Category: Mental health

A New Way to be Human

A New Way to be Human

To look at the last decade of my superficially is to miss the miracle.

Everything flows back to my father who was addicted to a vitriolic and cruel rage and took it out on us all.  His anger was cruel and it undermined what I thought of him.  Though his public figure was charming and people always wanted to be around him.  He was a minister to others throughout his life but at home – he was unforgivably harsh.

We were all affected differently.  My three sisters in their own unique ways are each formidable women.   Though we all live with the legacy of Dad’s anger, it has unlocked different things in us.  For me the heartbreak of his disapproval was especially hurtful.  I do not think that my spirit & soul ever fully developed.

After college I learned quickly that I had Dad’s skill for managing process and people.  Creativity energized me and I soon ran my own communications department at a small non-profit.  I was given more and more responsibility, promotions and opportunities for influence and I loved the constant challenge.

I was doing well, but didn’t feel any triumph.  I tried working longer and harder and better, but it could not satisfy the colossal hole inside me.  Instead the needy monster of insecurity grew inside me. Anxiety and dread hovered.  I stayed busy and numb.  Somehow unaware of my pain, because I didn’t allow myself time to think or feel.

Little by little I stopped believing in all the reasons I was doing my job.  Slowly I was turning into a critical, perfectionist, and overly competitive person — I became my father, without the rage.  Newly married, I brought it all home with me.  I was the horrible person that I had feared and loathed growing up.  Life became a difficult dance — of work and home –the thought of quitting it all began to compete in my head with the need for significance eating at me.

My spirit was troubled.  Life was a constant push and pull of expectation and disappointment.

What a relief it was when I finally quit — though it was not an easy decision.  My husband and I looked practically at our earning power, my extreme dissatisfaction with my job and agreed together that one of us should be home with our three kids who were under four. To his credit, he always thought I would not like being at-home. I talked to women about their experiences for more than a year.  I do remember being afraid to give up personal income power.   All of my life I watched my mother at-home and saw that it guaranteed she was trapped without options.  I connected it to being “at-home.” So in a sense I was giving up when I quit working and stayed home.

When I left full-time work in 2001, I was bone tired.  I didn’t have work to define me any longer.  Suddenly I had vast stretches of undefined time.  I went into autopilot at first, letting being a full-time mommy distract me.  But nine months after leaving full-time work, I became pointedly aware that I hated being at home; which is dreadful to admit among certain circles.  I was disappointed with who I had become both at work and at-home.

I was headed toward a major life crisis –and after years of denying how bad I felt I faced it.  That was when I became clinically depressed. That was when things fell apart.

I have always been mildly melancholy in temperament.  But this was different — so different it is really quite inconceivable until it happens to you.

True Depression is a sink hole – It slows time down.  Hours turn into days.  It fogs my brain and makes it impossible to think.  The rules that I lived by all my life are swept off the table without consideration or consequence.  Up is down and down is up or maybe even sideways.  It hurts physically; even my skin hurts.  Asking for help is insurmountable.  But overwhelmingly, you need human contact.  Isolation only reinforces. Those that love me can recognize it in my eyes – meaning I cannot lie and say I’m okay, which I have tried a few times.  But the truth is that while I want to deny depressions’ return, health and healing come in the telling – in admitting your need.  A true friend listening helped me crawl out of the trance where simply breathing hurts.

Back then, I knew nothing about depression or what was happening to me.   For a while I focused on care of our children. That I did, somehow. Was it one long day—or a year—that I nursed, changed diapers, read story books, comforted and loved?  I have no memory of it hoping they don’t either, but sadly my daughter sometimes—still—gets overcome by fear that she will lose me.  Some inner notion tells her that she almost did.  I—so—regret this…  My sorrow is deep.  I didn’t know or understand what was happening to me for a very long time.  Eventually, I asked for help.

Service and sacrifice, along with higher degrees, are the pinnacle of success for my parents.  I have always known this and been frightened that I could never meet their expectations. The voices in my head have always told me that I was worthless.  Now they say I will always be a mess.  But they are wrong.

That first depressive episode took months to get through and became the beginning of a new way of being. I am not the person I used to be.

I was driven to succeed out of fear of failing.  Now, somehow I don’t have to look at these years as lost – though for nearly a decade I did nothing to further my career.  Sometimes I do compare myself to my sisters who during those same years were very busy.  One is ordained, running a parish and working on a PhD.  Another adopted two Chinese children and works at her church.  My youngest got her masters and worked full-time, while having three kids.  (My father, who died during that time, would be ecstatic.)

And me?  I have been here—

At my computer finding healing through writing;

In my garden growing a delight in the beauty all around me;

With my photography expressing my spirit and soul.   And, lest you think that it has been easy, know that I have working hard on my stuff.

Depression broke me—it was an unexpected and unimaginable grief in the midst of life’s toss and tumble of a young family and work.

It taught me to stop and reconsider many things.  It forced me to truly look and see myself for the first time. If forced me to stop running.  Though I was not much of a drinker for most of my life, I found myself craving a glass of wine to get me through the evening which soon became two, or three, until I knew – years before I admitted it out loud – that I was addicted.  Admitting that was by far harder than admitting depression.  Although both are illness (this has been proven by research) alcoholism holds a stigma that is hard to get over, especially as a soccer-mom in her thirties.

It must be said that there is no way I could have gotten through clinical depression and alcoholism without health insurance.  Psychological counseling, medication, a hospitalization and alcohol counseling have been integral to my health and are expensive!  Without that help — and my incredibly supportive husband and precious friends, and a renewed faith — I have no doubt that I would have drunk myself to death by now.   I am gratefully sober today two years later.

Life doesn’t stop because you are unwell.  My father was diagnosed with cancer and died during those years. Our family has faced many trials.  Although I reconciled with my father before he died, I have spent the seven years since working on forgiving him.

As I look at those years, I see what I thought was success was anything but and what was necessary – to lose so much made me strong.

These days some might say I don’t do anything.  But I am very content for now to work on my physical and mental health, which are intricately woven together.  I write in order to learn and sometimes it helps others.

Yes, I have learned a new way to be human.  I breathe life in—slowly—with full appreciation. I still long for more – but for now it is enough to be alive and thankful.

Can depression lead to a richer spiritual life?

Our tears so blind our eyes that we cannot see our mercies.
               -- John Flavel (1627-1691)

The thoughts by Dr. Parker Palmer below are beautifully expressed and echo my experience with clinical depression.  If you’ve never suffered, it may enlighten or expand your notions and ability to empathize.  Reading it was a comfort to me and perhaps it will be to you, as well, if you have suffered.

I also have a poem I wrote a while back about being in the middle of clinical depression titled “Sink Hole.”

How could depression lead to a richer spiritual life?

“I can answer this question only after the fact, because in the midst of severe clinical depression I have never felt anything redeeming about it, spiritually or otherwise. But when I emerge back into life, several things become clear.

* One is that the darkness did not kill me, which makes all darknesses more bearable—and since darkness is an inevitable part of the cycle of spiritual life (as it is in the cycle of natural life) this is valuable knowledge.

* Two, depression has taught me that there is something in me far deeper and stronger and truer than my ego, my emotions, my intellect, or my will. All of these faculties have failed me in depression, and if they were all I had, I do not believe I would still be here to talk about the experience. Deeper down there is a soul, or true self, or “that of God in every person” that helps explain (for me, at least) where the real power of life resides.

* Three, the experience of emerging from a living hell makes the rest of one’s life more precious, no matter how “ordinary” it may be. To know that life is a gift, and to be grateful for that gift, are keys to a spiritual life, keys that one is handed as depression yields to new life.

Sinkhole

the woman thought to herself,
what’s really important?

[some days I wake up so lost I can’t remember
why I got up the day before;
what mattered enough to make
me want to get up?]

the woman told herself
breathe, just breathe in.
exhale, do it because you can.

