Category: depression

Crawling Out of the Hole

by Jane Jones*

I’m constantly amazed at how the Holy One works – we just have to learn to (as my Gramma Milly would say), “Let go.  Let God.”

I suppose I can admit to the fact that as a lifelong “fixer” this is one hard task!  I’m used to being in charge of something – I’ve trusted what I’ve known as “The Voice” my whole life, and so when I feel called to take on a challenge, I tend to step up to the plate and get to work. 

Often, I’m successful in these attempts, because I believe the Holy One uses me as a tool for the good in this world.  I feel humble and grateful to be chosen to help…but what happens when you suddenly find yourself on the other end of fixing?

Four years ago, real life of a different type happened and suddenly, I was the one who needed help at the deepest level anyone could know.  A relationship I treasured and totally devoted myself to suddenly ended; my marriage of 22 years ran into a cement wall. I was blind-sided, shocked, heartbroken. In one day, my whole world took a 180-degree turn.

The circumstances swirling around it were ugly,  very public, and it all ripped me apart.  So much pain, so much doubt about myself, so many details forcing me to step into a life I truly never expected to live – on my own. 

I went down a very dark hole, doing all the things another instinct tells us to do to ease the pain, and I wondered how I’d ever crawl out of it again.

This Fixer was in desperate need of being brought back to life. 

Here’s the part where the God reveals just how amazing a Being God is…

At the worst time I’ve ever experienced, I was surrounded by a cloud of atypical saints, (most of them not people of faith!) and each one of them contributed to the healing journey I found myself on.

I truly was never alone. 

Did you know that the God has many disguises?  Do you remember that Spirit can show up in the oddest places at just the right moment (in the wrong place) to give you a poke, reminding you who and Whose you are?  Did you know that getting through a life-changing event can change you in ways you never thought you would know and understand; dropping new hope, new strength, new life right at your feet? 

These aren’t just buzz words thrown at us during a sermon in any church…this is absolute Truth. 

I know this, because I’ve been constantly in awe of how the Holy One works – how the Holy One reaches out – always, and often when you least expect it. 

With honest love from friends, family, even people I didn’t know personally, I’m finding my way back.  I’m crawling out of that dark hole, one step at a time. I’m also learning about real forgiveness – God’s trademark – and true peace.

The newer me is a modified version for sure, (and a better one, I think) – and as I squint each morning at a much brighter day ahead, I find that I’m not the only one who has suffered such loss. There is so much to grieve about in this world these days…The Voice is telling me that it’s time to get to work again. 

What’s different, though, is that instead of being a fixer, I’m now a “mender” because we’re all in this together. We need to patch up the torn places…and keep going.

It feels good to step up to the plate again.

Thanks, Holy One.

*Jane Jones served as the licensed pastor for First Congregational Church in Prescott from 2009 – 2015, has been SWC’s Moderator and Moderator Elect, is almost a former member of COCAM B, and currently sits in on Faith Formation ZOOM meetings.  She will be one of the facilitators at the “Doing Grief Community Healing Project” at Church of the Palms in Sun City.

Beyond the Bell Jar: Reclaiming the Life and Art of Sylvia Plath

by Kathryn Andrews, Desert Palm United Church of Christ Council and W.I.S.E. Committee

For many years, I knew Sylvia Plath only as an author who ended her life at age 30 after producing an excellent but depressing book called The Bell Jar.  That understanding changed after I read Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.  This biography celebrates Plath as a disciplined and prolific artist who helped to reform modern poetry and posthumously earned the Pulitzer Prize for her Collected Poems. The book also contains a sobering history of Plath’s struggle with mental health issues.  

Plath’s family was riddled with mental illness.  Her immigrant father engaged in a slow-moving suicide by refusing treatment for diabetes for two years.  He died in 1940 when Plath was eight.  The book points out that young children who lose a parent run an increased risk of suicide later in life.  Plath fit that pattern.  Unknown to Plath, her paternal grandmother had died in an Oregon insane asylum years before. When Plath’s own depression surfaced at age 20, doctors repeatedly subjected her to a primitive form of electroshock therapy without anesthetic.  According to Clark, Plath “was at the mercy of a patriarchal medical system that assumed that highly ambitious, strong-willed women were neurotic. As women, Plath and her mother had no power to defy the system.” 

The absence of her father and family financial worries galvanized and haunted Plath. She was able to partially finance her education at Smith by selling her poems and stories to national magazines.  Plath later won a Fulbright Fellowship to Cambridge.  There she met and married Ted Hughes, who eventually became England’s Poet Laureate.  Each contributed to the other’s professional growth; both were working toward an “unliterary” poetry “composed as much for the ear as for the eye.” Their relationship was progressive for its time, but also volatile. Plath seethed over the patriarchy and male humanist tradition that frequently denied her recognition while celebrating her husband’s accomplishments. In Daddy, Plath rages against her lost father, who also personifies “a bankrupt culture” and “patriarchal tormentors.”  Linking her father and husband, Plath writes, “I made a model of you . . .and I said I do, I do” but by the end of the poem Plath declares: “I’m through.” 

Following the birth of their second child and her husband’s departure, Plath entered a new level of depression while also taking her art to a new level.  Plath’s own mental health crisis and her father’s immigrant struggles gave her insights into the life of the outcast, and her writings from this period explore the viewpoints of marginalized mothers, refugees, and Jews. She became one of the first poets to write about miscarriage and post-partum anxiety.  More generally, her poems “open up new aesthetic possibilities that would change the direction of modern poetry.” The darkness also came through, as in Sheep in Fog: “My bones hold a stillness, the far/Fields melt my heart./They threaten/To let me through to a heaven/Starless and fatherless, a dark water.”    

