November 8, 2016

I will never forget when I fell off “the cliff.”

It was when I was in high school, and I didn’t want to get out of bed. I couldn’t stop crying. I felt miserable in my own skin. And I didn’t know how to talk about the epic feelings of sadness that were overwhelming me.

I didn’t know if the feelings I was feeling were the same feelings every other teenager was feeling, or if I was the only one in the world who could be this sad.

And then there was the guilt.

Guilt because the sadness I was feeling didn’t match the incredible circumstances into which I was born: a two-parent household of economic means, with huge opportunities being offered to me in every realm—educationally, culturally and socially.

But when you fall off the cliff, nothing matters.

And strangely, even if you’ve fallen off the cliff or down the hole or whatever analogy you want to use, there are times you can show up and appear to the world as capable and functional, so no one would ever know otherwise.

They’d never know the depth of sadness that envelopes you like a dark fog, even while you continue to get the job done as needed. People wouldn’t know that to get through a day, you had to close your office door and lie on the ground and stifle the tears—or steal away to a bathroom stall because you needed to cry for no reason or any reason at all.

Today, I understand that what I was experiencing was a form of depression. And I also understand that naming it or saying it out loud isn’t a bad thing. Publicly, I know how I show up: like a happy person, bright and shiny and nary a sad day in my life. Why would I have sad days? Life is beautiful. I’m happily married. Two healthy, bright, beautiful kids. Two puppies who are so darn cute. And meaningful work filled with purpose.

Still, every once in a while, I have my dark days. When those sayings that I normally love, like “happiness is a choice” or “optimism is contagious,” feel more like a slap in the face.

Over the years, I’ve used my own set of tools that help me get from those dark days to a new day. Years of therapy helped immensely. For some people, pharmaceuticals can be helpful; for me not so much.

As I got older I used other tools like diet, exercise, journaling and—even though it’s a struggle—meditation. These have made all the difference in the world. And I believe that pursuing my creative life as an actor, and later as a writer and a leadership consultant, has actually helped me explore the full range of feelings that have been a part of my own story and, ultimately, helped me grow. For me there is no cure for alienation and depression like finding your purpose. That and a sense of humor.

It definitely helped to know that I am not alone in my family to have experienced this crushing sadness. I learned after I grew up that my grandmother, who I always thought had the best nightgowns ever, had them because she spent whole weeks in bed.

Ironically, my husband has been my greatest weapon and challenger against the darkness. He’s an eternal optimist whose mom was diagnosed with cancer when he was 6. If depression or even sadness ever hit her, you’d never know it. Even when she was going through chemotherapy, you’d ask her, “How you doing?” and she’d say, “Great.” So to my husband, perspective is a core value and an antidote to a bad situation.

We call it perspective with a capital “P.” So when I feel myself going over the cliff, it’s the word he uses as a bungee cord to stop me from lingering in the darkness.

It’s been years since I have experienced anything like the sadness of my youth. But I was instantly brought back to those memories while scrolling through, of all things, Facebook—the place of puppies and silly memes. I was stopped in my tracks when someone posted something that was real.

Lisa Carp Hughes, a local photographer and yoga instructor, posted a video of a speech she gave at the local chapter of the National Association of Mental Illness. I cried when I watched it.

Lisa is on a mission to share the story of her own depression in order to, as she says, “shatter the stigma.”

She first experienced depression during her childhood, but at the age of 27 she had a full-blown episode while living alone in New York City. She eventually recovered, but was surprised by a recurrence when she turned 40. Ironically, it was on a trip to the happiest place on earth, Disney World, that she finally shared her recurrence with close friends and family. She realized then that so many people she loved were dealing with many of the same issues, but no one was talking about it.

And that’s when Lisa got mad. And got working. She decided to create a depression awareness bracelet so people could literally wear their heart on their sleeve. And she used her talent as a photographer to begin the Face Depression Project. She’s interested in keeping the sunshine on a dark subject with her website so that people can be heard and their loved ones will have a place to share their stories (it’s at www.depressionbracelets.com).

A few weeks later, a friend shared her daughter Caroline Ioele’s blog about her experience with anxiety and depression. I stopped and read it and marveled at her bravery. I’d watched Caroline grow up as a beautiful, bright and always sweet young woman. I never realized the struggle she went through as a 17-year-old senior in high school, or what she overcame to go to college last year as a freshman. Right now she’s taking a break after a particularly hard summer, but she says she’s coming out of the depths with help from what she calls her “team.”

Caroline says she hid her depression well while in high school. She was highly functioning, doing everything she was supposed to. But then this past summer, the kind of depression where you can’t function at all hit her, and she had to stop everything. She began to write about her experience because she wanted her peers to know what she’s been through and because she knows others are going through it, too. “Everyone has something,” she says.

Odessa Despot, a staff psychologist at RIT, says, “Depression is often a primary complaint for those who seek mental health treatment on college campuses.” Mental health professionals try to help those students develop coping skills, identify problem thinking patterns and obtain medication if needed.

She says the number of students seeking help for depression has increased across college campuses, as have attempts to reduce the stigma of depression with the prevalence of campus groups like Campus Minds Works and Active Minds and initiatives like National Depression Screening Day.

I wish I’d had a safe place to go on campus when an episode hit me as a freshman in college. My mom, who was studying to be a Freudian psychoanalyst, took me to a man she said was the preeminent adolescent psychologist of his time. As I started to cry, he said, “Turn off the water works—I’m not a plumber.” It was shocking, but effective in the moment. After ditching him and finding the right doctor for me (a kind one), I actually did start to feel better.

Hearing the stories from Lisa and Caroline—two women decades apart and younger than I—made me realize I needed to share my story out loud as well, so that others who are experiencing much of the same sadness that I felt so long ago can know that one day, the light will come.

I can’t help but think that it must be so much harder for kids today. As Caroline says, “So much of our life on social media makes it look like we are perfect.”

No one, of course, is perfect, or perfectly happy.

It’s perfectly human to admit your struggles and even to share it with others, in order to help yourself and make a difference. To me, that’s what stands out in these two women: their humanity and their generosity. I believe that those qualities can cure all the ills in the world, and in ourselves.

First Published in the Democrat and Chronicle and USA Today Network.