[I haven’t had a day like this in a long time.
such a long time that it almost hurts worse
than before when the bad days
were constant.]

the woman laid down, her skin hurt
she gave in, just for a moment, an hour.
thinking perhaps if I sleep
this feeling will flee, and it will almost be
as if it never happened.

[I know from experience
you can NEVER give in to it.
depression is like a Sink Hole.
FIGHT,  get up.  Don’t let it win.]

the woman thought to herself
and took a breath.
and another, and accepted
again,
that this was a fight, but it was her fight.
and one that she wanted to win.

What’s a Woman of Leisure? (Not that you asked)

“I just want to be happy.”

As I spoke those words to my father on the telephone, I meant them.  I could not remember the last time I felt genuine joy.  I was coming off of three pregnancies in rapid succession and being a person that worked 60+ hour weeks in a rewarding but stressful job.

Tom and I had decided together that I would stay-home with our three kids who were all still in diapers for two reasons.  One, because I wanted “out” of my job.  And secondly, it made sense financially to not put three kids in daycare.  But I hadn’t found it to be a positive change for me and after a year at-home I was suffering from major depression — although I did not yet know  what to call.

I was expressing a desire for something that I could not have defined exactly.

Happiness.

This was one of the last real conversations I remember having with my father.  It was the summer of 2002, and I recall my father saying, “Do you need me to come?  I will come if you need me.” and I deflected, thinking as usual that my need was not important.  I said, “No, I’ll be okay.”  Which was the farthest from the truth.

I wasn’t okay and wouldn’t be okay for a very long time.  But that day, sitting on my back stoop looking out at my yard with unseeing eyes, I couldn’t imagine what he could do to make things any better.

You see the idea of him coming was better than the actuality.  My parents did visit in October, and my father was preoccupied with work —  on his laptop and cell phone the entire visit.  He was critical of our choices — We took them out to a Thai restaurant for dinner instead of cooking.  That was wasteful or indulgent, which he did not approve of, never mind that we were buying.

But I was depressed still five months later.  And when you are, things like grocery shopping and cooking are impossible to do.  I didn’t stick up for myself at the time.   And I knew Tom felt no criticism of me for not cooking.  So we went out.

It turns out Dad was suffering from brain tumors (though no one knew at that time) which would be diagnosed a few weeks later.  He had brain surgery in early December.  He died five months later, in May of 2003.)

Recently we were dining (at home, if you must know) with some new friends.

Tom and I are both making an effort to make some new relationships, as this has been a theme at church lately. We were gathered in the kitchen — as often happens in the minutes before enjoying a home cooked meal together — and Tim asked if I needed any help?  I usually do leave some things for when guests have arrived, because it gives me something to do with my hands.  (I’m a nervous, socially introverted tongue-tied  person, especially with new people.)  And a task sometimes makes a guest feel good.

I flippantly and off the top of my head said “No, I’m a woman of leisure,  so I finished everything ahead of time.”  Where in the hell did that come from, I thought immediately? 

I’d never described myself that way before.  Haven’t even put those words together in a sentence before. And I haven’t felt bad about being a stay-at-home for a good long while.

Oh, it creeps in now and then, as people ask the “good ol’ American get to know ya questions” like “What do you do?”  Awkward when you have all your kids in school and you’re not “working” outside the home.  My self-esteem would definitely be enhanced by a salary and some hours working at tasks that have a higher purpose or a more obvious result.  But no, for now this is working for us.  I am at-home.  I am a full-time MOM, two-hour a day max home-keeper, and working on my health.

It all leads back to that desire to be happy.

Am I a woman of leisure?  God help me, no!  But I guess I joked about it because I don’t know how to tell people what my life really involves.  It’s not typical for someone to admit ,

“My #1 job is staying healthy mentally. What do you do?”

Yup, I have a mental illness (there I said it) and it’s chronic (meaning it comes back, all too frequently) and I am learning through trial and error, research, and lots of effort and hard work what it takes to get healthy, stay healthy, and be healthy. 

I know that I could do a 9-5 job and sort these things out on the weekends.  But I am grateful that I don’t have to and so I’m working on my health every day (or most days. Many are too full to think about me. I am a mother of four, active in my church, and writing…)

Major depressive disorder was the diagnosis and it has led me to a half-dozen different therapists, psychologists as well as psychiatrists. A near fatal suicide attempt.  Medication.  Hospitalization.   Alcoholism.  And …the depression comes back.  I start all over again.  Well, the truth is …

I work, work, work  …

on my sanity.  And on the good days I think why the hell does it take so much time just to be healthy?  On the bad ones, well, I just can’t think. I struggle to be functional.  But it’s not quite like that.   A depressive episode builds, like a few rolling waves at first sliding into a tsunami.

If you’ve never been in therapy, you’ve no idea how much work it is.  It’s hard when you are not depressed.  Hellishly difficult if you are.  If you are committed to getting better and growing and changing, you have to do it.  There is no other choice.  No one wants a  relapses, of which I’ve had more than a half dozen over six years.

It feels like two to three months of going through life like The Undead.  Your body is heavy all the time — It feels like you are filled with sand.  And your head, your mind, your soul, your psyche is a Black Hole.  Everything swirls around into it and nothing worthwhile comes out.)

If your commitment is to health you have work on it EVERY DAY:

  • On your spirituality, because I’d hate to give you the impression that “healing” only comes from doctors.
  • On your physical health, I have learned that exercise and diet are probably most important, after Psychotherapy.
  • On your friendships.  Isolation is a big danger and a signal that you’re slipping backwards.
  • On your relationships with family, which must stay positive and healthy.
  • You have get off drugs or alcohol, because at least alcohol is a depressant.  [The story of alcoholism well, it will have to be another day for that.  I am two years and two months into sobriety as of this writing.]
  • You have to do the therapy, which only works if you do the work.

So what does a woman of leisure do?

This one works on her stuff.  And sometimes keeps house and cares for four kids — nine, 11, 12 and 22.  Our youngest has learning difficulties which have involved years and years of advocacy and therapies and doctors appointment.  Being an advocate for him meant getting an education on many things including how the public school system works to help children with disabilities, pushing the insurance company and doctors and teachers, learning about hearing, and speech and attention-deficits.  Learning about nutrition and medication and side effects.  Just regular stuff mom’s do if they have the time.  Most women have much less time for this than I do, so I feel fortunate.  But managing all that, during the same years that I’ve been ill has been hard.  Rewarding but difficult.

I volunteer my photography skills and writing when I can or when asked. I ventured into a photography business for about three years, but decided that I didn’t really want it that badly.  I serve in various places with a variety of things — as I hear of needs at church and school.  I study further on things will help me do all this in an intelligent way.  When they were little I was in the kid’s classrooms volunteering every week and was going on field trips.

I do love being at home when my children come home from school — world-weary, and kind of beat up from their day — offering a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen or a word of advice.  It just happened last night with my 22-year-old and it is awesome.

We only have a few years with our children and so I have concluded – selfishly perhaps – that if I can take these years then I will.  Gladly.  Joyfully.  And try to best of my ability and with all the strength I have in me to live well. 

For them.  For myself.  For the pure sake of being happy to be alive. 

Who knew, as a child, that just being happy would be so much work.  What does this woman of leisure do all day?  Some days I wonder that myself if I’m truthful.  But I hope I will look back, in the years to come, and have no doubt it was time well spent.

MHH September 15, 2010

For more of my story scroll down to TAGS and click on MY STORY.

Do you run from your shame?

Fetus at 8 weeks after fertilization 3D Pregna...
Image via Wikipedia

I have avoided words for a while.

I mean my own — on the page — telling me things I may not want to acknowledge.  I find out about myself as I write.  What have I been afraid of knowing, I wonder, as I put off writing day after day?