Plath would not live to see widespread critical acclaim or her works become best-sellers.  As her depression deepened, Plath feared another round of botched electroshock therapy. She ended her life on the morning she was scheduled to enter a psychiatric hospital. But as Plath’s daughter later wrote, and Red Comet affirms, “The art was not to fall.” 

Can spirituality or religion decrease or even prevent depression?

by Kay Klinkenborg, Church of the Palms UCC; Spiritual Director; Retired: RN, LMFT, Clinical Member AAMFT

A burst of joy went off inside me as I read of research by Dr. Lisa Miller, PhD that has clinical documentation revealing depression is avoided and certainly significantly reduced in persons that recorded a high connection to religion and/or spirituality.1 I had a hunch that was true.  Each of us has had a thrilling moment when we read something that ‘jibes with what we thought but we couldn’t prove it.’  I anticipate that is what your reaction will be to this essay about depression/ religion/spirituality.  Dr. Miller has just published her book: The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. She is a practicing psychologist and faculty at Columbia University.

     The fields of psychology and psychiatry have been hesitant to do research to determine if there was a correlation between depression and personal connection to religion or spirituality. Some of that stems from the long history that science and religion have no connection in many academic fields of study. Another factor of resistance comes from the hesitation to know the truth.  What if is true there is a correlation? “But I don’t want to be a religious/spiritual person. That doesn’t fit with how I see the world, or even might not believe in a creator.” Attached to that are topics beyond this essay as to what defines spirituality and what defines religion.  And ‘religion as a formal place to worship’ or ‘belonging to a denomination’ is not in those definitions.

     I add a statement of medical reality before you read further. There are mental health diagnoses that are beyond the scope of this article; and there are diagnoses of chemical imbalances, etc. Miller is talking about widespread depression that many around the world experience. I will comment more later.

     In 2012, Dr. Miller approached the idea to colleagues on an upcoming research project about depression: “I’d be very surprised if we find any kind of association between spirituality and depression, but we shall see,” (senior MRI colleague in charge of the research).1  Contemporary psychotherapy tended to characterize spirituality and religion as a crutch or defense, a set of comforting beliefs to lean on in hard times.1,2

     Miller’s team had used colleague Myrna’s multigenerational sample of clinically depressed and non-depressed women, and their children and grandchildren. We’d taken MRI scans of people at high and low genetic risk for depression to see if there were any patterns among the brain structures of depressed and non-depressed participants that could allow us to develop more targeted and effective treatments.1   

     They asked all participants to respond to a major question used in the clinical science literature to quantify inner life: How personally important is religion or spirituality to you? 1,2

            THE RESULTS of MRI BRAIN SCANS:  “On the top half of the page was a black rectangle with two brain images inside. The scan on the left showed the composite brain image of participants with low spirituality—those who had reported that religion or spirituality was of medium, mild, or low importance. The scan on the right showed the composite brain of participants with sustained, high spirituality—those who had said religion or spirituality was of high personal importance.

     The brain on the left—the low-spiritual brain—was flecked intermittently with tiny red patches. But the brain on the right—the brain showing the neural structure of people with stable and high spirituality—had huge swaths of red, at least five times the size of the small flecks in the other scan. The finding was so clear and stunning, it stopped my breath. The high-spiritual brain was healthier and more robust than the low-spiritual brain. And the high-spiritual brain was thicker and stronger in exactly the same regions that weaken and wither in depressed brains.”1

Spirituality appeared to protect against mental suffering.1,2

     “The MRI findings marked a pivotal moment on the way to my breakthrough discovery that each of us has an awakened brain. Each of us is endowed with a natural capacity to perceive a greater reality and consciously connect to the life force that moves in, through, and around us. Whether or not we participate in a spiritual practice or adhere to a faith tradition, whether or not we identify as religious or spiritual, our brain has a natural inclination toward and docking station for spiritual awareness. The awakened brain is the neural circuitry that allows us to see the world more fully and thus enhance our individual, societal, and global well-being.”1,2

     I interpret Miller’s findings as supporting that God has created us with a phenomenal capacity to have an awakened brain. How do we feed that possibility?  In raising children, what needs to be a focus on their learning and exposure to keep that part of the brain and alive and curious?  There is “a God within us” and it is alive and active. What a celebration to have science document something that is thousands of years old, known by mystics, orally told through the ages!

The awakened brain offers more than a model for psychological health.1,2

Through many examples in her book, Miller documents that when we have a moderate to high connection to spirituality/ religion: “we awaken, we feel more fulfilled and at home in the world, and we build relationships and make decisions from a wider view. We cultivate a way of being built on a core awareness of love, interconnection, and the guidance and surprise of life.”1

“I’ve discovered that the awakened brain is both inherent to our physiology and invaluable to our health and functioning. The awakened brain includes a set of innate perceptual capacities that exist in every person through which we experience love and connection, unity, and a sense of guidance from and dialogue with life. And when we engage these perceptual capacities—when we make full use of how we’re built—our brains become structurally healthier and better connected, and we access unsurpassed psychological benefits: less depression, anxiety, and substance abuse; and more positive psychological traits such as grit, resilience, optimism, tenacity, and creativity.”1

     I hear your appropriate questions: “But I have physiological depression, a chemical imbalance in my body” or “I had a stroke and after that I have lived with depression, never had it before, but now it’s a constant companion” or “after heart surgery I was blue and never been like that before in my life.” Where do I fit in this study?

