In honor of national mental health month, I’d like to remind you that depression is health, not disease. We will be revisiting and unpacking depression and other mental health ‘issues’ throughout the month. The deeper the depression, the more potent and profound the initiation. Francis Weller says that we are called to cross the threshold of initiation more than once over our lifetimes, but that we have free will to refuse. This collective refusal to become initiated into adulthood is why we are a society of adolescents at best, and why we are floundering as a collective. Depression is an alchemical chamber that invites us to step inside and be transformed. The only problem is that life as we know it will have to change. It’s highly inconvenient. Many folks will go on prescription medication to continue living the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, rather than implode a marriage or career etc to move towards deeper truth. Admittedly- a huge ask! Our relationship to depression is complicated further by a culture and often our families collusion with it. When you spiritually awaken through submitting to the intelligent forces of depression, you become whole and thus stand in your true power. This is undesirable for a culture that wants you numb and disconnected. Your family may also benefit from your diagnosis of depression - you are far more compliant & subservient when depressed (due to all that guilt and self-loathing). if you actually healed it would make you far less willing to enmesh and feed that system your life force. I’ve worked with many folks whose family members ask them to consider medication. We have to be extremely discerning about what is truly a loving suggestion and when instead dysfunction is animating our loved ones. We are extremely vulnerable to being gaslit by family under the auspices of “love” which may instead be dysfunction, violence, disrespect, hatred, jealousy, etc. I will always advocate for your depression. Not as something you should wear as a badge of honor as though it is a medical fact, but as the *temporary* and healable invitation it offers you. (Continued in comments)