I am uncomfortable with how narcissistic blogging is and yet I can’t seem to write any more without knowing others are reading.  Except what is in my prayer journal, I am completely out there — laid open, exposed.  And by choice.  I don’t know what I think about this.

For a month now I have exercised six times a week.

Taking vigorous walk/run on the treadmill downstairs.  I am up to three miles a day.  I’ve lost about four pounds.  I reassure myself that this pace is the healthy way to lose weight and that this rate is one that can actually be maintained.

I find myself angry and discouraged, when I think of all the weight loss programs that promise miracles and sometimes provide them.  I once lost 17 pounds in about five weeks.  It was years ago.  My body was younger. I did it without exercise.  But I was told that I looked ill.  And inevitably it all returned.  Those pounds brought friends to the party I call my thighs and double chin.  I remind myself that wasn’t on an antidepressant then and weight gain is one of the top side effects of this medication.

But I hate the weight — It’s visceral.  I am ashamed of being fat and more so of being ashamed.  But how I loath being fat.  It is complicated by my mother’s yo-yo dieting my entire life.  And in God’s irony I married a yo-yo dieter as well.

In my mind being fat equals failure. Although intellectually I challenge this idea, it seems to be winning.  I have to challenge it over and over again, because of people I love and respect working their whole adult lives on this issue and “failing?”

Up until a few years ago weight wasn’t an issue for me.  Now I judge myself for my “failure” and I assume others are judging me too.  I realize suddenly how I have utterly bought into the idea that “thin = beautiful, intelligent and successful.”  Imagine the judgmental thoughts I have then.  The shame.

And so I run, longer and harder each day, hoping the weight of my shame will be lost with the physical pounds.

I’ve thought a lot recently about time passing.

I suppose because we’ve come full circle with Molly moving back home after four years on her own.  And a new school year for the other three kids. Around the time that my father was ill my depression was at its worst.   I was trying to decide if I should go on an antidepressant to help manage it.  For Tom and I, going on an antidepressant was a sobering choice that we thought and prayed and researched ad nauseam.  It was one  that we struggled with for months, so when I decided to go ahead I had to take a prerequisite pregnancy test.  No-one could have been more shocked to find out I was pregnant, it was just too much.  Dad was sick with cancer – basically dieing.  Mother was caring for him, in Colorado alone, and was at the height of her drinking.

Being pregnant was the worst news possible.  Mostly because there was no research on the impact o this medication on the fetus.  And I was desperate for help coping.managing.surviving the depression.

A few weeks later I miscarried seven weeks into the pregnancy.

As I look back on those days now, with distance and perspective, I am filled with longing for that child.  She would have started kindergarten this year and as I watch the tiny children walking hand in hand to school, their seemingly enormous backpacks on their tiny shoulders, lunch box dragging, their new white tennis shoes, I am crushed with the sight of it.

And wonder will I mark the passing of every year with this lost child?

I had a dream about her.

I was in a busy train station.  People were flowing in and out of trains and it was difficult to figure out which way to go.  I felt confused about my direction, overwhelmed.  Then a tall blond college-age young woman turned her head toward me.  She was beautiful, angelic, and strikingly similar in looks to my daughter Emma and she had downs syndrome.  I knew she was my daughter.  She looked me and said, ‘They wouldn’t let me come.”  She smiled. This was my daughter that I had lost when she was just seven weeks old in my womb.

I woke up with the knowledge that she wanted to come to me and that she was at peace.

I am six years into the battle of dealing with depression.

There is so much learned.  Many things I have lost or given up.  Much grief and more joy that I could have imagined.  Depression has made me the person that I am now — stronger, genuinely in love with Jesus, disciplined spiritually, more and more at peace with myself in the world.  Twenty pounds heavier and hating that.  But knowing that this depression is a conduit to a better life for me.

I exercise because I know that it helps me manage my depression and my goal is to be off medication.  And it makes me feel good.   I exercise because it means I am willfully thumbing my finger at the Sink Hole of depression.

Keeping balance, along with the wrong attitudes I have about fitness and weight, well, that’s another story.

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Life. It is a humbling (er, humiliating) journey

an update

I appreciate the care and concern.  And thought it would be good to write an update since I fear some may avoid me for my returned melancholia and others will fret and worry for me.

By the time I posted that poem, I was doing somewhat better.  Improvement made it possible to write and think and therefore compose those words, stringing them together one after the other into some semblance of poetry.  At the very least they were a cry for help, as they say.  Ha!?

For days I have looked at my camera and not had the will to pick it up.  The last couple of days I have been able to and that is a sign.  Though yesterday in my ineptitude I spilled water all over my camera and it may be dead.   I am afraid to put in a charged battery and know for certain whether it is gone.  All is not lost.  I have a better camera bought for the business venture.  I don’t know how to use it exactly but I may be forced to learn.

finito

That reminds me.  The business of Imagine Photography LLC is finished.  Although I love working with entrepreneurs (my father was one) I am not one.  And I didn’t enjoy the business of family and wedding photography.   I am hanging up my “professional photographer” hat and picking up my Artist’s.  Closing the “doors” after three years and it’s somewhat of a relief, though I regret not having the personal umphf to “make it.”   Some of my depression may have been triggered by the finality of this admission.

back to the issue

I have certain people for whom I have held on to lack of forgiveness.  I feel hurt by them and so I resent.  Resentment hurts me and is a self-defeating prophesy in a way.  Anxiety, insecurity and fear come in and all of a sudden it is  unbearable.  Figuring out how to forgive, myself and the other person, is the only way to get past this.  This requires time to pray and find the place of openness inside.  Right now, my heart is still full of anxiety, it’s pressing down and creating tension and pain.  I must do this business of forgiveness to move on.

It is no coincidence that this all started right after I wrote the poem about forgiving my parents.  I wanted something powerful from that ‘gift’ of writing it for my church.  My ego wanted it.  And ironically, what has come of it is a humbling (er, humiliating) experience of being battered down by my weakness, frailty and continued inability to be a forgiving person.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” [Lewis
B. Smedes, The Art of Forgiving.]

This is the journey.  This is only one piece of it but it is imperative that I figure it out.  What a joke to be a follower of Christ and hold on to resentments and pain.  To live held captive.  To live without joy.  To live bound and controlled by our fear and bitterness.

I know this is not right.  I am humbled by my mistakes and want to climb out of this hell hole I’ve sunk into.  That’s only accomplished one fragile experience at a time, as I listen and respond to the nudging of the holy spirit.   I am so relieved to know there is a way out of this.

Feeble though I may be, I respond.  There’s strength to be found in that.

a thousand conspirators :: a poem

It’s been a while, I know. I have major depression which comes and goes for me and it has come again.

I have not been able to do much of anything for a month, though I have learned over the years to overcome eventually.  At first it was too hard to think, or write, or be coherent.  I have been afraid to put words down for weeks.  This time, it has been really bad.  Worse than I have experienced in years.  I’ve been so frightened by it that I haven’t wanted to try to write – one – word.

But then the truth, it sits inside me stewing and I have to try to get it out of me.  This poem is  truthful, but now I believe I am starting to come out of it.  But if you’re the praying type please do.   I don’t really think this poem is finished but I needed it out.

Melody

a thousand conspirators

The devil with his fist is pressing on my soul
while a thousand conspirators chant in my head.
Deceit is their only aim.
They laugh at my impotence.
They dance away with my heart.

I cannot breath.
I cannot clear my mind.
I can only listen to their lies.  And surrender.

I do not understand this affliction.
Or fathom why it chooses me.
With my heart constantly racing.  Jolts of fear come, and come again.
This is what depression brings.

