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The Book Is Here!

August 31, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Living Without Skin: Everything I Never Knew About Fierce Vulnerability is finally here! Click on Buy the Book in the banner above to get your copy today, or find it anywhere books are sold!

Feeling vulnerable is frightening.
Being fiercely vulnerable is phenomenal.

Most of us spend a lifetime trying to avoid pain and insecurity while overlooking the power we inherently possess. What would you do differently with your life if you knew you were failsafe at birth?

If you’ve ever felt vulnerable, weak, or like a complete failure, you can transform those feelings into fierce superpowers.

Life can leave you feeling raw, naked, and skinless. Learning to live without skin can turn you into the superhero of your dreams!

Prepare for an extraordinary and sometimes humorous journey that begins with a child’s imagination and ends with an ordinary adult’s transformation on unexpected paths.

You’ll discover how embracing vulnerability can help you:
– Learn how to find and wear the skin you were created for.
– Uncover the core of your individual insecurities, and transform them into strength.
– Connect internally and externally to humanity-defining power in a personal and public environment.
– Heal from trauma so it isn’t passed to the next generation as culture.

Step out of your old skin. Be your own fierce hero.

The Problem With Compassionate Empaths

September 27, 2021 by robmcclel 2 Comments

The term “empath” may be familiar to you in reference to the Myers-Briggs scale, indicating someone who is intuitive or feels things. However, if you’re an empath, it’s likely that you already know it.

I was an empath even as a small child but didn’t know it for many years because I wasn’t conscious of the term. It took me much longer than usual to realize that other people felt differently from how I felt, and that not everyone could understand my internal experience (or even wanted to). Eventually, however, I did realize this, and have spent the past decade trying to understand not only my own experiences, but empaths as a whole. Now, as an empath with several years of experience, I’m aware that there are advantages to being empathic. However, there are also pitfalls to empathy that can make life difficult for those who have this psychological trait. So, what are the cons of having heightened emotional awareness?

1) Overwhelming emotional experiences

One of the biggest challenges for empaths is learning how to handle the intensity of their own emotional experiences. This is due to a phenomenon called emotional contagion. Emotional contagion is defined as “the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize facial expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person”. In other words, empaths are likely to involuntarily take on the emotions of those around them. Empaths are able to accurately sense and distinguish between other people’s feelings, but it is difficult for them to prevent themselves from becoming overwhelmed by strong emotional experiences that are out of their control.

2) Lack of boundaries

An empath has a hard time differentiating between their own emotions and the emotions of others. This can lead to intense personal relationships, where they feel like everything is shared, but it can also cause them to neglect themselves because they think other people are more important than them.

3) Sensitivity to stimuli

Being an empath means that you are sensitive to stimuli of all sorts. They can be sensitive to light, sound, taste, or smell. Also, they may have a difficult time going out in public because of loud noises, unpleasant smells, and crowds of people.

4) Physical symptoms

Being an empath makes it hard for you to distinguish between your own emotions and those of other people, which leads to physical symptoms of diseases or other ailments. This can cause them to think they are sick even though they are perfectly healthy.

5) Mental overload

Being an empath means feeling everything that’s going on everywhere, which leads to mental overload and being overwhelmed by emotions. They have no way of selecting what to feel and the emotions can become too much and can cause them to shut down. Also, if the emotions and feelings of others are constantly coming into their area, it makes it very difficult for them to stay in a positive mindset. They may feel like they’re drowning in negativity and sadness, when there’s no reason for them to be sad. Mental overload and constant bombardment of emotions from those around them can also lead to emotional burnout and develop into severe anxiety for the empath. It’s not uncommon for empaths to also suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as a result of all the emotional damage they’ve accumulated throughout their lives. This can also result in an imbalance of serotonin, the feel-good chemical that helps keep our moods balanced. Without it, stress levels rise and depression becomes more likely. The best thing empaths can do is protect themselves with meditation, visualization techniques, and other protective methodologies. They can also avoid letting others take advantage of them, practice self-care routines, and even use their abilities to help heal others.

