I want to talk about depression with a little “d,” including the surprising appearance of mine. Before you decide to skip this reading, please understand that this is not what you think it is. Depression is not just a deep funk or dark hole, but more often a shallow dip, a slightly dimmed version of the Being that is You. You may not have perceived depression in the ways I’m going to describe, but in one way or another, depression has been a part of your condition, even if for a brief time, whether previously in your life, or in this last year, or only recently. Or, you may have functioned on a slightly dimmed version of you for most of your life, without even knowing… because no one teaches you about the powerful generator that you truly are. No one talks about what you can really feel and experience and create on a daily basis for your entire life.
You have been taught that depression is defined by a certain degree of inability to cope, or period of darkness, or prolonged sadness or numbness, when it actually has a much broader spectrum and pervasiveness. It may appear as if someone put your light switch on a dimmer mode. Most times, depression does not even make itself known until we start coming out of it, up from it.
I was born with a gift of optimism, a sunny, honest disposition, and an ability to easily, without trying, notice things about people, myself, and my surroundings that are beautiful or inspiring or have something that I appreciate and exchange energy with, that light me up and keep me lit. I have always been able, without intention, to maintain this spirit of genuine happiness for myself and receive inspiration and gift it to others. That is one of the qualities that enabled me to have a therapeutic and nurturing effect on people throughout my life and, also, what inspired me to become an Inspired Life Guide eight years ago.
Prior to this past year, I looked back on my life and concluded that I only suffered a brief month of depression when I was 20 years old. However, I now have a greater perspective of what depression is. Over this last year, I felt myself dipping in and out of a certain level of decreased vitality, energetically. This form of depression is when the innate essence of spirit and aliveness is pulled or pressed underneath the surface, somewhere inside of you but not revealing itself, sucking your energy, focus, and bounce. You’re not able to float like a cork on the water and feel your normal buoyancy and ability to smile and laugh, have open viewpoints, and know that you’re okay, that you’re going to be okay, and that you have continual chances and possibilities for creating new things. This level of deep-pression of spirit zaps your energy in a way that makes you not able to get out there and take that early morning walk or run, or dig in and declutter that corner or that room, or turn on music and dance around the kitchen, or launch that new project, or finish that book you started but can never get back into (or toss it!), or promote your new business (or change it!), or take a spontaneous adventure, or just be happy and at peace and laugh easily. You may wonder why you haven’t taken that bag to the donation center yet, why you haven’t been able to brisk through house or garage or car cleaning like you used to, or why you can’t seem to get to that storage container and clear it out, or why you’re collecting so many things, including inches on your frame. That drainage of you has a way of slowly, insidiously pressing down on your energy and aliveness over time, so that you truly don’t notice it until quite a while has passed. Or, you may never know and blame your decline or slump on aging or life challenges or health conditions.
Depression is not just the big “D” devastating condition that only afflicts some and ends up taking the lives of a few. Depression with a little “d” is of the spirit, body, energy, and emotion, a state of human condition that occurs to every single one of us at times in our lives when something happened that we didn’t expect or we couldn’t handle as well as we thought we could. I think we can all identify with that over this past year of the web that is Covid.
On December 26th 2019, I had a premonition, a knowing that I needed to be closer to my sons, and I made an unexpected u-turn in my traveling California journey to come back and be closer to them. For me, the consciously identifiable deep-pression of my Self took place incrementally, beginning the day I moved back. After eighteen and a half years of not being sick (not even a cold), on February 1st, I succumbed to a sudden, unexplained illness that took me down hard for five days. A month later, news of Covid hit. Though I released buying into the belief in illness being contagious, and the trauma and drama of pending doom or gloom, paying attention to the conversations and media and fear-based energy that did not resonate with my inner truth took a brief toll. The deep-pression took a deeper toll when quarantine hit and all of my clients and their projects came to a screeching halt and I had no outlook for their return and was left wondering what I was going to do for income. One week later, it went deeper still when my molar revealed a critical infection, and all dental offices were closed except for the elderly and life-threatening emergencies. I was in such pain that I was worried it would abscess and poison me, and no one would know. It dunked me even further when my older son unexpectedly died a month later. A few weeks later, triggered by unhealed childhood trauma, his girlfriend turned on me, with lies and attacks and shut me out.