It comes when I am least expecting it.  When I imagine I am good. When life is safe.
When I am well.
I fear it is me.  That I can not heal.
That my head and heart have learned
only this path.
That isolation will always be my companion.
When I am depressed I feel inept, frantic. Heavy as sand.
When I am depressed
I can’t think or do what needs doing.
I no longer pray. There is no universal truth. No god.
I have lost my sense of wonder.
I am tired.  Frequently angry, disoriented.
Dizzy with feelings of defeat.
Disappointed in myself, because depression always returns. Wondering if it will ever end?
Will this hell ever end?

For a moment this cry becomes a lifted prayer, every detail of the noise in my head.
With the utmost of my attention and effort
momentarily, I believe.
I surrender the fear. The disbelief. The weakness. My Doubts.
I loosen the two-fisted grip I have on my sanity. I hope.
But How? How does letting go of my frailty
do that? I have no answer.

I grasp for healing
because there is no cure.
This affliction of mine
is pure misery.
If I could give it away would I? Not to anyone that I know, not even an enemy.
If I cannot bear it how could anyone else? Not that I am better, but
in all of it, for reasons unknowable to me, it is mine. I accept this.
I no longer wish, or cry, or pray it away from me.
And in a moment, in a miracle,
a glimmer of faith returns. I do not feel
quite so alone. Nor do I sense
the devil with his fist pressing on my soul.

god sees me :: a story of hope

God has shown me twice this week, by marking time in my past, to show me how I have changed.  When this happened I was blown away by how much God loves me, something I have long struggled to believe.  And that in and of itself is so sweet.  So good.  I just sat in the moment, feeling precious.  God loves me enough to show me the changes, the progress, the healing that has come.

When I fell into my first major depression in 02, I didn’t really know what was happening to me.  At first I just sat absorbing the fact that I couldn’t think, or sleep, or make decisions, or read; I couldn’t do anything.  It was strange.  Foggy.  A bit like being in slow motion.  A ten-hour day at home with three small children didn’t feel like a day at all.  It felt like a flash, because I wasn’t really conscious. I had no words to describe what was happening to me.  Depression took everything.

Lost My Way

After five weeks stranded in this place, I finally told Tom that something strange was going on.  And then my friend Carol, then at some point I told my parents.  I remember sitting on my back porch talking on the phone to my father who had called.  Of course he said he would cancel all his plans and come straight away if I needed him.  He was good in an emergency.  But I declined his offer knowing it wouldn’t be that pleasant nor likely to be helpful.  And I don’t remember much about that conversation except saying “Dad, I just want to be happy. I can’t remember the last time I felt happy.”

Looking back today, from the perspective finally of joy and contentment, I have to admit that I never believed I deserved happiness.  It wasn’t something on the conscious level or anything I thought about very clearly.  But at a deep, foundational level I couldn’t remember happiness.  And didn’t believe I deserved it.  I would reach out for it sometimes.  Usually that resulted in hurt because I did it in such needy or aggressive way.  And more than how others treated me, my thinking about myself was so bad, so low; I had a deep hatred for myself.

I can only guess that this was caused by being yelled at so often and so unexpectedly as a child, young adult and adult.  You knew it might come at some point, but you could never guess why he was mad or what you might have done.  My father was unpredictable in his rages.  Berating.  Pushing.  Demanding that you admit wrongdoing.  Keeping at you, over and over again verbally — until you concede to him, whatever it was.  The subject didn’t matter. You must apologize.  You must ask for forgiveness, absolutely.  Looking back, he was Psychotic.

And so, inside I slowly disappeared.  Life was numbing and I was without opinion.  Without question I began to do whatever he expected of me.  And that too reinforces your own loathing.  I was a classic under achiever, my one way of getting his goat.

Every once in a while over the years, the last time happened in the late ’90s, I would meet someone who seemed to see right through  the walls and ask me “Why are you in so much pain?”  It was if I was translucent and they could peer into my heart and soul in a way that I couldn’t even do any more.  I just looked at this person who didn’t even know me, with shock and disbelief at what they saw.  I felt exposed and yet I had revealed nothing.  They felt the pain I had stopped feeling.  It was horrible.  And yet, looking back it was so important.  Again, one of those markers God gives me to see how far I have come.

I worked for my father for many years. My reasons (I see now) were to receive his affirmation.  And it worked, though I worked too much and became a workaholic.  I worked unreasonable hours, had no boundaries between work and my life, and I had hardly any personal life until I met Tom.  Even then, I really had trouble getting home for dinner, worked through lunches, lived and breathed work.  I worked 150% and knew that I couldn’t fail, which was what I was sure was going to happen if I stopped striving, because it was my father’s reputation and his good will toward me that were hanging in the balance.  His love?

It wasn’t until I had my third baby in five years and quit that life to be at home that it all came crashing down around me.  Thank God it did.  I say that because it began a nine-year process of finding myself , FINDING LIFE — Oh, the mistakes I had to make in order for that to happen.  But hey, I was doing the sped up version of adolescent rebellion I guess.  Growing, learning, expanding, reaching, feeling.  Finally feeling. And it felt terrible, and good at the same time.

Nine long years.  And in those years I found

  • Photography.
  • Writing poetry and thought put into words in general.
  • A study of the Bible and the power of prayer with faithful believing women.
  • I developed opinions, thoughts and ideas that originate with me!
  • I found gardening and theology.
  • I have been slowly overcoming of anxiety – mostly social anxiety which I get so badly even still.  I really do hate that.
  • I have found joy.  I’m actually glad to be alive.
  • I have found love from humans and cats,
  • And more important than any of this I have found that Jesus loves me.  No really, he does and I never believed it.  After the phone conversation with my father he sent me a postcard in a frame that said “You are the One Jesus Loves.”  I was so uncomfortable with it that I buried it in a sock drawer for years.  Long past when he died.  I really couldn’t fathom it.   Sunday, right before church, I found the post-it that he included on it which said: “And your father loves you too.  Love, Dad. 7/02” (Yes, in the strange third person.)
  • I don’t want to die anymore.
  • I started smoking in that time, which was a slow suicide and last year I quit smoking.
  • I starting drinking, socially at first, and then heavily and began to abuse it.  And I quit drinking over a period of three or four l o n g years.  When I started to think about quitting, I thought I would never have any fun again.  I actually thought that.  No fun, ever again.  I had no idea what true contentment and joy, even happiness was until I quit drinking, accepted my powerlessness against it, and faced the shit I had been so cleverly (or not so cleverly really) been avoiding.

When I was depressed I thought I would never be happy.  When I overdosed, a small part of me must have wanted to live because I woke up and told Tom what I had done and I lived.  But only a tiny piece of me still wanted life, mostly I still hated myself.

But it has been the process of becoming ME that has made it possible to consider forgiving my father and mother.  I know I am a strong  person.  As I begin to want more from life, I can accept and voice what happened to me.  Yes, my father had to die for me to have the courage.

This near decade long process made it possible for forgiveness.  And it isn’t a short or easy road.  Truly, it has taken all those years.

My first honest words expressed about my dad were in a poem called “Good Dad. Bad Dad.”  It felt so risky, so bold at the time.  After reading it again after all these years, I think I’ll post it here:

Good Dad. Bad Dad.
I shed no tears today
for the warrior who has fallen.
Taken down by Cancer's sword.
My heart is full of memories,
good and bad.
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
Constant worry.
Constant change.
Who could have foreseen
the Cancer overtaking his mind;
that became my liberation
in five short months.
The danger --
of loving too much;
needing tenderness,
and all the things Daddy's are supposed to be.
PAIN. FEAR.
Emotions jangling around me
like some kind of white noise;
pushing their way into my conscious thoughts.
Invaders, threatening to undo
the weak hold I've found on a Good Life.
So many memories
good and bad,
bad and good.
Who was he?  Why was he MY dad?
MY tormentor.
MY warrior;
Finally broken,
beaten by the cancer
that was to become my friend.
Betrayal,
these thoughts which plague me.
Broken;
the unspoken promise
to keep our secrets to the end.
How do I remember?
How do I stay true and honest,
when the Truth causes an ache
too strong to feel,
to face,
to bear.
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
Who was he in the end?
A demon? A saint?
Now simply a Muse --
remembered, but no longer feared.
Thought of
in furtive,
anxious moments.
Good Dad. Bad Dad.
Who is he to me now?
A man driven to despair
Living a chaotic, frantic life.
Not the Good Life I choose,
Not the legacy I will repeat.
Good Girl. Bad Girl.
Who will I listen to?
Who will I believe?
I am the woman I choose to become
today,
tomorrow.
These are the Good Days
that I can change.
Yesterday is Dead.
Burned in the funeral pyre.
Vapors
Mist
Dust settling around me.
Good Girl. Bad Girl.
Good.
Bad.
Good.
by Melody Hanson, 2004

So how does it work, to forgive a tormentor, an oppressor, an abuser?  Does it mean taking someone’s anger and rebuke over and over again?  I’ll never know if I could have stood up to my father?  I have never met someone who did and stayed in relationship with him.  That’s daunting.