In conclusion, compassionate empaths are sensitive to energy and emotions. They can easily become overwhelmed by the negative feelings of others, which is why it’s important for them to monitor their exposure levels. In this article we’ve explored what a compassionate empath is, how they may experience life differently from other people, and some ways compassionately empathic individuals can protect themselves from being over-exposed to negativity.

To learn more about the adventures of a real-life empath, grab a copy of my book HERE.

Photo by Jessica Delp on Unsplash

Embracing Vulnerability

September 23, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Shame and guilt are two emotions that occur together often. They both stem from our sense of right or wrong, but they come at it differently. Shame is about what we think other people might think of us; guilt is more about hurting ourselves. When you feel ashamed it’s usually because you’re thinking of what someone else thinks instead of yourself. You might be thinking “they’ll know I’m ________” or “they’ll know how _______ I am.” Guilt, on the other hand, comes more from the inside out; if something ever makes you feel guilty it’s because you hurt yourself with some sort of an action (or inaction). Sometimes shame can make you do things that harm your self-esteem like binge drinking, but for the most part, guilt is what we feel when we do something that hurts ourselves. Add in feelings of weakness, and you have a recipe for low self-esteem, low self-respect, and unworthiness. Shame, guilt, and weakness are often linked because sometimes shame comes from feeling weak or less than average. It can be hard to separate them though because sometimes people cover their feelings of shame with guilt by making themselves feel guilty for being ashamed in the first place.

When I was younger, I was terrified of being vulnerable. It wasn’t just the fear of being made fun of or ridiculed by other people, although that definitely played a role in my fear. It’s also the fact that when you’re weak for too long, you start feeling useless and broken.

Understanding the differences between these emotional states leads me to my next point: embracing vulnerability.

Vulnerability is when you are open with your feelings, without fear of judgment, even when it’s icky or awkward or makes you want to run and hide in embarrassment. It can be scary because letting go of any sign of weakness means that you risk being exposed to vulnerability with other people. But isn’t that kind of the point? Isn’t there some wisdom about no risk being no reward?

I know for me personally, I have a lot more success in communicating what I need when I’m able to talk about my feelings surrounding what’s going on instead of burying them underneath layers of shame. It also helps me maintain stronger relationships with the people around me because they feel like they can trust me more rather than having an emotional connection that is partially real and mostly a facade.

Most people try to cope with the feelings of shame and guilt by trying to ignore or cover them up. When we feel these emotions, our first instinct is often to try to suppress them rather than dealing with the source of the discomfort they cause us. However, this doesn’t make shame go away; in fact, it only makes it worse because now there are two conflicting thoughts inside your head!

Here are five ways you can start letting go of negative feelings of shame, weakness, and guilt:

1. Nothing is bad or good but thinking makes it so. Are you feeling shame because of something that happened in your past? Do you feel guilty about an action you took? If so, stop labeling the things that have happened to you as “good” or “bad.” It’s easy for us to get caught up in thinking that one thing is inherently bad while another thing is good. This is not the case. The only thing that makes something bad or good is how we label it and think about it. All action has a consequence: this is not good or bad, but what you do with it can be good or bad.

2. No shame, no blame. There is absolutely no shame in the fact that you have acted in a way that you yourself consider to be detrimental. Blame implies that there is someone at fault, and who’s fault is it when nobody else was involved in your actions? What happened, happened. You are not responsible for what others do or how they react, but only for your own actions and reactions. That being said, you are responsible for your own emotions as well as all the consequences of your action stemming from those emotions.

3. It’s okay to be wrong. In fact, it is great to be wrong sometimes. It is a good thing to be proven wrong if you have been acting on faulty assumptions. But there are times when nobody can prove you wrong because none of the conditions for your action were ever met (meaning that the possibility of being proved wrong does not exist). The downside of having completed an action based on faulty assumptions is that you have to live with yourself afterward. There are no other consequences. Know your boundaries and when to switch over from “I think” mode into “I know” mode because once you move into the latter, all further discussion becomes pointless.

