Making Sense of Depression

Below is a very poignant excerpt from Judith Duerk’s Circle of Stones: Woman’s Journey to Herself. Her words capture portions of my own journey and the journeys of so many women I have had the privilege to know and have yet to know. Circle of Stones was originally published in 1989 – it is truly a timeless treasure.

A sense of her process

If a woman is trapped in a collective framework, unable because of family or economic pressure, to give time to herself, her need for rescue may fall to the unconscious, and its response may come in the form of depression.

Sometimes, into the lives of women who seem to be successfully fulfilling the standards of the surrounding society, depression may come as a settling embrace. It may come to a woman who is terrified that there will be nothing there, inside, if she allows herself time to rest, to separate from her extraverted hyperactivity in the outer world. Or it may come to a woman who already vaguely senses a different way, a more elemental mode than she is living out. Perhaps she has dimly glimpsed a way, more in touch with herself and life, that would reflect more truly her own feelings and life values. Yet, she has chosen as she has chosen. Her choices may have seemed better, safer, all she was able to do at the time….

Into such a life, depression comes as a gift, bringing the chance to strike root in a deeper ground inside oneself. Depression comes as a gift forcing one to listen to the voice of the Self within.

Depression comes as a gift wrenching one from the comfort of the collective to the isolation of one’s own feeling doubts and fears of one’s own unmarked, rocky footpath … a stagnation and illness – death to the possibility of becoming oneself.

Depression comes as a gift that stops one from hurrying briskly, confidently into the market. Stops one from rushing to the shopping center to buy one more bargain blouse for an already overcrowded closet. Stops one from emptily mouthing what one no longer believes in anyway.

Depression stops time

…and one settles into one’s own waters as a sailing vessel without wind…without wind…without momentum…and one sinks into one’s own depths.

And somewhere, deep inside, in the beehive tomb
… one sits alone
… and weeps.

Depression serves a woman as it presses down on her, forcing her to leave behind that which was not of herself, which had influenced her to live a life alien to her own nature….

With the humbling of the old ego position comes a slowing of awareness that allows one to notice, wordlessly one’s left hand…warmed by the cup held in it…the finger on the right…cramped from the handle of the cup….

Depression asks that the attitude towards one’s life be changed, that the source of authority be recognized as no longer outside, but now deeply within, that one relate to each event, task, and moment of one’s life personally, subjectively….

Depression demands that one’s life be viewed, no longer objectively … but to be held sacred, and lived, moment by moment

as one’s own.


Reference:
Duerk J. Circle of Stones: Woman’s Journey to Herself.
Inner Ocean Publishing, Inc. Makawao, Maui, HI 1989:65-8