Forgiving is “the opposite of ignoring and excusing.  It is moving toward the offense.” And that’s been my path. Naming the pain. Drawing attention to it in my writing.  My father’s anger and rages were ugly and dangerous and as a child I was constantly afraid of him.  With some amount of distance – his death  – and my personal work, I’ve worked to let go of it.  But there will never be restoration and reconciliation because he has gone.

On the other hand, I’ve also experiences anger toward my mom over the years for her lack of action, defense of us and for shutting down.  She also disappeared into health problems, depression, and eventually alcohol. But we, two fragile and broken people are working on a long healing process and I try every day to trust her and not expect or need her to change.

My pastor said recently about forgiveness: “Let go, open your heart, move toward the pain. Recognize the person’s humanity, their broken heart and sense of failure.”  I can do that with my mom.

For the longest time I couldn’t have said that my pain and hurt belonged to my father.   I had a blessedly complex relationship with him.  I longed for his approval while at the same time had much hurt, anger and resentment for his controlling behaviors.  I learned to be exceptionally passive aggressive and sarcastic because that was, I thought, the only safe way that I could express myself.

“Safe” is so ironic.  I don’t remember ever feeling safe growing up.  I was anxious, afraid, tense, doubtful, insecure, wracked with shame, self-loathing, and fear.  Fear of the ambiguity of my home growing up — I actually said to a boyfriend “Treat me well or treat me badly. I don’t care.  Just be consistent.”  I longed for it.

But grace, coming from God in the life of Jesus and the sacrifice done for me — that’s changed everything!!!  He takes the most broken and restores.  Better put, he heals.

He makes like new but different, strong;  his touch, attention, and gaze are profound.  I will never be the same.

I have a new life.  I have a life.  I have started living.  I have hope.  I have joy.   I may not ever feel loved by my human father …but I’m going to be okay.  I don’t expect the way forward to be simple because as I grow God continues to ask things of me that are difficult.

Will you obey?  Will you choose my path?  Will you give such and such up?  Will you forgive?  Will you seek me?  Will you be disciplined to know my words, the Word?  Will you exercise because you know it helps your mood, and eat right?  Will you pray?  Will you have a generous heart?  Will you sacrifice your desires for mine?

Every day, if I am listening, God speaks.

Will I choose life today?

My Crooked Heart

“There is a sacred quality to words.  They are not information but revelation.”

— Eugene Peterson

I believe every person is on a spiritual journey.  In as much as we are human, we are spiritual beings.  Pierre Teilhard De Chardin put it like this:   “We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.”

That has completely been my experience.  De Chardin wrote that everything is sacred because God is shown throughout creation.  My life might seem quite insignificant in the grand scheme of the cosmos, but  human endeavors are epiphanies of the reality of God’s presence.  Though we may, at different times in our life, walk toward or away from belief or what I call faith in an “other” we each walk a unique path of belief and disbelief.  This journey depends on the individual , the people who influence them, and their spiritual openness and experiences with God.

Organized religion, actually, has ruined the journey of many beautifully spiritual people who I have known.  It has hurt them.  Destroyed their fledgling hope in a power greater than themselves. Fortunately for me, organized religion has been a process that has been good, bad and indifferent but not completely horrible.

As a child

I quite easily and naturally believed in the God of John 3:16, the first Bible verse I memorized.  My parents very forthrightly and consistently did things like thanking God for our food.  They gave God credit for home, food, and health, and they knelt in supplication to God for their needs.  God was their source. They gave God all the credit for anything good and never blamed God for difficulties.  Strangely enough, in my childlike perception, they seemed to live well because of knowing God. We never wanted for anything, although we were never well off.  God took care of us.  Yes, I believed that.

In my teens, I found I couldn’t relate to the God that I heard about at church, a southern United Methodist congregation who gave people the gift of speaking on tongues, but not me.  Who was powerful, immediate and super-charged.   I was full of longing and unrequited need, but I never found whatever I was hoping for in those years.  I was never confident of my “salvation” in my teens.  I knew my crooked heart — my huge insecurities.  I knew I was a bad person, so how could any kind of smart God love me?

I was pretty confident that God was real, but I couldn’t accept that Jesus had died on the cross  just for me. No way!  I didn’t fully believe it until my forties.  Yeah, wow, that is a long time. Looking back I realize this means that I did not “believe” but then it was ritual that carried me along.  I found acceptance in the church, but not faith.

During those years my father was constantly yelling.  Arguing with my mom about every little thing; like us kids, or mom’s spending of money, the house being a mess, or our grades.  (When I say arguing with I really mean arguing at, because my mom never argued, rarely defended herself or her children and never fought back.)  He had a generous heart, but he also had this unresolved anger — his Achilles — and although he had a strong faith, a great influence with his life, he never managed to change that behavior or allow God to change him in that area.  This was irreconcilable to me.

(And then I think of the things I have such trouble giving up: my addictions, ….  Did I hold him to a higher standard?  An impossible one?  More on that later.)

Perhaps, but this became a hurdle for me spiritually that probably took thirty or more years for me to resolve within myself.  It hurt me.  I had trouble with the belief that God was all-powerful and could heal, because he never healed my Father of his anger addiction.  And what Dad was doing to us was destructive, and cruel, and just plain mean.   Dad would be apologizing for the destructiveness of his anger, but it was clearly not a true repentance.  I know what repentance means — it is a spiritual u-turn.  A changed behavior.  He never changed.  Some would say that he began to change in his late fifties and early sixties.  I did not see evidence of it, though I was spending less and less time with him.

This spiritual disconnect altered me and impaired my foundational sense of God.  God didn’t change Dad’s anger addiction …  Admittedly I have always been über sensitive — a harsh look from my father would crumble me into tears when I was little.  For years I was afraid to talk, to speak up in groups or pray aloud.  I don’t know how I made it through school.  Perhaps that was a factor in my parent’s frustrations, and my father’s anger, about why such a bright kid did poorly in school.  Early on, I think I was too scared to talk and later simply no longer cared or believed in myself enough.  And looking back over records I discovered that I wasn’t a bad student so it is amazing to me that I got the message that I wasn’t good enough, ever, academically or otherwise.

It’s a tangent, my academic success, but it’s also central.  Deep, deep down I still fight to believe I have good enough ideas, can express myself adequately, or should be trying to say anything unique.  Down there, in the scary place of self-love or in my case -loathing, I have always hated myself. That’s no exaggeration.  In part, why I succumbed to alcoholism, to depression, to constant fear & anxiety.

What changed?  What dragged my sorry ass out of that morose place?  I can say I began listening for God’s voice because I needed to hear it so badly.  When I started listening, God spoke and when I responded (i.e. obeyed) my crooked heart was encircled by God.  It’s still crooked but God continues to  smooth out the roughness and my life is different.  This is an almost daily thing.