4. We all make mistakes. You are allowed to make mistakes. You are even obligated to make mistakes because a mistake is nothing more than another way of doing things. Productive people learn from their mistakes and adjust. Unproductive people simply repeat them and blame everyone else for their failure. One way to begin learning from your mistakes is by thinking in terms of “failure modes.” Failure modes are more than just slips and lapses; they can include mistakes, incorrect assumptions, poor organization, lack of knowledge… anything that contributes to a less than optimal outcome. The way to begin learning from your failures is to take the time to find out what you did wrong, why it happened, and how you can avoid doing it again in the future.

5. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Of course, it’s natural to feel a bit nervous when you’re about to put yourself out there. A little fear can even be a good thing, as it keeps us sharp. Learn to see the upside in failure. Every failure contains valuable information that can be used to avoid or minimize failures in the future. Being vulnerable is daring to be ourselves. by sharing our stories instead of hiding them away, we are encouraging others to do the same. We are talking about our lives, what gives us joy and meaning, what breaks our hearts. What’s the antidote to vulnerability? Nothing! So go ahead, try something new…see what happens… break free from being so scared of life. Don’t be afraid to love this much.

Vulnerability is one of the strongest things you will ever do. Being vulnerable means expressing your true emotions openly. Just because you made a mistake once doesn’t mean your entire life deserves to be thrown out the window! Have faith in yourself and trust yourself enough to know that you can get past this feeling. As William DeFoore said in his book, “There’s no way around this stuff—no shortcut, no get-around, no back door. It’s always going to sting a little when we tell someone about our stumbles. It’s worth it, though, to experience the freedom that comes with sharing these stories because only when we own who we are can others love us for who we are.

Check out my book, Living Without Skin: Everything I Never Knew About Fierce Vulnerability at www.livingwithoutskin.com to learn more about my own journey with vulnerability.

Vote for my cover!

September 15, 2021 by 2 Comments

They say not to judge a book by its cover but I need you to do just that. If you liked the cover of my book, Living Without Skin: Everything I Never Knew About Fierce Vulnerability, please vote for it for the Cover of the Month contest on AllAuthor.com!

I’m getting closer to clinch the “Cover of the Month” contest on AllAuthor! I’d need as much support from you guys. Please take a short moment to vote for my book cover here:

https://allauthor.com/book/big/386920210820210801.jpg”> Click to Vote!

A Little More Haphazard Blogging

June 24, 2021 by Tammy Green 1 Comment

It seems as good a time as any to check back in here, especially since my last post was in November, 2020. I feel pretty confident that none of us were sad to see THAT year go. As we came through the beginning of 2021, it appears many of us were just trying to find stable ground again – emotionally, spiritually, and physically. I certainly was.

I have finished writing the book, Living Without Skin. I decided to shoot for the moon when asking for endorsements, and I sent requests to Brené Brown, Glennon Doyle, and Elizabeth Gilbert. I assume we’ll be “talk-on-the-phone” friends by next year anyway, so I wanted to get a jump on building our relationships. Of course, I didn’t get a response from most. However, Brené Brown’s team actually did respond – with a PERSONAL response vs just a canned “No”. So, clearly the first signed copy will go to Brené (who will likely never know how close she came to being famous by endorsing my book).

“Hmmmm…I’ve always wanted to write a book.” Are you thinking that? Do you have a great story? Dreaming of having a different career? Thinking that writing a book must be glamorous and an ideal job? Um, no. It’s a J-O-B! Writing, in and of itself, is a lesson in slicing open your heart and bleeding all over the paper. And, unless you’re famous and you have a publishing company doing all the legwork, putting that book together and actually publishing it is WORK! So, it’s been a labor of love, and definitely a check mark on the bucket list. I am unequivocally proud of it, and of my truth that I managed to tell.

