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I have recently celebrated three years off of anti-depressant medication. I am overwhelmed with gratitude, because there were many, many days when I did not think I could do this thing called life. But as time has unfolded since facing the darkness, I have realized the genesis of my profound sadness, and that is where my healing began.
I have two boys, and one thing my husband and I cultivate in our home is that everyone can share how he/she feels—safely. One day I was struck by how one of my boys was able to express his thoughts in such a way—despite my obvious anger—that I was brought to my internal knees. I could not get over how eloquent this child was, and how my frustration over the situation (I don’t even remember what it was!) did not phase his ability to share his heart. I wanted to know: did I start out this way? Was I capable at such a young age to speak my hurt, share my wounds, have the words to communicate my pain? I think I did, but over my formative years my voice was rendered useless and then all of that emotion started to back up to the point where words failed me unless I wrote them down—and even then I would struggle with the vastness of the page…
How does one effectively communicate
years of pain once her voice has been silenced?
My depression was an overwhelming fullness of pain meeting its threshold without a safe outlet. I do not doubt that there were other things going on, but at the heart of my profound sadness there was a claustrophobic emotional vortex that couldn’t contain one more injustice.
What is under the sadness? What memory, residual emotion, or event comes up when you sit with your profound sadness—if you have one of your own? Have you ever given it an opportunity to speak? Have you allowed its voice to be heard?
I know it can be scary.
Perhaps it is the walking through and not around that we need to do in order to find healing for our active wounds. Perhaps the answer is in the listening we need to do in order to turn our wounds into sacred scars.