In those early years

I was guided down my spiritual path  by a youth pastor (Julian “Hule” Goddard) that helped by answering each annoying question I had about matters of faith. I had many doubts.  I’d sit behind him as he drove the bus on various trips and ask all my questions.  He conveyed to me that they were alright to ask and that he loved my questions!

A love, passion, desire, even craving for the scriptures started then and has been with me as long as I can remember.  I have always loved looking up original meaning and intent and when I learn those things it is as if something inside me grows. A spiritual person was developing inside me even then.  One that got stronger each time I studied.  It is difficult even for this wordsmith to find the words to express this but a similar experience happens when I pray.  And The the combination of prayer and study of the Bible, for me, are transformational.  I am a different person as a result.

And then I grew up and

I never felt farther from God than I did in the thirteen years that I worked at a Christian organization.  I would say my faith was conjecture.  I saw evidence of others’ faith and believed in that, but not in a God that has personal encounters with me.  Even as I floundered I felt dead inside.  I was afraid, working for Christians, when I knew there was no evidence in my life that I had a personal relationship with Christ.  I was afraid to pray.  I even refused to pray with my husband when we were first married, though I never said truthfully why.  Knowing my background, of being controlled all those years, he wisely didn’t insist though I know that it created sadness for him.

I knew nothing about addiction until my thirties when I began to see the results of alcohol addiction in my family.  I wasn’t cognizant of it before that, though a friend mentioned that he was the third gen in an alcoholic family and chose not to drink.  I was curious about, that but didn’t give it a lot of thought because I rarely drank in my twenties or the early years of marriage.   It was when we began to socialize with other couples in our neighborhood that I found there was always a bottle of wine (or five) involved, mixed drinks, open bar which proved to be more than I could resist.

My parents regularly had wine at the dinner table and I would have a glass, but in those days I found that wine made me feel “funky” or down.  At that time I didn’t want more.  I usually regretted drinking at all having a naturally melancholy tendency and didn’t need any help.  But it was always available and one’s glass was never empty at my parent’s place in Colorado.

We visited there for my parent’s 40th wedding anniversary.  It was a horrible weekend for the entire extended family, with a huge altercation breaking out, on our last night together.  My dad announced that he was “giving up the dream of moving to Beijing, China” because the pollution in the city would have been dangerous for my mom. She has a condition called Sarcoidosis of the lungs.  Someone made the mistake (I’m willing to say it was me, but honestly I don’t remember) of saying that mom had given up her dreams over and over for him for the forty years of their marriage. Dad went ballistic that we weren’t more empathetic to his feelings, a long argument broke out and then, finally, dad pouted shamelessly for the rest of the visit.  He made everyone else miserable which was his mode in this type of situation.  When I finally apologized, at Tom’s encouragement and in order to make peace, dad told me I didn’t apologize “correctly” for him (probably because I was saying it with bile in my mouth) and he was still angry.

finding my voice

I guess that story is important because it was fairly typical.  We did something that “made” him angry and then we end up apologizing.  I had so much I needed to say to my father.  I wanted to tell him he had gone too far this time.  I wanted this to be the excuse for walking away from him.  For saying STOP.  I wanted to say that he had gone too far and I couldn’t see him any more.  But Tom’s encouragement to apologize, instead of what I wanted to do, was compelling (and right). And I was not very strong, so I did.  At some point in my life I knew I would have to stand up to my father.  But not that day.

But I never did do that before he died.  I guess, no I KNOW my poetry is a small but important stance against what he did, even with him dead.  My way of telling my part of the story.  And in writing, I am being healed.  Slowly I am peeling away the layers of hurt by writing down my experiences.  Some day I may come to a place where I find myself well.  In a way, I am afraid of that day.  My need makes me open.  My weakness makes me stronger because I can depend on someone greater than myself.

I did tell my father, finally, the day before his brain  surgery how much he had hurt me over my life.  (I write about that here.) I feel I got the one genuine moment of grief, expressed by him, when I did that.  I know from reading his notebook, that he felt a great deal of pain from what I shared.  But doing that made it possible for me to serve him and my mom, as he was dieing, to care for him and to speak genuinely and yet respectfully at his funeral.

and then I was a falling down drunk

During those years I found myself drinking too much but it just resulted in stumbling to bed and dealing with a hangover the next morning.  How may Sundays did I sit in church totally hungover, in pain spiritually, emotionally and physically, and  full of remorse. Too many to count.

Over the years, as I was dealing with a major depression, I began to drink more and more.  I didn’t like being a stay-at-home mom, I missed the purposefulness of work, and I got depressed in a serious way. Ironically, in the recovery period from depression I started drinking more.  With alcohol being a depressant, this was seriously unwise.  But when are drunks wise?

Five o’clock couldn’t come soon enough!  And over time, the occasional glass became a shared bottle three or four times a week.  That led to drinking every day, sometimes harder stuff, like Gin or Vodka which can be so easily disguised with something innocuous.  And  we began hosting parties, a lot of parties, in those years.

About the time my father got sick, and then died, I started smoking.  I got my nose pierced.  I wasn’t reliving adolescence but rather starting to express myself for the first time.  I don’t know how it is all connected but it is.  And smoking and drinking became a daily pattern.  Neither are wrong in and of themselves, in my opinion, just ways of coping that were unhealthy.   I became more attracted to my habits than is easy to admit.

A slow recovery, a melting of my heart occurred as we began to attend a different church.  At this new church I would hear talks from the pulpit that I made sense, were real in an intellectual and mystical way.   I felt like this kind of faith I might be able to get my heart around.  I was in Bible studies with women that kept me searching, seeking and through that I didn’t completely lose my meager faith.  Over time, in a process that I can’t completely explain except to say that it was beautiful and profound I became open.  I was hurt, and lost, and self-medicating.  From that broken, openness God began to reveal himself to me.

I carried tons of pain through out my life — hard childhood, deep, deep insecurities, being a really lousy step-mother, being a perceived failure academically and not doing anything significant with my life, being a broken lover, a sarcastic and mean sister, I essentially hated my parents and yet was profoundly dependent on them even working for my dad for a number of years, my first experience of falling in love had ended in rejection.  I had concluded I was unlovable.  Bottom line, I had no idea how badly I hated myself.   And I thought God somehow hated me.

But I can see God’s big and loving hands on my life: the healer, the potter, the painter, the creator was at work on me. I know that I would not have learned the things that I have about myself and about God if I had stayed at work.  Work filled the hole most of the time.  And I replaced work with shopping (another story for another day), and other things along the way and then finally alcohol.

For forty years,

I equated all the pain I had experienced with God’s care for me and it didn’t feel very good.  I was hurt and angry. And ready to tell God to f-off!  Well, being a drunk is pretty much the last place you’d expect to meet God, but turns out Jesus hung out with people like me.  He kind of preferred the messed up.  My story changed at that point to one of personal redemption.

I was experiencing postpartum depression, I was coming off being a workaholic to being a full-time nursing mom of three in diapers.  My identity issues which had trailed after me all my life flared their ugly head and all of a sudden I felt irrelevant.  When dad got sick with brain tumors I was trying to figure out if I should go on an antidepressant which was a heart wrenching decision and at the same time I discovered I was pregnant.  I flew off to Colorado to be with my parents, knowing I was pregnant and clinically depressed.  I did finally go on the medication.  And for four days I considered an abortion.  Other than feeling I was an unfit mother, I don’t know where the thoughts of aborting the baby came from but six weeks later the baby self-aborted.  A miscarriage.  In the end dad passed away and my mother got help at Hazelton.

things got ugly-er

And I was back with the problems I had before it all started.  Still depressed, confused, lonely, insecure and angry.  Still drinking daily and waking up hung over.  I began to have blackouts after being in settings where the alcohol was flowing.  Having a family history of alcoholism, I have learned, means 1 in 4 are likely to become an alcoholic.  So, I got it and it meant that I did NOT  have that internal meter most people have that says you should slow down, or stop now…  After two drinks, … I go blank.  No conscience.  No internal meter.  No memory of past bad experiences.  No care.  Not one.  Nada.  Just the next drink.