     Part of the answer is that medical/physiological depression is a different experience than situational or stress-induced depression. There is no guarantee that any of us will go throughout our entire life and not experience one or more bouts of depression, of varying degrees. Life is more complex than to say: “if you are highly spiritual and religious you won’t have depression.”  What the study does show is that the correlation of those who ranked a high importance of spirituality and/or religion in their life, had far less experiences of deep depression or persistent depression. It is about learning to honor the ‘lure to spirituality/ religion’ and reinforcing an active healthy mental and spiritual life.  Miller in her book goes into chapters of detail through memoir notes and case studies that prove what the research found on the MRI brain scans plays out as true in real life:  a moderate to high connection to spirituality/religion is a powerful tool to a healthy balance in our lives; we can develop skill sets that help us be resilient, compassionate and live full lives.  

1Miller, Lisa  (2021).  “Can a Commitment to Religion or Spirituality Help Ward Off Depression’s Debilitating Hold?”  Lit Hub on line e-letter, August 19, 2021.

2Miller, Lisa (2021). The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life.  Random House, New York.

© Kay F. Klinkenborg, September 2021

What If One Word Could Say It?

by Kay F. Klinkenborg

What if one word could provide clarity for the wide range of emotions we have all felt during COVID-19 since March 2020? Try: languishing.  Dr. Adam Grant wrote an article: “There’s A Name for the Blah You’re Feeling:  It’s called Languishing” for the NY Times, April 19, 2021.

I have heard a wide range of emotions this year: anxiety, fear, empty, listless, depressed, trouble concentrating, and life without a defined direction to name a few. And there have been many sad experiences of loss and resulting grief of loved ones and friends. Also grief of the loss of our normal routines, limitations of what, how and when we could do our predictable routines.      

Grant notes that “we think about mental health on a spectrum from depression to flourishing… being the peak of wellbeing.”  Prior to COVID many have experienced or known someone close who experiences depression. When depressed you feel despondent, worthless, no energy to move forward. “Languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health” states Grant. One of Webster’s definitions: to lose vigor or vitality.

Remember acknowledging that you weren’t functioning at full capacity, but couldn’t say why? You had no overt symptoms or behaviors to indicate mental illness. I recall days of ‘trying to make myself focus.’ Maybe accomplishing one or two of five goals I would have normally set for the day. I have read other articles that comment that during COVID, people were struggling with the long-haul impact of restrictions and the unknown. 

Languishing is the void between depression and flourishing—an absence of wellbeing, but you don’t quite feel yourself either—your motivation is dulled, notes Grant. The potential risk of remaining in ‘languish’ is that one might not notice you are slipping toward depression. You might not be experiencing joy or delight and suddenly realize you haven’t felt that for some time. 

Say it aloud, languishing, name it. Grant writes that might be the first step to learning more about it; because we haven’t done many studies on languishing. “Languishing is common and shared.” And thus, is not an abnormal reaction. We have not been through a pandemic before.  

The professionals admit there is still a lot to learn about this term.

Grant proposes one of the first things to do in coping with languishing is to ‘be in the flow.’  Fr. Richard Rohr in his book, Divine Dance, writes in numerous chapters about the concept of “flow.” To be in the flow is the experience of trusting the moment and staying focused on the smallest of goals. Being present and not letting your mind wonder hither and yon. Don’t spend energy trying to figure out how to control the situation or others or debating solutions for the biggest of problems that professionals/ elected officials are set out to do. Take a deep breath and remember the Creator designed you, and lives in you and all of creation. Don’t go the judgmental path…go the path of discovery the smallest awes.

I find that spiritually to own languishing means I have to name it and experience it and claim that God is a verb in the midst of all that I am witnessing, hearing, and experiencing. Where is God in what I see today? Where is God in what I heard about today from others? Stay in the flow. We have not been alone in this pandemic; nor are we alone post-pandemic.

Second, set boundaries as to when you are not to be interrupted.  You need breathing space to rest and process all that has transpired…even…especially even now… as we see a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ in America as more are vaccinated.  All processing doesn’t happen in the exact moment…when we can’t name what is happening. We need to bring some grace to ourselves and others for quite reflective time. A time for energy to be restored. Maybe it is a time when you read a novel, do some craft work, have a project. The important thing…it is your time with boundaries and no interruptions.

Third, pick small goals (Grant). This pandemic was a BIG LOSS. Maybe a short word game, one meaningful conversation with a trusted friend 1-2 times a week to own the gift of that friendship to you and to them. Maybe you color in an adult coloring book.  It doesn’t matter the goal…make it a small one. No one is here to judge you about how you spend your time or what you need to do to complete a goal that feels satisfying. 

One of the most important sentences in Grant’s article is: “Languishing is not merely in our heads…it’s in our circumstance.” You didn’t cause this…you aren’t making it worse. Many journalists, mental health professionals, and trauma psychologists remind us we are entering a post-pandemic reality. And with that will be some who have some Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for which they need to seek some professional health; particularly if they aren’t eating, can’t motivate themselves to get up, are isolating from others, and feel ‘blue’ beyond what they can manage. 

We can now begin with the lists above to address how the post-pandemic awareness of what languishing is and has been in our past 15 months. Give voice, name it, there is power in naming what is happening with you. Your courage to name it…will encourage others to name it too…and that empowers each of you to move forward with positive steps into more ‘thriving’ modes of living. 

Kay F. Klinkenborg © May 2021                                         

Church of the Palms

Kay is a Spiritual Director; Retired: RN, LMFT and Clinical Member AAMFT. She chairs the Life Long Learning Board at Church of the Palms, serves on the CARE TEAM, and the W.I.S.E. Steering Committee.         

All Together. Separate.

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Here we are. All together… separate.

What a weird time.

I have been doing this a while, this thing that we are doing now where we each take to our own homes and live a sealed life, trading handshakes and hugs for emojis and typed words. Instead of reaching for each other, we are reaching for computers, phones, devices. The phone becomes a portal to a world rather than a device to accompany the world. Our lives getting lived out on a small screen as the natural world around us does what the natural world around us does naturally without us. 