Stay tuned for more information on ordering your copy starting August 1, 2021. We’re halfway through 2021 with many of us gratefully recovering from 2020. Let’s make the last half of this year amazing! Onward.

My Daughter’s Country

November 7, 2020 by Leave a Comment

Dear Daughter,

Today is the day that we begin the work of building this country for you.

I’m sorry that you spent four years watching adults tear each other apart, and feeling confused and frightened about your country.

I’m sorry that you experienced a pandemic that was handled incompetently by those trusted to protect you.

I’m sorry that you couldn’t sleep many nights with worry for your parents, and your family.

I’m sorry that you had to stay indoors for months, and miss making school day memories with your friends.

I’m sorry that your dad lost his job, and that you worried about where you would be able to live.

I’m sorry that you had to fight to find honesty, and truth, and integrity when those you respect around you accepted and encouraged lies and disrespectful behavior.

I want you to know that all the years I spent teaching you about integrity, honesty, and ethics are not in vain. I did not excuse that behavior from a powerful man. I condemned it then, and I condemn it now.

Please know that I stood firm for your right to decide what happens to your body. I trust you to make healthy decisions for your life.

I want you to know that I fought hard for your right to love and marry whomever you choose. I trust you to make healthy decisions for your life.

Know that I saw your face when you watched news reports of children being caged. I saw the alarm, and I could almost hear your thoughts, “What if that were me?” I protested as loudly as possible, because I also thought, “Dear God, what if that were me?”

Believe that I fought for your right to grow intellectually, and learn all you can without the burden of debt, because I know that greater intelligence will be a gift you will give back to your countrymen.

Today is the day that I will make a decision to reach across the aisle, and come together for solutions for the entire country. But before I do, I need you to know that a position or class doesn’t determine whether you are a good person. Your behavior does. And every good thing I taught you to recognize and honor in yourself remains. Today is the day we begin the work of building a country for you.

Rip

October 7, 2020 by Leave a Comment

The year of ripping, of goodbye, death, of the word “cruel” and being able to say “you are not who I thought you were”, the year of sickness, when the whole world stopped. The year I broke open, and my guts spilled out onto the paper, into the earth, when I learned that spirit is larger than body, and bodies are fragile. Everyone this year tells me ‘your words resonate with me’, and minds are twisted – the veil between good and evil is opened. The year that slammed me into humanity/humility, stillness, laughter, softness in the corners found underneath the shadows and the swords. Skinless and raw, with scabs that have somehow become scars, and scars that have become beautiful mosaic tattoos on my soul. The year of feeling someone else’s pain, sitting with it, holding a hand, wiping a brow, cupping a face while a hurricane boils inside me. The year of drowning in powerlessness and worry while flowers bloom, the ozone clears, the air is cleaner and fresher than ever before in my lifetime, sadness and joy weave and wind throughout soul and heart like serpents and doves. The year of evolution, revolution, mixed with flour and butter and honey-the best birthday cake ever made for the earth, and I learned through loss what love really means. The year I found my place, and I belong.

It’s Not Really Work

February 29, 2020 by Leave a Comment

She was born a caregiver. She’s so smart and can literally do a thousand things at once, and juggle every one down to the detail in her mind. She went to nursing school to learn a trade that would provide an income for her 4 kids and family, but nursing was really her destiny. She did it, and did it well during her whole career. And when she “retired”, she kept on nursing in a private setting until age 86. Seriously, age 86. Who does that? Probably because she loved what she did, it was never really work.

