first pregnancy (and never switched back by the way), I can say that I was happy for most of it.

I considered myself quite fortunate for loving motherhood and having next-to-nothing baby blues. I was worried about having a second child, but once I had been her mother for a year, I thought: I made it, I can do this, I am OUT of the woods.

Then my second bout with depression hit this past summer. I got home from California and I never recovered. I blamed it on jet lag for a few weeks, but my sleeping became increasingly off, I never felt rested, I was agitated and anxious all the time. I blamed everything on my kids. I could barely function. My worst point was around the beginning of September and I just stood and sobbed for no lucid reason. My husband was patient but did not quite know what to do with me. I didn't know what to do with me. I was numb. I could not talk to anyone. I did not call my friends, I did not call my mom, I just walked around like a zombie.

I was desperately trying to figure out what was wrong. In theory there was nothing for me to be sad/agitated/upset/tired about...I could see quite clearly that I had a blessed life, beautiful family, amazing opportunities, but the reality was just not paralleling that.

After exhausting every possible explanation,(it's natural to feel low after a high like my trip to CA, maybe you are still harboring bad feelings from "the past", maybe you are having issues with a particular person or situation....)I finally reached out to a friend. The email went like this: I think I'm depressed, how can I know for sure? She sent me a link to a test on the web. The scoring went somethingn like this: 0-10 sad, 11-25 sorta sad......54-over SEVERELY DEPRESSED. I scored a 62.

When she heard that, we made a phone appt. (b/c she lives out of state). She talked me through it and made things a lot clearer for me. After that phone call, my good days started outnumbering my bad ones. I started to find genuine joy in my life again.

For a while there I was blaming a lot on my two challenging children. I was only seeing them 1-dimensionally: Kids with Needs that I cannot fulfill. Now the light is shining again, the merkiness is clearing, and I can see them in all their dimensional glory: 32 flavors, and then some. The other day I found myself saying their names over and over again in my head, and quipping about what great names those are, and what great girls they are to go with those names. I am so glad to be back and fully present with them again, and I am so grateful that they loved me all the while.