The world is healing as we are retreating. We are getting an object lesson that we didn’t realize we had been needing.

I don’t desire to make light of it because people are dying. Alone. People are not able to mourn together because doing so will increase the reasons to mourn. We must wait to even begin the task of grasping that which is lost. So much loss. So much change. And here we sit. Wondering and waiting.

I have been doing this awhile. And yet… this is oh so different because you are doing it too. That matters somehow, doesn’t it? It matters to know that it’s not just you… Even when it feels like it is just you, it never is. Whatever it is you feel, that feeling has been felt by nearly every person on this planet. That’s true pre-pandemic and is mightily true now. Whatever intensity you feel, that intensity has rested heavily on someone else’s shoulders. It rests there now. You are not alone in this even as you are literally alone in this.

I have some isolation tricks to share, but before we get tricky, let’s get honest.

Some of us are loving the opportunity to finally slow down and rest. That feels a bit bad for some because they don’t want to be the one finding solace and slumber when others are exhausted and in a nightmare. Some of us are really loving the break, though. That makes sense.

Some of us are hating every single moment of this isolation. It’s the opposite of anything they would have chosen for themselves. They need people and it feels like they are slowly losing their grounding force as people go away. Some of us are really hating this time. That makes sense.
The disease spreading has impacted us each in different ways even if we have not been sick or known someone directly who has gotten sick. It’s starting to get closer and closer, though.A friend of a friend of a friend had it. Now a friend of a friend had it.Now a friend has it. Closer.

Allergies seem like cruel April Fools pranks coming early. A sneeze turns into a warning where it used to be an annoyance. Scary, scary stuff.
We are feeling things, all kinds of things.It all makes sense in the midst of something we don’t understand. That’s an understatement. I’ll try again. It all makes sense in the midst of something we haven’t ever imagined before. That’s a bit closer. Not there yet, though.

It all makes sense in the midst of something we can’t fathom because we have not had anything like this ever, ever, ever. We are very aware of what is happening globally in a way we never have before and we just can’t begin to wrap our single human mind around it.

There is a lot of stuttering and trailing off of sentences as we try to piece it all together. When the words fail us, we turn our attention to graphs and numbers to quantify the unquantifiable nature of this loss. High school math teachers everywhere are whispering, “I told you that you would need this!” Fine. Mr. Clever was right. 

That’s the thing, though. This time is drawing on all the resources within us and outside of us. We are reaching into the recesses just to make sense of what the heck is happening. My goodness, that builds pressure within us and we are looking for a release valve. Some of us might be reaching for the things that have worked in the past and we may find that those things just aren’t working anymore, but we are alone and it feels too late to figure out how to manage this anxiety. I get that on a cellular level. Truly I do.

I don’t have answers. I do have experience in being alone and scared due to illness. I’ll offer that. In that offering, please know, I am scared too. I have the same moments you have still. My illness has not built up an immunity to being afraid of death. I just have a lot of experience of feeling that fear, thinking those thoughts, and having it lift. 

My offering is to remind your precious self that you are definitely not alone and isolation breeds all kinds of things that you actually do have some ability to impact. I was surprised to find that out. I still am surprised when intensity lifts and reveals itself as just a part of living rather than the harbinger of demise.

First and foremost, your thoughts are just thoughts. I know they are really, really loud thoughts, but they are just thoughts. You constructed them and shaped them. You made them. We forget that. These thoughts are sometimes helpful, they are often not. There’s more noise and fuzz when there is stress and it gets hard to distinguish what is real and what is not. One of the ways we combat this is by taking in new information. We listen and we add the information to the flow. This may not help because it’s still the same thoughts sifting and sorting the information. 

Can we agree that our thoughts sometimes may not be the best, most accurate thing and that news, in its effort to be the most newsiest news, is often riddled with errors? If we can agree with that, can we agree that solely thinking those thoughts and watching that news will only feed the cycle within that feels so bad? We need to break it up. We have to otherwise it will continue to hurt us. 

An informed mind is not a panicked mind. Those are very different things. Your feeling of panic will not subside by exposing it to more panic. It will subside by stepping away from that panic because Panic is always inaccurate. We are not doing ourselves any favors by turning our attention to more of it when we are consumed by it. It will make us lose all sense of reality in our attempts to grasp reality. 

We can’t be haphazard by the sources of information or our use of this time. If you went from having 60 hour work weeks to now having endless free time it leaves a void. What is filling the void?

The thing that will get us through is intention. Thinking about your day when you have endless time is crucial. I am not someone who adheres to a tight schedule and am not suggesting that you become rigid with your time, but the time will slip away and you will find yourself wondering what you did all day and why you are so tired. You are so tired because your brain was trying to gain purchase somewhere at some point and couldn’t because the autopilot mode feels far too slippery and you can’t seem to find solid ground. Time is a relative thing and if you did not know that before, you are about to know it in a very real way. The minutes can drag and the days can fly by. It’s odd. It’s very, very odd.
Structuring time to some degree is a necessity. Set-up a structure that is loose but something you can bounce around in and keep.

Next up: entertainment. Many of us have endless options to the point of being bored. Excess is overwhelming. 

It helps to simplify it. Try to do it in parts and separate the binging of entertainment with something in the real world. Break it up with projects, conversations, connections. The entertainment will be far more enjoyable that way.

Relationships: if you are unhappy and resentful of the people you are quarantined with, it may be time to try and work on that. That’s doable. Truly it is. 

If you are experiencing harm from them, that is something else entirely and please reach out to someone for help if it is abusive. If you can’t stand them because they slurp soup, that’s something we can work on. 
It will all be amplified which means it is inaccurate. Amplified = inaccurate. 