At that point, I was in that murky place, between numb and disbelief. Yet, within that realm, I was also opening an inner truth and consciousness. I was ok. All was ok. In and out I floated, on top of the water and then slightly in. Still knowing what to do and how to live my daily life and continue my work, but not motivated to put out the same kind or amount of passion or time or energy. There seemed to be no urgency. I was not worried. I knew that it was a period of time, grief, rest, release, and recalibration for me, a space I was being offered by the universe to go within and tap into deeper levels of myself. The greater consciousness of life was what I was being called to know.
During the eleven and a half months between my move back and mid January 2021, I did a lot of inner work in my cave, giving myself stillness, peace, Grace and love and patience… doing one thing at a time, even if it wasn’t what I would previously have labeled important or on the list, even if it was journaling, or walking or meditating or cleaning the surfaces of my space, or getting reorganized or getting rid of items that were no longer needed or serving me. My life began to sustain itself, like a raft floating on the water, without my needing to put in any effort, worry, or planning. Many energetic shifts and experiences, awarenesses, truths, and communications on different levels occurred. This was not my first experience of these kinds of shifts. I had a similar one in 2015 and had been cleaning and clearing out the parts I had accumulated in me that were not me. But this was much deeper, more transformational, and much more energetically magical and ethereal.
I discovered new and innate parts of myself. One of the biggest discoveries I made was that, in a subtle way, a part of me had been running away from myself. What that means is that the greatest, deepest, most passionate part of me that I truly loved to play in, that magical place, was only showing itself to a part of the world and to some people, because I did not consider myself ready or able to show that or be that, without judging myself or wanting to deal with judgement from others. By shutting out the part of me that was a primary facet of the real and true essence of me, I had been depleting my energy. I had been steeling my joy. I had been stifling my creativity, my lightness, and my playfulness. In short, I had been making my life harder than it wanted to be, because I had not been fully alive, and for quite a while. But that was all changing.
Along with my older son’s death and the inner work I did, many physical and energetic shifts occurred during those eleven and a half months. Four weeks prior to his death, he and my younger son and I shared an unexpected circle of love, bonding, and healing. Six days later, I experienced a life changing, illusion shattering Ego Death (I’d love to share what that means with you). In a surreal, serendipitous series of events, I connected with the love of my life (of many lives) that summer. Simultaneously, I began a year of unexpected and expensive oral surgeries. My younger son got Covid the week of Christmas. I got Covid in late January. There is much to too much to tell here. The point is, neither the death of my son, nor the Covid and surgery experiences knocked me over, scared me, or made a dent in my rising aliveness. I had already begun coming back to the surface, then staying up and lightening into the true being that is me. In January, I began an open dialogue with my body, inviting it to communicate what it needed me to know. And, boy did it…the awareness came. A day later, more breakthroughs came, which brought me to the doorway of where I am now, having not been here in decades. I rediscovered Access Consciousness, had a Bars session, and did the work to get my certification as an Access Consciousness Bars practitioner. I began giving and receiving Bars sessions and using tools of greater consciousness and quantum physics possibilities, helping myself and others to a greater level of lightness than I had been able to before, personally and in my Life Guide business. In facilitating their experience of the lightening that I experienced, I saw them become so grateful, so relieved, so full of increasing life and essence and love and hope and energy.
So many changes have occurred in my body, mind, spirit, relationships, surroundings, creativity, hopes and dreams, and life in general. But this is not new for me. I am the catalyst for change. I always have been, in myself, and in others, though I was not aware of it for the first half of my life. I have ignited it and created with it many times, but so much more was in me, brewing and simmering inside, so much Creative Energy within my being waiting for me to unlock it that, when I finally started releasing the limited beliefs and energies and emotions that had been accumulating within me for most of my sixty years in this life, that conscious creation Energy started to spill out onto the surface and Light up my Life and reignite me. Not only did it help me to remember the whole of what I really am, but it also enabled me to have the knowing, inspiration, self love, and trust to BE who I really am, and be the difference that I can make in the world.
