When depression knocks at your door
Strategies and perspectives getting me through my latest depressive spell
My friend Chella tells me I am one of the biggest lovers he knows. This surprises me every time he says it, because he is one of the biggest lovers I know. The truth coming from someone I trust smacks me back into my body from my heady “I am too small and important and damaged to matter” spiral. It gives me ground to find my feet on.
I love so big because I always feel dangerously close to death. Depression feels like death banging at my door, and sometimes it takes all my weight pushed up against the door to keep it out. I blast meditation music. I chant mantras. I dance in the mirror. I script out the future I want to live in. I refuse to answer the door to death. I insist on cultivating the conditions that make me want to stay alive.
Eventually, depression gets tired and goes away. But by the time it does, I’m exhausted from the work of shutting out its voices and stifling its violent, intrusive attempts into this life I’ve carefully built.
Artist Mariko Mori in her studio on the coast of Japan’s Miyako Island, photo by Yoshihiro Makino for Architectural Digest
This is different than giving in to the rhythm of the spells. Slowing down, accepting where I am, and changing my pace to tend to my shifting mood are all important and necessary strategies. What I’m saying is, I want to live a life so full of love, care, and purpose that these knocks become less violent, less intrusive. I want to be so enamored with my own heartbeat that I can’t hear death knocking at the door.
Maybe this is why I’m vocal about the love I feel, maybe this is why I process out loud. I’m persistent about loving the people I love with all my might because it anchors me into reality and reminds me there is a garden around me, and this soil needs my attention in order for all the seeds I’ve planted to grow.
Conversations as seeds. Every journal page as a seed. Every healing practice as a seed. Every expression of love, a seed.
A wondering: how powerful are we, even when we are in the throes of grief, pain, and desperation? In what ways can we tend to the proof of our power, more than we tend to the proof of our pain?
If it’s possible to feel the depths of despair, isn’t it also possible to feel the length of bliss? The width of satisfaction? The magnitude of being here, being alive, together?
If the shape of this sadness takes up so much surface area of my life, isn’t it also possible to reshape this emotion and let it become food and fuel for where I want to lead my life?
Imagination practice: Bring one complaint to the tip of your mind. Something you’re worrying about, angry about, upset about. Give it a shape. Give it a color. Give it a texture. Concentrate on it until it feels large, until you feel the heat of it through your body. Feel it fully. This sadness, this rage, this longing is real. Then, imagine the sky, the ground, the trees, the support of your loved ones and the guide of a force larger than you gently enter this shape through a thousand different touchpoints. Up, down, over, under, across the entire circumference of this shape is this expansive force of natural elements dissipating your complaint. Carrying it with you. Transforming its temperature, so you feel more ease in your body. Feel the load lighten. Feel your edges soften. Feel your breath deepen.
This is a way to channel your power. This is a way to source peace during times of conflict. This is a way to return to your sense of self.
Thank you for reading and practicing change with me.
If you’re interested in neurodiversity, learning more about your own neurodivergence, world building, future making, and collective liberation, you can listen to Dreaming Different, my audio series with Deem. Transcripts available at deemjournal.com/audio, along with links to the 3 episodes out now. You can also find by searching “Dreaming Different” anywhere you listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, leave a positive review! They really help us reach more people and share our ideas with a wider audience.
If you’re on a spiritual journey and are interested in hearing me talk about themes of interdependence, the intersection of self care x community care, and how I’m healing from religious trauma by reclaiming my inner power, you can listen to my conversation on Jasmine Nnenna’s podcast Counter Cultural about “The Poetics of Interdependence.”
If you’re interested in theater, creative process, and collective art-making, you can listen to the latest episode of Stage Whisper, where I talk with my fellow new castmates about the most intensive audition process I’ve ever been through and how we feel about writing and performing 2-minute plays with experimental theater company Neo-Futurists. 100 people auditioned and 4 of us were invited to be a part of the theater company. I’ll be performing in a weekly show all of August in NYC. Still wrapping my mind around that.
And finally, I’m available for lectures, workshops, panels, keynote talks about inclusion, identity, wellness, and creativity if you’d like to get in touch, just reply to this email or go to jezzchung.com to learn about my work as a public speaker.
I hope you treat yourself to something sweet today! A stretch, a warm note to a friend, a love letter to yourself, a hot or iced tea depending on the weather where you are.
Bye for now 🧚♀️