They don’t always slurp, they just are slurping now. This closed down world is mighty claustrophobic (I almost made a pun of cloister-phobic, but didn’t so I should get some points for that). The reason you feel locked in is because you are locked in. They slurped their soup before, your ears were just pointed somewhere else. Zoom out.

Make gratitude lists. Don’t just think about things you are grateful for, make an actual list and do it anytime you feel scared, annoyed, lost. It changes your perspective. Perspective is liberating.

Own your internal world. Your thoughts and feelings are your internal world and you are the only one who gets to construct it. There are endless thoughts we could be having so the thought that we happen to be on is just one of many thoughts you have access to. Pay attention to what gives you clarity and what brings in the noise. That’s yours to shape and yours alone. No one else gets to come in there without an invitation and that includes information and panic.

Lastly… we may find ourselves wanting to use the things that make us forget, the things that separate us from our living momentarily, but ruin us if used regularly. These things are usually addicting. They rewire the brain to search for ease instead of enduring whatever is going on. They overuse the good feeling chemicals in our brain that are finite. They become depleted and need time to regenerate. 

The more we use these shortcuts, the less our brain has time to reproduce the neuro-chemicals we need to feel things like ease, comfort, happiness, etc. That’s why we feel so lousy after we use these things in excess. I can tell you that this is very slippery ground in isolation. 
Our minds are already a tornado at times right now and if we add in more pressure from increasing drinking, drugs, overeating, porn, binging entertainment to the point of ignoring life, we will feel worse. If you feel like you have some choice over some of these behaviors, consider stepping them down a bit rather than ratcheting them up a bit. If you feel like you don’t have choice over it, reach out for some help because it will make it worse.

Be gentle with your lovely selves. Your life on pause is still life you are living and choices you are making matters. 

Even when you think you are the loneliest of the lonely, you are not alone. Not ever.

Cocoon

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

I was hurt really badly some time ago. It was the kind of hurt that you carry in every cell. It was the kind of hurt that wakes you up and refuses to let you sleep. The pain was excruciating at times and settled into an intense ache the times in between. The ache was physical. The ache was emotional. The ache was spiritual. It felt unending. It redefined the word “harm” for me and those closest to me. I didn’t know I could hurt so much day after day after day after day and still not die. I know that now, though.

When I was harmed I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what had happened to me because there was no way I could have anticipated it. My life was solid. I had an amazing family, a job I adored, and friendships that were brilliant and full of life. I had dreams that I was pursuing. I had love at the ready. I had lost a lot of weight. I was exercising. I felt great. I was fully alive to myself and my world more than I had ever been in my 37 years of life up to that point. And then everything changed to such a degree that the life I knew before seemed like it was someone else’s. My lived experience of harm negated all the previous lived experiences of safety. That’s what trauma does to you, locks you in.

Even though I had been safe in this world more often than not, this one event of harm was rewriting me, it seemed. Like a virus that takes over your electronics, it just invaded the depths of my soul and started laying down new patterns of thinking that were the worst, fear-based stuff I had ever known. I thrashed and railed against this reality. I was crawling my way forward and collapsed more than I moved.

I would have stayed there. Laid there. Died there. I would have.

But I didn’t.

And that wasn’t because of me.
It was because of them.
Those people.
Over there.
Coming here.
Holding me.
Loving me.
Reminding me. This isn’t forever. This will change. This will pass. It always does. We are here.

Broken and beaten things need time to heal. A battered soul is the same. We need rest. We need nourishment.

What happens then if the thing you need to have to get better is the very thing you cannot access? I needed to sleep so my body and brain could heal. I couldn’t sleep though because my body and my brain were broken.

I needed to eat so my body and my brain could rebuild. I was unable to eat. I couldn’t swallow water without intense revolting nausea, let alone any food. I couldn’t take anything in as I was desperate to keep all the bad stuff out.

I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t heal.
Yet I was healing.
Slowly.
Ever so slowly.

You see, I was eating. I was sleeping. It just didn’t look like what it did before. I wanted my life back. I wanted to be able to live and move in this world in the same way I had moments before the harm. I wanted to feel hunger. I wanted to feel rested. I wanted to feel ease. When I thought about eating and sleeping during the worst times of post-traumatic stress, I was comparing it to what I used to be able to do. I was longing for a time that was so different than my own. Of course I was. How could I not?

The bit by bit bites and the minute by minute sleep that I was able to have access to slowly changed the healing process in my body, mind, and spirit. It was slow going, but it was going.

I was not alone. That was what changed it for me. That’s why I didn’t die on the floor of grief and unimaginable sorrow.

When you are that broken and that beaten in some way, you can’t begin to think the next thought of what you should do, let alone act on the next thought. Action was not possible for me. I was needing to be in an idle state, tucked away with comfort, medicine, kindness, compassion, and grace. Where does someone go to get that on Amazon? There is no kit to be purchased. Trust me. I looked.

What I described for you is something that happens from people just being. Those people over there that came over here to hold me, comfort me and love me just sat with me, listened to me and reminded me of who I am. They encouraged me to eat. They encouraged me to sleep. They encouraged me to keep trying. Sometimes I was helped by them mightily, other times I was too far within to hear them. Yet they remained.

You know how you never know what to say when someone tells you bad news? It’s because you don’t need to say anything.
You don’t.
There’s nothing that will fix it.
Nothing.

We hate that feeling, don’t we? We want to have some type of control over the world around us and it is so very strong when we see someone we love hurting. We want to alleviate pain when we see it. We want to skip to the end or hit rewind even though that doesn’t exist. It’s our first reaction, though.

