For me, critical tools against depression are a belief in the future and an ability to roll with what life throws at you. Understanding that doesn’t happen overnight but it can begin in an instant. And if you are aware, attentive to the given moment in your life, it can become a strong piece of defense against darkness. Ironically, the critical moment that pushed darkness as far away as ever, was triggered by the bright orange flames of fire.

It certainly does feel good to be able to feel good. To live constantly in light and relative happiness, experiencing only the usual struggles of relationships and responsibilities. And it has been important to always recognize what puts me in that mindset and also what will keep me there. My tools to fight depression were plenty at this point and, thankfully, continued to develop during this fulfilling period of my life.

Thank goodness I experienced so many wonderful wins during that first college experience because I needed those growing “layers” of protection to continue pushing through. I continue to bounce around from one direction to another, all the while just compounding the struggles in my brain. But I pulled from the past, and saw how to continue towards the light…but something always seems to get in the way.

I definitely felt a growing ability to push back against darkness as I moved through this first college experience. Critical moments taught me what tools work to keep me from the deepest black of depression. Though I had started developing these tools, however, they were not as sharp as they are now. But I got lucky that an unexpected coincidence gave a little more strength to my efforts to keep moving forward.

It could have been the darkest of days when I was faced with the decision to turn away from the one thing that had brought such light into my life. But my time in the darkness taught me to never stop trying to move forward and to recognize even the slightest beam of hope. Feeling the “dead end kid” disappearing forever was the key to spotting a chance for growth and for nudging me in a new direction along my personal Path Of Wellness.

I discovered Theatre not long after discovering the mental health trouble I was in and it became a bright light in the darkness of my life. Through high school and into college, that was the group I kept going back to. But I was in for a very different experience with the theatre folks in college. One that I never could’ve seen coming. And one that has rippled through my life to this day, more than 30 years later.

It’s one thing to recognize an unwanted behavior and to make the effort to change, but it’s a much different thing to become aware of a significant mental health issue in yourself when you’re just a kid. Knowing nothing about addressing the problem, not to mention any concept of behavior change, I made the mindful decision to fight. To fight to live and to search for the light whenever I feel darkness approaching.

Throughout this podcast, the way the topics are delivered has evolved. I’ve gone from thinking they’d be given like lessons in a text book to simply just telling stories about my encounters with wellness along my personal journey. And peppered in with the joy, the sleep, the song and the heartache have been references to many other wellness factors and domains. This episode marks the beginning of a deep dive into the most frequent of those passing references. How depression has presented itself in my life and what I’ve done to find the way from darkness to light has played the biggest role in my wellness journey and will shape the next several episodes of this Path of Wellness.

When you really want to do something for your wellness but the doing of that something might create anxiety, you’ve got yourself a wellness conflict. This issue is showing itself as I contemplate more broadly publicizing this podcast about my personal Path of Wellness. But doing so involves coming up against a major anxiety trigger that I can’t let stop me.

Our lives are molded by so many decisions, both good and bad. Learning how to accept and live with the bad ones has been a major part of my personal wellness journey. Any moment in the future can become very different than what you expected and so every moment in the present should be held dear.