The picture you see above is 17-year-old Brooke during one of the worst bouts of depression I’ve ever experienced. It ranks among the darkest years of my life; one I spent a great deal of time separating myself from. I reconnected with her a few years ago during my Prolonged Exposure therapy treatments, and now when I look at this picture, I still hurt for this kid, but I am who I am today because of what I went through at that time. I welcome the grief, and it turns out that it is much easier than running from it.
“What if I could learn to trust my feelings instead of asking to be delivered from them? What if I could follow one of my great fears all the way to the edge of the abyss, take a breath, and keep going? Isn’t there a chance of being surprised by what happens next?”
Barbara Brown Taylor, with reference to the work of psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan, writes about “dark emotions,” or grief, fear, and despair. She writes that our culture often places a deadline onto what is deemed an “appropriate” amount of time to grieve. If the grief carries on for too long, it becomes an illness which must then be treated professionally.
Many of us have likely experienced the discomfort of others when in the presence of dark emotions. To them I say, Eeyore was always depressed, yet he was still invited to hang out with the gang in the Hundred Acre Wood.
Greenspan argues that there are no dark emotions, “just unskillful ways of coping with emotions we cannot bear. The emotions themselves are conduits of pure energy that want something from us: to wake us up, to tell us something we need to know, to break the ice around our hearts, to move us to act.”
I’ve learned to think of my depression like any other chronic illness. Some days I wake up, and my whole body aches with deep, debilitating sadness, and those are the days when these conduits of pure energy tell me to slow down, to accept my limited focus and stamina, to try softer. I do not approach my depression as something invasive, rather it is intimately connected to who I am, and to how I interact with the world. On any given day, I would rather be depressed than numb. There is beauty in feeling so deeply, even when it hurts. Many years ago, a pregnant teenager in Bethlehem was a testament to that.
Grief, fear, and despair are sacred emotions, and we cannot get to Christmas without welcoming them to accompany us. Us. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “when I stopped trying to block my sadness and let it move me instead, it led me to a bridge with people on the other side. Every one of them knew sorrow… I learned that sadness does not sink a person; it is the energy a person spends trying to avoid sadness that does that… Eruptions are good news, the signal that darkness will not stay buried.”
The Christmas story brings tidings of great joy, yes, but it is also accompanied by fear of the unknown, anxiety from haste, the pain of childbirth, and the cries of a baby, vulnerable and divine. Isn’t it beautiful?
Photo credit goes to Zoë Woods. Thank you for what you have captured.
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