We can’t remove pain. It has a function. It is there for a reason. The focus then is not on removing the pain, but in tending to the harm until the pain subsides as it does with healing.

Your presence is a balm, especially when it is a steady, dependable presence.
Your words, when found from places of love will be far more meaningful than when they come from a place of fear that just wants the pain to stop.

Gradually, there were words shared with me that helped me. That could only have come after being together for awhile. They only were fitting because of the tending that had come before.

Some of the things said to me in the tending that I was able to make use of were really vital because of the love that existed. I believed the sender of the message more because of the care they held for me.

I said, “I feel so much hatred. I don’t want to be a hateful person”
They said, “You are an inhospitable environment for hate. It won’t stick. It can’t. There’s too much love there.”

I said, “I don’t want to relapse because of this. I am so scared to relapse.”
They said, “We’ll sit with you until that passes. We are here to help you not use again. This trauma will not take your recovery.”

I said, “I can’t eat anything, I can’t even swallow water, I can’t do this.”
They said, “How about for today, you eat just a tiny bit more and I will eat a tiny bit less because it hurts me too.”

I was not alone. That was what changed it for me. That’s why I didn’t die on the floor of grief and unimaginable sorrow.

Your love, when expressed through presence or communication, is a magical thing.

Those people over there that came over here to hold me, comfort me and love me wanted my pain to stop. They tried things too. We all did. It just wasn’t effective so we stopped trying to stop pain and redirected our efforts toward living in the moment we were in, with the people we were with, and with the capacity we had. That was enough. That was more than enough.

We created space for healing even though it was so inconvenient and not at all what we wished we would be doing.

We created it still.

I read a joke on some social media platform at some point in the last year at some random time of night and it stuck with me, as random things so often do.

The joke was, “Do you think a caterpillar knows what it’s doing when it’s building its cocoon or is it like, ‘What am I doing’ the entire time?”

It stuck with me because it’s clever and I enjoy humor that wonders about the world around us rather than judges the world around us. I think of that joke on occasion, especially when I see a butterfly (pssttt… spoiler alert, that’s what comes out of the cocoon).

Today, I thought of this joke while brushing my teeth, no butterflies in sight. Something clicked.

I didn’t know I was building a cocoon.
Then the next thought.
I wasn’t.
They were.
I let them.
I had to.

I was a broken and beaten being and they wrapped me up. They waited. They stayed.

None of them knew how to do it and neither did I. We were clueless.
The thread was in the visits, in the expressions of love, in the sharing about their own lives as it reminded me that the world is still happening and that helped me reconnect to it. I cried. They cried. That was some strong, vibrant thread that we had at the ready and didn’t even know.

Our capacity to love is endless and boundless when it meets with others’ capacity to love.

A five-minute phone call is enough if that is what you have to give.
A meal together is enough if that is what you have to give.
A text message is enough if that is what you have to give.
It is not the amount of time of the offering, its the offerer.
It’s you.
That’s the balm.

The hurdle to all of this is our own doubt and fear. We think if we get too close to pain it will hurt too much when it is the exact opposite. Pain hurts less when tended. My goodness, though, isn’t it hard to know that when you are thrashing and railing and afraid? Isn’t it hard to know that when someone you love is the one thrashing and railing and afraid?

I am still cocooned in a lot of ways, but that is changing as I have been emerging more and more.
I laugh far more than I cry these days.
I listen to others far more than I need to be listened to.
I see the transformation more and more. It’s reminiscent of my life before. It’s not the same. It never can be the same because the past doesn’t exist in the present. It is a beautiful, full, vibrant life, though.

I have cocooned others recently, without even knowing it. Just from being and responding I have been able to hold others well too.

That innate thing that prompts a caterpillar to begin the next step for life to be nurtured and continued is the very thing within each of us that prompts us in our living.

We want to emerge. We want to be better, stronger, alive. We think we don’t know how to do that, but we do. It’s within you. It’s within me.

It starts with a prompt, that feeling inside, that nudge to reach out and connect. That is the thread of life, the thread of love reminding you of its presence. It is at the ready, waiting to be woven into sanctuary for one another. It will amaze you as you weave it and will dazzle you when it’s done.

Standing on Holy Ground

by Talitha Arnold

The place on which you are standing is holy ground. – Exodus 3:5

Moses must have laughed out loud when the voice from the burning bush told him he was standing on “holy ground.” How could a desert wilderness be “holy ground”?

The same way a hospital room or a graveside can be sacred ground. When filled with prayer and the awareness of God’s presence, even the lonely and scary places of our lives can become holy and sacred.

Nest Sunday, September 10, is World Suicide Prevention Day. It’s also a National Day of Prayer for ‘Faith, Hope & Life,” sponsored by the Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. Across the nation, people of all faiths are invited to join in prayer for persons struggling with mental illnesses and suicide, and for those who love and care for them. As part of the Action Alliance Executive Committee and co-lead for the Faith Communities Task Force, I hope you and your church will also join in.

Depression, bipolar disorder, suicide, or other mental illnesses can make someone  feel cut off from others, including God. That isolation increases exponentially if one’s faith community is silent about such concerns. When a church offers no prayers for persons struggling with mental illness (as we do for those with physical illnesses), it’s hard to find the holy ground.

We can break that silence next Sunday.  On this National Day of Prayer, let us pray for persons living with mental illness or whose lives have been touched by suicide—and for their families, colleagues, therapists, pastors, and all who seek to help. (prayers, videos and other resources at www.faith-hope-life.org.) Let’s help create holy ground for others.

Prayer

God, as you came to Moses in the wilderness of his life, so you do the same for us. May our prayers remind others they are not alone and that you make all things holy.