She cared for her family with just as much devotion. At age 21, I was working my first “real” job after college, and the job had taken me to a small town about 2 hours from Chunky, MS, where I was raised. She still lived there. I was an assistant manager for a retail store 2 hours away, and worked at least 6 days per week. I rented a small house near work and I lived alone. Of course, a small town where you don’t know anyone can be very isolating, and sometimes lonely. So, I worked a lot, and eventually, I got sick. Not seriously sick, but a cold or flu or something that a little chicken soup would eventually take care of. That was all the excuse she needed. She packed up her car and headed on down to take care of me. And she did. She nursed me, and chicken souped me, and we sat together in the evenings, each reading a book. After a couple days, I was feeling better enough to make it back to work. She just said, “Well, I’ll just finish out the week here if that’s alright with you, and I’ll go on up to Jackson when I leave.” If you haven’t noticed by now, Jackson was an integral part of our lives. Listen, I was 21 and foolish, but I wasn’t stupid. When the Mimaw shows up and waits on you hand and foot for a couple days, you don’t really want that to end too soon. “You can stay another week after if you want to,” I said. She just smiled.

She did stay an extra week, and we spent the evenings reading, and talking. Who even wants to spend that much time with a headstrong, know-it-all, 21 year old? Especially one who is sick? She did. I am her oldest grand. The one on which she lavished everything. The one who stole her heart. The one who taught her what being a grand was all about. She wants to spend that much time with me.

So caring for her now, when she needs it the most? Doing for her what she can’t do for herself? This is a breeze. Easiest thing in the world. I want to spend time with her. Because I love her, it’s not really work. ❤️

Myrtle Irby, My Grand, The Great

February 23, 2020 by Leave a Comment

I brought the roses to her from Memphis on Tuesday. She couldn’t smell them so I rubbed one of the blooms across her cheek so she could feel how silky it was. They are so beautiful in the vase sitting across from her bed.

This morning when I awoke to go into the kitchen, I noticed one bloom bowing its head toward her. I wondered if it was a sign.

Our tiny little bird spread her wings tonight and flew. She was right in the middle of the people she loved most, listening to stories of her adventures as experienced by each of us. Had she been able to speak, she would have been adding her voice to each one of those stories. She is the reason we all exist, and we were lucky to have her as the matriarch of our family.

The stroke took her ability to enunciate, and to swallow, and to do anything for herself. It was a privilege to do for her what she couldn’t do for herself. She gave my cousin and me one last gift at her last hoorah at 3:30 a.m. on Friday when she sat up and looked at us both and said, “You have been a big help, and everything is gonna be alright.” She spoke the words as clear as a bell. Twice. He and I gawked at each other when she said it. And they were the last words she spoke.

Her roses kept watch over her, and they chose an ambassador to bow to her as she made her exit today. My heart will sing in her memory the words that will forever remind me of her life – “I hope that I see the world as you did because I know a life with love is a life that’s been lived.”

Everything is gonna be alright, Mimaw. Right now and always, Myrtle Irby, RN, my grand, the great. 💔

She’s Not Flying Yet

February 3, 2020 by Leave a Comment

This tiny little bird is going to gather a few more stories here with us before she flies. I’m not sure why that’s surprising. After all, she parented two small boys singly after their father was killed. She put herself through nursing school when women didn’t really take on careers like that. She married again and gave all four of her children a legacy. She taught her children and their children the value of hard work, perseverance, and not settling. She worked as a nurse until she was 86 years old. Yes, you read that right. Two weeks ago, she celebrated her 96th birthday. Saturday night, she suffered a stroke. It was big, and we were afraid that we were going to lose her. We forgot who she is. She is coming back by the minute, and after a bit more rehab, she’ll be back to being Myrtle Irby, RN – the RN stands for Right Now. (That’s a family joke as she’s known for her impatience.)

For her whole life, she’s cared for others, and I am the recipient of a large part of that care. It’s a privilege to be able to give a tiny portion of her gift back to her. As she used to read to me, I snuggled her and read to her. As I used to say to her, “Don’t leave me, Mimaw.”, she said to me, “I don’t want you to go.” As she used to drive to work crying after having to leave me, I drive home crying after having to leave her.