Increasingly, I have rediscovered an infinite capacity for being a container of love, for myself and others. I’ve become higher, happier, sunnier, lighter (in spirit, emotion, mind, and body weight), and more energized and fueled. I walk faster, get up earlier, don’t need as much sleep and still feel great, know even more clearly what my body wants, being more than ever drawn to what it needs to eat and how much and when. I’ve been cleaning up those corners, buying that new piece of furniture, going outside and exercising more, receiving ideas, insights, and epiphanies, expressing my voice and my authentic unique essence without hesitation, and tapping into who I really am and what I really want and not running away from that, but diving right into it. The space of me is bigger and greater than I had been allowing it to be.
Lightness and ease, freedom and excitement, energy, creativity, and spaciousness are what you receive and become when you release everything that has been accumulated over a lifetime that is really NOT YOU and dive fully into what really IS YOU.
And so, what this long-winded message is all about is that deep-pressing (depression with a little “d”) is not something to be ashamed of, or judge, or minimize, or whisper about, or hide away from. It is not just an experience of a few, but a suppressed condition of aliveness that affects each and every one of us at different times in our lives in different ways. Most of us don’t even know we are slightly dimmed, or more deeply muted over a long period of time. It can be brought on by Covid, quarantine, mask wearing, vaccine, controversy, distancing from hugs and affection, inability to move and go out and travel and experience life. It can be brought on by past trauma, death of a loved one, unexpected job loss, unexpected income loss, illness, unexpected change, unplanned relocation, or world events. It can be a result of embedded familial mimicry, ancestral patterns, family or relationship challenges, body pain, addiction, abuse, listening to viewpoints and fear based talk that is not resonating with us, or avoidance of some part of us that we have been taught to believe is wrong or bad or not enough. We may turn to alcohol, medications, binge watching, eating, sleeping, gambling, co-dependent habits, smoking, couch potatoing, obsessive crafting or cooking, gossiping, becoming obsessed with the internet or porn, self-inflicting pain, verbal or physical attacking, or hibernation.
All of this is not a bad thing. There’s no right or wrong or good or bad about any of this. It’s just a part of the human condition, the shadow side, the contrast of the light. It is just a result of your not being taught the truth about who each of you really is, what’s really important to you and only you, what you’re really here for, and how you can really live this life experience in the way that is true and light and unique for you. The world has become heavier, and the weight of it is being felt by many, including you (or someone you care about) if you are reading this.
But, it doesn’t have to. This depression of you does not have to be damaging, devastating, permanent, or even long-lasting. There are so many gifts lying inside of you waiting to be discovered and revealed, and so much energy within you waiting to be felt in your body and tapped into and expressed. There is so much aliveness and beauty and amazement and creativity and infinite possibilities in you and the world that you and others have never even conceived of, let alone imagined were possible. All of it is waiting to rise up from the deep-pressing of YOU, so that you can create the outcomes you truly want and be the infinite capacity of contribution and gift to the world that you actually are.
If you have read this far, I know this resonates with you at some level, even if only mildly, or during a period long ago. Yes, I am a powerful catalyst for aliveness, consciousness, change, creativity, inspiration, love, and rebirth. But, I am not the only one. When you come up out of deep-pression, you have the capacity to be whatever you discover is the true powerful essence of YOU. If you feel called to discover yourself and what is possible for you, I would love to help you, or help someone you know. If you are wanting to come out of deep-pressing of any kind, even just a sense of feeling drained, unmotivated, unproductive, uncreative, or unable to look into the future and figure out who you are and why you’re here and what you want to do next, you can. It is more than possible. In this moment, know that there is aliveness, renewal, healing, magic, and miracles in you and for you. When you tap into this, you not only create a new reality for yourself, but you create a new reality for others, and a greater consciousness of the planet. You were born a creator. A new day is waiting for you, ready for you, beckoning YOU. What have you believed was impossible for you and your life – that Is Actually Possible?