The Farthest Place on Earth

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

The Christmas of 1997 I was 19 years old and preparing to travel from Tucson, Arizona to Willowvale, South Africa to teach school as a missionary. I actually didn’t even have knowledge of where Willowvale was on a map. I had very little experience traveling and I was giddy with excitement to head out to the farthest place on earth I could imagine. Christmas Day was the usual gathering at my grandma’s house with my mom and my brothers. My Uncle Mike, my mom’s brother, was supposed to be there too. He lived in town and we saw him quite a bit. He wasn’t there. I remember feeling bummed about that because I was excited to tell him the news.

As the day went on, I knew there were frustrating phone calls happening and I had gathered my uncle was on the other end of those calls. I watched my grandma nervously tending to the phone and then to the meal she was making, nervous whispering with my mom about whatever was happening. My grandma often had worry on her face, but this felt a bit different. When the phone rang next I answered it. My uncle was on the other end of the line, his words slurring and his tone angry and loud. When he realized it was me, he softened a bit. He wished me a “Merry Christmas” and then he told me to tell grandma to come get him. I knew he was drunk and I knew he was making Grandma upset. I said we weren’t coming to get him and hung up. My mom was on duty next. Her conversations were not a whole lot better. The phone was ignored a few more times as we ate dinner.

These interactions weren’t unusual behavior.

I had actually just seen my uncle the week before. He arrived at our house wearing shorts, a tank top, and sandals at 11 pm on December. I was talking with a friend on the phone when he knocked and was very annoyed to see him standing there. He was slurring and asked me for a coat and water. I got him the water and found him a sweater. I wanted to get back on the phone with my friend. It was a rushed interaction. I remember saying something about my “crazy uncle” to my friend, my tone dripping with judgment. That wasn’t unusual behavior from me. I shamed others easily back then.

It was hard not to have Uncle Mike there on Christmas and it was hard to watch my grandma worry about the best thing to do. The calls stopped for a bit and then started again after dinner. My mom answered. He was hurt. He had fallen through his glass table and needed to go to the hospital.

I went with my mom and my grandma to Uncle Mike’s apartment. He was bleeding and had a shirt wrapped around his arm and hand. He saw me and asked that I be the one to help him down the stairs. I remember feeling scared for him. For all my judgment I adored my uncle and a lot of my anger and ire was because I hated to see what he did to himself. Back then, I thought he could just stop it if he wanted. I thought he was acting this way on purpose and it was too much.

The rest of the Christmas night we spent in the emergency waiting room. I was cold and aloof, arms crossed over my chest and staring at the floor. My grandma and mom were near each other. I realized that Uncle Mike did not know my big news. I told him I was going to South Africa to teach school. My uncle had this sweet smile spread over his face and his voice had an ease and lilt that was uncommon for him when he was suffering. He was proud of me. He told me. I saw it. I felt it.

I have a hard time recounting what happened next because nothing really happened, yet something changed. I remember getting this swell in my chest, sadness and love for my uncle as I took in our surroundings. There are not a lot of things more sobering than being in a sterile institution on a day of intended joy. I looked at him and smiled again. He laughed a little and shook his head. I laughed a little and shook my head too. The judgment fell away and I scooted next to him and leaned on his shoulder. I realized for the first time that Uncle Mike hated this more than we did. He was in pain and did not know how else to fix that pain.

A horse-whispering awesome friend of mine, Chris Edwards, taught me this: Everyone’s behavior makes sense to them at the time, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.

All of the things we do are an attempt to meet a need within, and my uncle sure had a lot of pain he was living in and a lot of solutions that no longer worked at all. He had been trying to find ease for a long while; most of my life I witnessed this.

I first heard that my uncle had bi-polar disorder when I was eleven. They didn’t call it that, though. They called it “manic-depressive”. The medical model used language that said mental illness WAS the person. Here’s the difference and it’s an important one: “my uncle is bi-polar” versus “My uncle has bi-polar disorder”. The first makes the person’s only identity be the mental health disorder while the second sees my uncle as a person with a disease. We don’t say “Ed is a heart attack”. We say “Ed had a heart attack.” We have diseases, illness, etc. We are humans with these conditions and the same is true for mental illness.

At age 11, I had witnessed a change in my uncle gradually and then dramatically. I saw him turning in circles quickly and I heard him say his belief that if he stopped spinning, a tornado would happen somewhere. He was making himself exhausted and dizzy because his mind told him he was controlling the weather. He didn’t want anyone to get hurt.

In my teenage years, I would spend time with him while he spoke of prophecies about the end times and his belief of the rapture, desperately wanting to make sure we would all make it in the afterlife. Remember that night he showed up the week before Christmas and asked for a jacket? He left my house and trudged up to up at the top of A-Mountain in our town of Tucson. His feet were cut and scraped because sandals were not made for this journey. My uncle had a chemical disease and he was attempting to treat that chemical disease with alcohol. He lived with bi-polar disorder and addiction on a daily basis.

Uncle Mike’s brain created so many scenarios that absorbed him into his own mind, leaving the world behind. I think we mistakenly call that selfish and don’t realize what a painful state it is to be left in your own mind, to make sense of the world all around, pushing away those who love you and who you love, alienation and pain being the unfair trade that gets made.

That Christmas night of 1997, my uncle was patched up at the hospital. I said my goodbyes to him and he to me, fully expecting to get time together in a year or so, after my mission work. I left about two weeks later to South Africa, having finally found it on a map and understanding where my plane would land. My grandma wrote to me all the time as the year progressed and I heard about Uncle Mike. He had been on some medication and it was seeming to be a bit better. I was heartened and my grandma seemed the same in the letters. If you had asked me about him then I would have expressed hope and gratitude based on the outside view of what “better” looks like.

