A Winter of Depression

   The journey of being Barbara is the goal; it is the process. This time my assignment is to experience diversity. I chose a stocky body that would ground me a little in the maelstrom that would assail me as I journeyed through life.

Then I chose to be Cesarean born, so that I would have to seek out and create my own boundaries and link myself to the dirt for my own grounding. The challenges have been so much fun and so educational.

I remember it was just after my 27^th birthday; I had read Gail Sheehy’s book, “Passages” and connected with the passage she described for that age. I was no longer young; I was married with a young son; I was becoming depressed.

What is it they now say depression is, repressed anger? I guess that I was angry; I was left at home alone with a baby who cried. I thought that it was my fault; I thought that I should know how to fix the situation. He was my first child. I was learning how to be a mother. He volunteered to be the angel who would guide me. It took a while.  

The angel who was my husband would come home from a hard day of work and I would almost throw the baby at him, so that I could do something, anything else.

Why else was I angry? Those feelings are lost in the mists of time, safely locked in the memory of a mind full of life.

I decided that if I was going to be depressed, that I would “BE” depressed. I figured that it would last about 3 months, like in the book; depression at the passage. I moped around, I cried, I anguished how tough my life was. I told my friends that I was depressed. I did this for about three months. I wallowed in depression, I relished each tear. I felt the anger and fear.

Suddenly, as the daffodils poked their heads out of the ground, and the lilacs budded on the bushes, I opened my mind to the love and beauty around me and released the idea of being depressed. I had survived the winter of depression. I took this opportunity to live in joy again.