But I’ll be back for a few more adventures with my grandmother, the great. ❤️

Reflections

January 4, 2020 by Leave a Comment

A decade ago, starting life over.
Love, work, school, life.
The culmination of a few years of darkness.
Painfully shedding the self I had known for 40 years.
Moving, kicking and screaming, into the unknown ahead.

Midway to end, learning, growing. screaming, learning.
Graduating, working, parenting, travelling, learning.
New friends, new family, a soul mutt, a soul mate.
Writing, photographing, living, loving.

Ending the decade, letting go of people and things
no longer helping me grow.
Surviving the most excruciating, most rewarding
experience of my life.
Recognizing the necessity of every tear, every laugh,
every heartbreak, every soul-bursting moment.
I am not lost.
I am the phoenix that emerged from the fire.

And now, I will not use accomplishments to measure.
Only attributes – kindness, empathy, listening to hear.
The next half of my life, this new chapter,
I will see the phoenix fly.

~ Tammy Green

~ Photo by Aziz Acharki

Depression: The Invisible Killer

November 25, 2019 by Leave a Comment

Depression. We are surrounded by it. According to AFSP.org, for 2017 alone, there were an estimated 1,400,000 suicide attempts. In 2017, there were 47,173 REPORTED suicides, with no estimate on the ones that were unreported. In 2015, suicide and self-injury cost the US $69 Billion. Celebrities get the spotlight in the news regarding suicide, and we all lament the loss of amazing people. But we don’t talk about the veterans, children, addicts, regular people that we lose to suicide. Addicts. Why exactly is there an opioid crisis right now in our country? Because people want to FEEL BETTER. No one likes to talk about it, except in the case of a mass shooting. We love to throw the words “mental illness” around a lot when trying to understand the reason a human being would open fire on a group of people. In 2019, according to Gun Violence Archive, there have been 283 mass shootings in the US. You read it right. 283 MASS SHOOTERS resulting in 283 mass shooting incidents. We are on target to track more mass shooting incidents this year than the number of days in the year. Why is there still such a stigma surrounding depression?
My own experience with depression began when I was a teen. I knew I needed to get out of the small town where I lived, and I knew I felt like an outsider there. I took my first drink at age 17, and I immediately felt “normal”, or what I thought normal must feel like. I didn’t feel sad. Undiagnosed depression was solved for me. Until it wasn’t. Until there just wasn’t enough alcohol to fill that hole inside of me. Alcohol saved my life until it quit working. Enter recovery. Twelve step programs helped me to change my behavior relating to consuming alcohol to change the way I feel. AA will forever be one of the greatest lifelong gifts I’ve been given. I learned techniques and tools that helped me to cope with life on life’s terms, and how to turn down the noise in the bad neighborhood between my ears when it got too loud. Twelve step meetings are where I heard the term “depression” as an actual diagnosis first. It didn’t apply to me though. No one in my family talked about depression even though all the signs and symptoms were there. One was considered “weak” if one felt the need to see a “crazy doctor”. So, I couldn’t be depressed. I was just a garden variety alcoholic. There was a stigma associated with being in recovery as well, but it was at least a notch up from being “crazy”. No one seemed to be ashamed of me when I was dancing naked on the table or wrecking my car while drunk, but they apparently were when I was trying to get well from being a drunk. Go figure. Enter the awareness that my own family might not be the benchmark on what’s actually normal. I practiced more self-knowledge, self-examination, and boundaries. If you ever want to piss off a bunch of relatives, create and enforce a healthy boundary for yourself among them. You will learn quickly how horrible a person you are for daring to question the dysfunction in which you were raised.
Marriage, new family, pregnancy all ensued – stone cold sober. Active recovery helped me fill the hole inside for a good long time. Pregnancy hormones told the bad neighborhood we were throwing a party. I began having thoughts of violence, not against myself, mind you. I wouldn’t have wanted to be an associate of mine during that time though. I was having thoughts that I KNEW were crazy, and I couldn’t control it. A friend suggested I talk to a counselor, who referred me to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed me with pregnancy induced depression. I was prescribed 10 mg daily of Zoloft. I fought with myself about taking medication during pregnancy and came to the conclusion that it was better for me to have non-homicidal thoughts while growing a baby than it was for me to allow those thoughts to fester. Who among us wants to infuse a baby with serial killer tendencies in the womb, right? I tried, after the baby was born, to go off the meds and it didn’t take long to see exactly why I needed them. My anxiety levels were insane. Again, I had to choose between being a complete shrew during my baby’s childhood or taking a pill to chill. The choice was easy.
Enter big life changes like divorce, bankruptcy, moves. How sneaky is this disease? The gang from the bad neighborhood convinced me that my depression was situational, and not chemical. It wasn’t rational, but what did I really know about it? I weaned myself off meds again at a time when I probably needed them the most. That decision was followed by the deepest, darkest depression I’ve ever known. I couldn’t sleep. I cried all the time. I was stuck in quicksand, and I didn’t know how to get out. I suffered for a couple of years before my best friend suggested that it’s okay to wear a raincoat when it’s raining. I had recently begun seeing a therapist again, who kindly suggested maybe it was time to go back on meds. The long journey to chemical balance in my brain began.
Ironically enough, even though I witnessed depressive behavior in my mother, and experienced my own depression, I never considered preparing my daughter to recognize the signs. I completely prepared her to recognize signs of addiction. She knows she has the genetic markers for it on both sides of her family, and she knows the signs. Yet, I never thought to tell her what depression feels like, and what resources are available to her. When she was 16, and was crying every day, even I couldn’t recognize it at first. I couldn’t decipher what was normal teenage hormones versus a bonafide depression. When she couldn’t tell me what was making her feel sad, it went off like a light bulb. We sought professional help. She has had a couple of good years with treatment for her depression. Recently, I noticed some subtle changes in her behavior, isolating, not responding to texts from people who love her. Again, I missed the signs. My frustration at her behavior changes didn’t help us get there any faster. A few weeks ago, we got into a conflict about her not responding to a text, and she said, “You ought to know better than anyone what being depressed feels like.” Boom. I saw it. I heard it. And, now, she begins the journey for chemical balance in her brain. Right now, that looks like talk therapy and continuing the medications she’s been taking since her diagnosis. I don’t know what the journey will look like tomorrow, but I’m grateful we’re taking it together.
The thoughts I have around depression as a disease as it applies to me right now are:

Although I didn’t prepare her to know what the signs of depression are, she knew how to ask for help. For this, I’m grateful.
We still have extended family that doesn’t understand. They are uncomfortable talking about it, and that’s okay. I will continue to talk about hard things around them. I have lost cousins to suicide, and an uncle to alcoholism. I have lost way too many friends in recovery to suicide. This disease is not fucking around. It’s here to kill, and we need to talk about it.
I’m immensely proud of my girl for helping me to hear her, and for her own awareness and willingness to focus on fighting her disease as a priority. Many won’t understand this. There is no problem she can’t solve, or no plan B that is wrong, when she’s mentally healthy. What CAN’T be solved, and what IS wrong, is if she thought there was no way out, and no hope. She can conquer the world when she’s in balance. I will continue to call and text her daily, whether she responds or not. I am not afraid of her silence, and I will sit with her in it until she can come out.
There is no shame. I am not ashamed. Her father is not ashamed. Her stepmothers are not ashamed. And she does not have to be ashamed. Choosing to become healthy mentally is no different than choosing to become healthy physically. Therapy is like the Orange Theory of mental health. Own it. Let others see your light so they can find their own.

This is one situation where depression has a potential for a happy ending, and that’s why we need to talk about it. Let’s talk about what mentally healthy looks like, and what the process to get there looks like. Let’s have those discussions so we don’t have to talk about suicides and mass shootings.
If you are feeling depressed or know someone who is, don’t ignore it. Call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.