About ten months into my life in South Africa, I got the phone call and was told it was an emergency.

Have you had this call? The two sentences of pleasantries, the tension in the voice on the other end. Some of us may have been asked to sit down before the caller continued on. Others may have heard the caller say “I have some bad news”. I have no idea what my mom chose to say to start.

I remember very few words as a sense of panic rose in me.

Uncle Mike.

Suicide.

Fire.

Died.

I ran for a friend who came to sit with me as my mom told me again, calmly, lovingly. This time I heard the other words: “Your Uncle Mike lit himself on fire and was found still alive. The fire was put out. He lived a couple days. We made the decision to end life support. Uncle Mike died on October 5th.”

Recounting this to you, so many years later, still takes my breath away. The internal pain he must have been in to take this action is overwhelming to me. I will say that the trauma of how he died likely increased the incredible pain we all lived with in the days, months, and years to follow. I remember taking my grandma’s car to the gas station for her to pump gas because she could not stand the smell of gasoline. Her tears were endless for her son and the painful way he died. My grandma never fully recovered and died a few short years after he did.

It has taken me a long time to be able to talk of my uncle’s death. I knew he was in a great deal of pain. The few times I had tried to talk about it outside of my family, I was met with some form of judgment. I heard the word “selfish” a lot when I talked about this. I knew, though, this had nothing to do with selfishness. This was some serious pain he was in. It would take lots of time to navigate the social messages about his death and suicide in general. I made it my life’s work to understand these things.

Here is what I know now:

My uncle Mike died from suicide and his death was not a selfish act, it was not a crime he “committed”, and it was not a lack of fortitude or strength. The brain is an organ like any other organ. Suicide is a potential outcome from the disease of depression and, if is treated, it can often be preventable. If the disease of depression is coupled with the disease of addiction, it increases the risk of completed suicide.

I have the disease of addiction and I have the disease of depression. For a while there, I was scared I would have the same outcome as my uncle had as though his death from suicide meant something about my future. It was as though I thought I had to make a decision to NOT die from suicide since he died from suicide.

That is a myth, dear ones. My increased risk is not because he completed suicide, it’s because genetically I am more predisposed to depression and addiction. It’s as simple as that. It’s not some taboo that I must now choose or not choose. It’s the potential end of a disease process for which I seek treatment.

Why is that important to know?

The stigma around suicide increases the likelihood that people who are having such thoughts will not seek help. I am sure I do not have to drive home the point that this increases the likelihood of attempts and completed suicides. What a difference the sliver of light can make in such a dark, lonely place.

My uncle died on 10/05/1998.

You can likely imagine that 10/05 is a hard day for me and my family. And it is. Yet, something else happened on that day just eight years prior to his death to make that day something we had been celebrating.

On 10/05/1990, my mom stopped drinking. I was 12 years old and was aware of the degradation and torment she was in due to her addiction. My mom got recovery first time asking for it. She admitted she had a problem and started a path of sobriety. I watched someone in deep emotional pain lay claim to a life with options and love. She had to work hard at it. She had to change so many things to stay on that path. I know I did not make it any easier for her, often flinging my resentments and anger her way. She was steadfast.

October 5th:

I lost an uncle who I loved dearly

I gained a mother seeking a path that would lead to wholeness

I saw a potential end of a disease that caused my uncle so much pain

I saw a potential beginning of a life that caused my mom so much joy

I learned that the loss of a dear one from suicide creates so many layers to sift through

I learned that the life of a dear one through recovery gives me so many foundations to stand on.

My mom introduced me to resiliency, seeking Spirit, believing I can and should do better. My mom showed me the way out and she was one of my first calls when I needed help years later.

My uncle is still with me in all the permeations of life he lived. When I think of him I remember he laughed easily and often (the Mulvaney Machine Gun laugh — I have it too. You’ll know it when you hear it). He enjoyed golf and often made me watch it. I always grumbled, but it is something I still put on in the background when it’s on because it soothes me. He soothed me. He was a chef with incredible talent. He was loving and kind to those vulnerable around him. He was fun to play with and learn from. He was proud to be my uncle.

He was human and disease happens to us humans.

It’s been almost 18 years since my uncle died. I still think of him all the time. The word “selfish” never once pops into my head in relation to him. How could it?

If our behaviors are an attempt to get a need met, what does my uncle’s death tell me?

It tells me that his co-occurring condition was so painful within him, death by fire seemed like a better choice.

That is not selfish.

That is suffering.

When we know that, we have new options. The reason I knew to call my mom and admit that I needed help is that my family does not cloak this in shame and stigma. I knew if I had depression, I would not be shunned. I knew if I had thoughts of suicide I needed to talk about them and not keep them locked inside. I knew that mental illness and addictioncause a person to go inside themselves, away from all who can help and who love them.

Christmas Day 1997, I leaned on my uncle’s shoulder as he waited to get some relief from the external pain he was in. I thought about this trip I was getting ready for and the plane that would take me farther than anyone else I knew had ever gone, the farthest place on earth in this big, wide world. I did not realize the farthest place we could ever go on earth is actually within ourselves, locked away believing the shame and pain of mental illness and addiction is reflective of weakness in character. And I did not know my Uncle, Michael Owen Mulvaney, had already made this trip alone.

You are not alone in this.

If you are considering suicide, please tell someone.

Check out some of these resources. Reach out to folks who get it.

Keep talking. Keep breathing. Keep being.

___________________________________________________________________________________

September is Suicide Prevention month. Here are some resources for you and anyone you love:

 

Image credit: Davin Franklin-Hicks

“Top left is me and my mom Teri and the same next to it. Bottom left is me and my uncle Michael Owen Mulvaney and the one next to it is him as well.”