How to Build Resilience to Depression

I wrote this piece for the local newspaper! As we’ve attempted to settle into post-pandemic life, the mental health crisis continues to rage. According to a review by Boston University School of Public Health, rates of depression in the United States have risen from 9 percent, pre-pandemic, to 33 percent in 2021.  With depression affecting…

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My Wish For 2023

Last Fall I read My Side of the Mountain to River. It’s a novel about a boy who leaves the city to make a home in the woods on the site of his great-great grandfather’s failed farm. He builds a shelter by burning out the trunk of a great hemlock tree and he steals a…

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Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith

It’s 10:00pm and I’m finding myself doom scrolling the furniture section of the Anthropologie app. Doom scrolling because, what urgent need have I for an overpriced arm chair at this hour, when I should be sinking into bed under the ceiling fan’s gentle blow with my favorite audiobook humming me to sleep. All that the…

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Week 10: Recovering a Sense of Self-Protection

[If you are just joining in, we are going through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron “a spiritual path to higher creativity”….Feel free to jump in or start back at the beginning. There are posts for each week (chapter)!] I was born under a full moon in Aries. giving me a deep sense of internal…

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Week 9: Recovering a Sense of Compassion

[If you are just joining in, this is a book by Julia Cameron “a spiritual path to higher creativity”….Feel free to jump in or start back at the beginning. There are posts for each week (chapter)!] Today marks the start of the last month of Summer of Creativity. I hope you are seeing some changes…

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Week 8: Recovering a Sense of Strength

[If you are just joining in, this is a book by Julia Cameron “a spiritual path to higher creativity”….Feel free to jump in or start back at the beginning. There are posts for each week (chapter)!] I realized today that there was a little synchronicity during Week 7, which we’ve just finished, and I wanted…

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Jesus and Cheeses

When I told my friend Sofi about this poem, she said, “Jesus or cheeses!? Those words sound the same.” So now I’ve got to write a poem about cheeses…. But here are two poems for a Sunday and one strange piece of art, because why not? Worth Repeating I stumble over and over; it is…

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I See Light Because I See Shadow

I cannot imagine a God, who created this world, filled with so much diversity, so much light and so much in the deep, to have meant for us to skim the surface, not when the landscape of human experience is so vast and rich. So this is a reminder, as much for me as anyone, do not neglect the shadow.

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Week 2: Recovering a Sense of Identity

Oh my goodness, there is so much to love in this chapter. I am holding back from just putting a transcript of it here! The introduction might be my favorite part: “Going Sane.” I’ve written a lot on my blog about my experiences going sane (aka learning to trust my creativity).  For most of my…

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I am terrified of the silence. 

As children of mothers with depression, we have to teach ourselves how to cry because there is danger in the sadness. It feels like giant cavern that could swallow me whole, a darkness that I might never escape. So I flitter around saying, I’m fine! I’m fine! and going to parties and talking and drinking…

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