I recall one party where we had colored rubber bands to mark our glass.  I thought it would be funny to add a rubber band for each glass of wine we drank, so I did.  At nine bands, Tom told me it was time to go home.  I remember wondering why?  We just got here. Was I behaving strangely?  When we got home I passed out in our bedroom, which my kids saw, and vomited all over the bed.

Believe it or not, but even then I was denying my problem.  The next day, I would feel bad and have remorse, have those “I never do that again” thoughts or internal conversations.   But, I couldn’t stop myself.  It was just a matter of time.

I don’t think my drinking problem would have gotten so far if I had a full-time job.  I hardly drank when I was working.  And I do believe looking back that the opportunity for ‘abuse’ came with too much time on my hands, boredom, the stress of little ones under foot, the genetic propensity, the almost manic depression that I was getting help for at the same time.  But also the pit in my soul, that hurt so badly, which I was trying to ignore.  To cover up.  To make go away.

I thank Tom and

I am grateful that I had the last ten years to slow down enough to actually know and feel my feelings ; to stop achieving long enough to realize how badly I felt about myself.  When I was working I was a maniacal over-worker.  If I had a slow day I would get this crazy black cloud over me that I had to run from and so I just kept running.  Doing.  Achieving.  I stopped feeling.   I stopped believing in the purpose of my job.  I stopped experiencing God.   My faith was so disintegrated at that point that I remember feeling I had better leave, before someone finds out what a hypocrite I am.  I was constantly fearing that someone would pull the wool off and I’d be revealed for the fake I knew I was.

A part of that while I was working at InterVarsity was allowing  pettiness and bitterness to dominate me.  I overworked people.  I knew there were people on my team who were hurting and I didn’t know how to help them, so I didn’t.  I just took on new things, projects, areas of influence and control, because like my father that is where I felt competence.  I was too proud to ask for help.  And the few times I did ask for help, I was so filled with bitterness and anger that it is no wonder no one could hear me, understand the issues and resolve anything. I disparaged those that I felt were my competitors.  I grew bitter.  I allowed anger to dominate me.  What a hypocrite.

I stopped listening for God and wasted so much time with my dark heart issues.  Strangely I am glad I fell on my face cause when I looked up God was there .  I have sought forgiveness. And I am slowly coming alive spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and in a mystical way I am finding my voice.  For the first time in my life, as I write I see myself for who I really am and I am being healed from the pain I have carried all my life.  I have a voice.  I create things.  I create beauty in my garden, in my photography, in my words.

For each of us, every day is an opportunity to step toward God, and the life of the spirit, or away.

Even with my belief , I have days when I turn away. And a shadow creeps over me, a shiver of loneliness and a wisp of memory darkens my heart.  Then, swiftly I turn back and I am comforted.  Then I am able to express my creativity, to grow things, to ponder, to write.

And I know God is with me.  And I write this, and other things, to be free.  And to help others become free.

Be not judges of others, and you will not be judged: do not give punishment to others, and you will not get punishment yourselves:  [make others free, and you will be made free. ]

Luke 6:37

Is my story one of faith and disbelief, alcoholism, dysfunctional families, or self-loathing or  – love?  I would have to say it is all of those things.  I set out wanting to write about how my faith made it possible for me to give up my addictions. Ironically I had to have that addiction in order to restore my faith.  But this story is about so much more.  How I became a person of faith and just a little about why I believe.  It doesn’t feel like I have been clear, because it’s a story that is difficult to write  linearly since it wasn’t lived that way.  And is much easier to talk about so if that interests you, let me know.  And most of all, I have to say that this God I found, or who found me, this God is so good, so full of love for us, that all the crooked spaces are can be filled.  God will fill you too if you ask.

Be well,

Melody

I write poetry and they are found here. Read them for my full story – there are about fifty poems there which I have written off and onsince 2005.  Someday perhaps I’ll get around to organizing them and getting them printed.  Anyone interested in publishing?

There are Stories to be Told

Each human person is unique and original, and nobody has lived what we have lived. Furthermore, what we have lived, we have lived not just for ourselves but for others as well. Writing can be a very creative and invigorating way to make our lives available to ourselves and to others.  We have to trust that our stories deserve to be told. We may discover that the better we tell our stories the better we will want to live them.

from Henri J.M. Nouwen’s Bread for the Journey.
To be honest, I know that you may not care that is National Mental Health Awareness week.  But I do.  And I wanted to tell you why.

For most of my life, I did not know what it meant to be depressed.  I’ve always been shy, reserved, and moody – some even went so far as to call me melancholy.

In 2002, I had been home with my three young kids (a one year old, a three, and a four-year old)  for about a year when everything I had known all came crashing down.  There are a number of things that converged to make this happen — some too personal to mention here — others, are so obvious; postpartum issues, leaving “work” after a thirteen year career with no healthy closure, and I was not handling being a stay-at-home mom very well.  I wasn’t sure that I liked it.

It came on gradually.  And not knowing what to look for, I got deeply depressed before I knew what was happening to me.  For about five weeks, I went from an unhappy stay-at-home mom to completely nonfunctional.  I was sleeping on the couch during the day with TV on for my three kids.  They wandered around, played, watched TV and I was aware of them but barely.  I know that was irresponsible but all I can say is that it came on slowly, over time, and before I knew it I was seriously ill.  I thank God for protecting them.  I couldn’t  do anything: grocery shop (too many decisions and choices), I couldn’t sleep (at night), I couldn’t cook though no one starved.  After over a month of this, I finally told Tom something was wrong with me and I was scared.  A key for my slowing recovery was that Tom was supportive.

Depression isn’t anything one seeks and unless you fight it tooth and nail it overtakes your life.  It overcomes your heart, mind, and soul.

It is critical that the family surrounding the depressed person are encouraging and supportive and never judge.  I got a therapist who helped immensely.  You see usually someone become depressed when they are stuffing feelings or memory or when they are not dealing with things in a healthy way.  I began to work on my issues with my parents and childhood.  The details aren’t that interesting and only muddy the waters, plus I’ve written many poems about those years.  Working on my stuff was critical.  Being willing to work on your stuff is the only way you can begin the journey to recovery.

I did get to a point when I thought I was losing my mind.  I felt severe anger and violence that was very unlike me.  I finally called my therapist requesting medication when I had a thought of hurting one of my children.  No, I never touched anyone in anger but I had the thoughts and they scared me sufficiently.  My therapist was old school and wanted me to work not take pills.  I tried it for a while but got to a point when I knew I needed more.

My memories are foggy at this point.  But over the years, as I have worked things through (five or six different psychiatrists and psychologists not because I’m difficult mind you!  really.  I have a HMO and the Residents are always moving on you!  It actually stinks, when you have intimacy and trust issues to have your therapist change every few years but that’s life.  And I finally landed on a non-student who has done some brilliant work with me.  Sometimes I see him quite often, and then at others I go for months without.  I have episodes of reoccurring depression and then I get in with him quickly and he clears the fog in my brain.  He’s a salt of the earth kind of doctor and he is practical and clear.    Access to this has been another key to my return to normalcy.

Lastly at a certain point I found writing to be healing and cethartic.  I began to write poems and found all this crap inside that I couldn’t express in any other way.  Many times I know I shocked people with how I said things or what I said, but for me this has been a key to healing.

