3 Musts to Combat Depression

As I spend time with women, friends, and colleagues, I am becoming more and more convinced that our cultural climate is something that should be scrutinized and pushed against and we should make every effort to resist the many temptations and norms thrown at us, why? Because it is so unhealthy and therefore so are we.

I believe we all so desperately want peace, joy, and ease and we find ourselves living something very different. 

Here are a few things I believe are necessary to the human experience to thrive and combat depression. Depression is an imbalance of chemicals and hormones in the brain and body, so if we are to move towards healing, we must move towards balance. 

1. BELONGING: If you don’t belong somewhere you will be depressed. We are pack animals. We run in packs, we need packs, we need a place, a role, and an office within a pack. Unfortunately, our culture pushes us away from each other instead of drawing us together. We have been taught that we need to own things and this will make us happy. Culture says “if you just had more space, or a bigger house then you would relieve this stress.”
   
   What if the solution was actually less space, fewer things, less responsibility, fewer bills, lower payments, and more freedom?  But instead, we sit in our own big houses with lots of things and we are lonely and depressed. We keep trying, and we keep getting the same results; lonely women in their houses with all their things, overwhelmed with managing them. 
   
   Maybe less is actually the most natural thing in the world and we have deviated so far from it and every woman feels it and every man feels it, as we have placed the weight of children, jobs, running a house, bills, all on 2 people’s shoulders. In other parts of the world, anyone that has any kind of money hires others and creates jobs. They employ housekeepers, cooks, and Nannies, or they live multi-generationally in homes or in villages and tribes and carry the burden together.
   
   De-press-ion- being pressed. Being squeezed, the burden all on my shoulders. This is not how we were created to live. We were made to help each other, to belong to one another, to carry loads together, to bring our gifts to the table, and make each other better.   We are sick because we need a pack. We are depressed because it IS too much for one person.
   
   WE MUST find our pack, our tribe, a place to belong. It could be a church community, a homeschool group, a yoga club, a cross-fit clan, a theatre group, a band, or a dog park hang-out group. You must have a place or you will be too (de)pressed. Take this as your sign today to reach out to someone to take a step towards finding that place where you belong. 
   
2. PURPOSE: We each have been given a unique mix of ingredients inside of us and those ingredients are to be used. Our personality, our gifts, our strengths, our weaknesses, our talents, our care, our listening ear, our sense of humor, our friendship, our artistic expression, our physical abilities, our love, our kindness, our honesty, our protection. They are to be used. We each need to feel like we have a purpose in our community, our pack, and our tribe.
   
   We need to have a purpose that gives us motivation each day to lift our eyes off ourselves and to those around us. What is my contribution? What do I offer? What do I have to give? It could be something as small as being a really great neighbor, maybe you love baking and keep your neighbors stocked with freshly baked goodies. Or it could be a calling to a nonprofit in your community. Maybe you love the workplace and feel called to give of yourself to the world in that way. Or you love kids and volunteering at a local school. You must have a purpose, something that gives you life and energizes you, if you don’t you will feel depressed because every human being was made to be useful. We must use what is in us. What is something that you can do or be for someone else today? Stir up the ingredients inside you and make something sweet to offer the world. 
   
   
3. PLACE: Depression comes when our perspective and our sight get pressed in so narrow that all we can see is ourselves. Tunnel vision. Just ask someone in pain to think about anything else but being in pain. It is very difficult. Depression pierces the soul and it can be very difficult to think of anyone or anything else but ourselves. The pain stems from perspectives, practices, and norms that must be challenged.
   
   We were not created to belong to ourselves, we were created to belong to one another. And we were created to live in a place of realization that the earth doesn’t belong to us, the land doesn’t belong to us, the sun, moon, and stars were all here before us and will remain after us and we control, none of it!
   
   We must put ourselves back in our proper place. Surrendering to a power that is greater, that turns the earth, that hangs the planets in thin air, that makes the waves hit the shore, that brings sun each morning, and that releases rain, all this is BEYOND us. It is to be marveled at, to be in awe of, to resign too, to surrender too. Realizing we are not the center of the universe, that we are a speck in the timeline of humanity and that we have a gift right now called LIFE, this is a posture we must carry to feel and appreciate being alive.
   
   This is our time, our place in history, our moment. This is the spiritual side of our humanity that we cannot ignore, this is the side of us that wants to transcend our environment, that wants to call on a higher power, and that desires to know more and see more beyond what we can see. We cannot ignore the human spirit or we will be sick. Take your place, relax, breathe, you are alive!

Belonging, purpose, place… we must have them to rebalance, reclaim proper order, and return to our nature. We need each other my dears, so much more than we realize. Let’s push against the cultural norms and find our way back to one another.