Tag: depression

WOMEN LIVING IN A TOXIC WASTELAND

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Photo by Rena Effendi/Institute

This morning, I read a powerful article from the London Tribune written by Holly Morris in 2012 about a group of women over fifty who took charge of their lives. It left me thinking about my life and the choices that I’ve made and how relatively easy those choices have been. None of them have involved life or death decisions.

In spite of the danger warnings by the government these women from Chernobyl in the Ukraine decided that living in government housing in the cities was depressing and more stressful than going back home to probably the most toxic place on earth to be surrounded by their friends and things that make them happy.

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They came home to the land they love and have banded together ever since in a community that shares food, fellowship, joys and sorrows.

Unlike these brave women, it has taken a lot of living for me to let go of the fear that used to control my life when I was younger.

Fear of failure, fear of change, and fear of making mistakes is quite paralyzing and inhibiting. The quicker we are able to drain the power from that word the better off we will be.

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Please take a minute to click on the following link and read the story of these very courageous women of Chernobyl

I hope you will be inspired, whether or not you agree with their decision. http://bit.ly/1wa9hT7

Copyright Sandra Hart 2014

You Should Have Waited

Robin, you really blindsided us yesterday. I would ask why you couldn’t hang on, stay here with all of us who enjoyed your talents. I would ask that if I didn’t know better. If I didn’t know all about your kind of depression. The kind of depression that wouldn’t matter if you had won the lottery, or if you had lost everything in your life that day. The ‘what if’s’ don’t matter. Which ever way the pendulum is swinging, it doesn’t matter. The dark cloud is always there.

I had hoped you would hang on just a little bit longer so that we would not lose another great mind to this devastating illness. There are little people like us working in the background to raise funds for illnesses like depression and other brain and behavior afflictions with the hope that there will be new cures soon. Just wished you would’ve waited, that’s all. We’ll miss you.

Mike Wallace once said the depths of depression can be so deep it seems impossible to climb up and out. And unfortunately the way out in one’s darkest moment would be the temptation to stop the pain by stopping living. So, so sorry you made that choice. You cannot be replaced.

http://bbrfoundation.org

Copyright Sandra Hart 2014. All rights reserved.

True Grit

If one lives long enough, change happens. That’s just the way life is. And each time I blog I wonder if I have anything else to say. But I write about my life, so if I really want to be honest, I also have to include the grit. It goes like this.

I find myself waking up in the morning a little bit depressed these days. How about you? Unless you live in a vacuum you must feel something. I have always considered myself a positive person always looking at the glass half full instead of half empty. Could be I’m getting older and recognizing that. Sure. Could be I am a realist. Maybe. Could be that I am inherently a sponge and can’t help myself to change. True. The honest to goodness fact is that I can’t take what is going on in the world anymore.

CNN, just give me some good news already! No more pictures of drunken Ukrainians and dead bodies, people running for their lives and starving children, missing airplanes. For heavens sake, my daughter is a flight attendant! Such an overload of bad news these days beyond my ‘glass half full’ ability.

I get it. The world is an unhappy place. The news is frightening. Everything seems to be falling apart out there. Missiles are flying and people are dying in flames in the Mideast, despots are coming out of the ground like weeds, gaining strength over their peoples and creating fear and conflict, choking the death out of goodness.

Just how much can an old woman take. I don’t ever remember the world being in such wide turmoil, do you? I don’t ever remember the United States being so weak in the minds of even our allies. God help us!

Right now, here at home, we have major economic problems that are affecting the younger generation, especially. Problems at our border. We don’t seem to have a strong American guidance, “rally around the flag” identity anymore. When did this happen? Where is Clint Eastwood when we need him! Or Roosevelt and his big stick!

Honestly, I don’t ever remember the world being in such wide turmoil. I don’t ever remember the United States being so weak in the minds of even our allies.

Am I tempted to turn into an ostrich? I wonder. The first thing I do in the morning to break the silence in my head is to turn on my favorite jazz station, then shuffle along to my Keurig that is waiting for me to pour that first cup of hot wake-up coffee to drink on the deck with a big fat ‘death to my arteries’ Napoleon to ease my anxiety. Privileged. Maybe. Worked for it. Dear God, yes. Take it for granted. Not! I vote, volunteer, work for charities, help others. But obviously it is not enough to clear my head.

It’s just that I want what we all want; my children and their children to have the same benefits my generation had – freedom of open doors as result of hard work. Pathways to a good life. Peace and prosperity.

I want my daughters and granddaughters to have the freedoms and opportunities equal to men. Respect as human beings. Choices of dress, beliefs, careers of their own respected and allowed.

Please. Wake up America before we are forced to sleep with the enemy!

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