Right now, I am depressed.  How do I know?  Monday on the way home from a field trip I started to feel anxious, and glum, and kind of frantic.  The grocery story was overwhelming, when I went to get things for dinner.  Gardening, which I usually find pleasing just made me frustrated.  Nothing seemed to help.  No nicotine any more.  Man I miss it sometimes.  And then the feeling lingered, was there when I woke the next day.  I was listless and unproductive.  I couldn’t focus on anything.  My eating became irregular.  I craved sugar.  Yes, in some ways it could be that time of the month but this feeling is still here, a pit in my stomach, … it lingers.  It makes my chest feel heavy.  It’s not serious – yet.  But you bet I’m gonna keep an eye on it because if it doesn’t go I’ll have to start fighting.  This week I’ve been very unproductive except for yard work.  That can’t continue.

Since my episode of major depression I have had nine or ten minor episodes and as many serious setbacks that required intervening by the doctor.  Over the course of eight years I have learned a lot.  I have become more empathetic to others: when someone asks me how I’m doing I never lie.  “Good, and you,” will never come out of my mouth.  I have learned to tell the truth.  Good and bad.  I see people now, I can usually see if someone is depressed.  No, I don’t say anything usually but sometimes I reach out a bit more intentionally.

You never know what is going on with people.  I walked around for more than five weeks a zombie, and not even my husband knew what was going on.  A depressed person isolates (which is another thing I watch for when I feel like I do right now.).  A depressed person has a terrible self-esteem believing all sorts of lies about themselves and others.  They can’t sleep well (which is very important to recovery.)  They should not drink alcohol as it is a depressant and will only increase the poor mood.  I believe my alcoholism contributed to the depth of my depression over the last eight years.   Now that I’m sober it is much easier to get out of a slump.

To sum it up, fairly incoherently I might add, a depressed person needs:

  • to eat healthy even if they are “not hungry.”
  • to get some form of exercise every day even if it is a walk around the block.
  • to not sleep during the day.
  • to sleep at night even if that means taking something (with a doctor’s supervision) and not for more than a few weeks.
  • to see a Psychiatrist  for possible medications and a Psychologist for therapy.  You must be in therapy to work on the reasons for your depression.  They will not go away.  And you cannot heal without dealing with your shit.  You do not have to take an antidepressant and I don’t recommend doing that unless strongly encouraged by a doctor.  They are difficult to come off for some people.
  • should not drink alcohol.
  • needs to be with people even if it means someone who loves them makes it happen.  They cannot be allowed to isolate.  This was truthfully a key to my healing.  Getting together and telling friends and knowing they cared.
  • requires the support, care, trust and love from family.
  • And at a certain point, a depressed person needs to fight.  So a kick in the pants might be required.  You really do have to fight it, once you are strong enough to do so.  If you can eat, walk, talk, then you can fight.

I’ve walked this journey and would be willing to meet with anyone who just wants to talk.  Or to listen, if that seems too hard.  Whatever your experience, whether it is loving someone who is depressed or being that person yourself, you have a story.  From my experience, the healing comes in the telling.

Be well,

Melody

Yikes, even as I write this I hesitate to push PUBLISH because it’s just scratching the surface.  But it is a beginning and well, I can’t be a perfectionist here.  These are a very sketchy thoughts.  I hope they help even just one someone.  There is so much more to be said!  I have read so many books! And done so much thinking on this that this hardly reflects or represents it. I haven’t touched on faith & depression at all.   But it is all I have tonight.  Here are a few links.

My poetry.

National Assoc. of Mental Illness.

Mayo Clinic Depression self-test.

608-238-3210 home * 608-516-4269 mobile * melhhanson@yahoo.com

[Lenton Series] Winter Slowly Recedes (A poem)

WINTER SLOWLY RECEDES

by Melody Harrison Hanson, March 8, 2010

As winter slowly recedes

And sunshine makes certain promises,

I find myself wistful which is improbable, to be sure.

I am grateful for a long cold hibernation.

For the unlikely beauty of the frosty, brisk days.

The blue, icy nights that were endured.

I reflect on what didn’t come.

The monster, the unwelcome and frequent enemy.

I did- not- sink.  I did- not- fall- down.  I did- not, oh no!

Yes, I have returned to spring

enduring, resolute and full.

Able.

Even so, I am

More and more dependent on the One that came.

Who lost everything.

Who went to the dark, cold and frightening places

For me.

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Choose joy. Do you really think so?

Henry Nouwen said:

Joy is what makes life worth living, but for many joy seems hard to find.

They complain that their lives are sorrowful and depressing. What then brings the joy we so much desire? Are some people just lucky, while others have run out of luck?

Strange as it may sound, we can choose joy. Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently than the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it.

What makes us human is precisely this freedom of choice.

I DISAGREE. I COULD NOT DISAGREE MORE. How dare he? I did not choose to have major depression, it seems to have chosen me. But I know I have to choose to fight it like it is an enemy that wants me dead. Yes, I have something inside me that surfaces from time to time. I feel powerless against it but I have learned that I am not without choices.

I did not choose to be an addict – though in recovery – I have to accept the fact that I can’t drink. Not ever again. The very fact that it still bothers me and I feel sad about the loss, well that reminds me that I’m an addict if I had any doubt. There was a time when I thought I couldn’t live without alcohol. Now I know that I can. I choose to be a recovering alcoholic.

But I have not found joy. I am not choosing joy. I am choosing life. I am happy. I feel a certain level of contentment. But I am restless. I do not feel joy. At least not yet. Perhaps I am failing to CHOOSE IT.

Choose joy – okay – I suppose on a certain level I have to agree just like … I choose LIFE. I choose not to smoke which is slow suicide. I choose not to drink which was a death sentence. I choose to get up, even when I want to sleep forever. I still have those mornings. And I choose to create, and love and … I choose to think that what I do matters even when the ‘voices in my head’ tell me it is all worthless. And it wouldn’t matter if I stopped. Stopped thinking. Stopped writing. Stopped shooting. Stopped.

Some days it is still just choosing to breathe.

That little girl above – a chubby toddler gazing out of that airplane door — innocent, curious, tentative, that’s me too. She had no idea how hard it would be to choose.

Some other things I have written on the topics above.
Eulogy to Life,
Winter Comes,
Splintered Truth,
This Epic Grief,
No Dignity,
I Need a Filling,
Addict.

The schizophrenic in me went to the library

The schizophrenic in me went to the library and found a few books I want to read.  So, I’m thinking of taking time off from the internet for a while (I’m going to try) so that I can read.

I am already reading CJ Cherryh Foreigner series.  I am on book four of ten. I read that at night.

The Depression Cure — The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs by Stephen S. Ilardo, PhD.

Because I do intend to go off my medication this year.  It’s a matter of how not when.

Cool Careers without College for People Who Love Video Games by Nicholas Croce.

For my son, Jake, who has some learning challenges.  I don’t know if it is more to inspire myself or my son, but I just need a little hope as it relates to Jacob.

Speaking Treason Fluently — Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male by Tim Wise.

Saw this book mentioned on a blog I was reading.  And the author is highly recomended.

Empowering Your Sober Self by Martin Nicolaus.

Sobriety is a daily decision as well as relearning certain patterns.

No Enemy to Conquer — Forgiveness in an Unforgiving World by Michael Henderson with foreward by the Dalai Lama.

I am writing an article about forgiveness.

The Mother Factor — How your Mother’s Emotional Impacts Your Life by Stephen B. Poulter, PhD.

Ongoing journey of understanding my mom’s power.

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines.

It’s Black History month.  It seems warranted to start reading black authors.

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by Clayborn E. Carson.

Ditto.  Plus he’s a general hero to half of humankind.

The Unheard Truth — Poverty and Human Rights by Irene Khan, Secretary General Amnesty International.

The situation in Haiti has gotten me thinking about human rights in general and especially how it relates to poverty.

Strong Kids.  Healthy Kids. — The Revolutionary Program to Increase Your Kid’s Fitness by Fredrick Hahn.

It’s an ongoing interest to develop healthy habits in my kids while they are young.

A Good Neighbor — Benedict’s Guide to Community by Robert Benson.

Lifelong need for connection.