10 Things About Being Not-Depressed Post-Depression

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For almost two years, this post has been sitting unrevisited and unrevised amongst the drafts of my blog. It's especially interesting to me now to rediscover it and read what it felt like to be no-longer-depressed right on the heels of depression, because I'm currently in a funny combination-state of health and grief and possibility, along with a sense of the changing season and anticipation for all that might mean.

In short, my point-of-view today is vastly different from my perspective while deep in depression but even a little different from when I wrote this list at the end of 2013. And that's why I'd like to share this. Not just to revisit it myself, but to preserve and make visible one more nuance of such an experience. Writers and artists have done well in recent years to show others what depression looks and feels like for them, and I think it's helpful to understand not just the moments during, but also in-between and before and afterward.

I'm revising the writing now for "publishable clarity," but I'm channeling my 2013 self to maintain the dignity and authenticity of the content as though I'm my own ghost writer.

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To quote Joni Mitchell, "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" (Big Yellow Taxi).

Living in the state of not-depressed is so unfathomably different after the experience of depression that I can't help but notice the contrast on a visceral level. At this point, I feel like I can identify what depression "was" for me better than I could ever identify what it "is" while still in the midst of it.

But I'd like to take this opportunity of clear-mindedness to describe 10 things I'm experiencing right now, at this stage of "shortly after" - this odd moment of vivid awareness and general wellness.

Of course, this is only my list of 10 things. This may or may not look anything like what others experience.

1. It will happen again.

-This is threefold: sort of fear/dread, sort of resignation, sort of identity crisis. Who am I with/without this illness? How much a part of me is it? When will it strike and what will it disrupt next? With all of these, there's an underlying sense of "when, not if" it will happen again.

-I'm also still trying to differentiate depression and grief and dark night of the soul. I know I've experienced all 3 within the past 3 years, often overlapping, but in some cases, how do I know what was which? What can I expect in the future?

2. Survivor's guilt.

-The ever-constant questions: Why me? Why did it recede for me and not for others?

-The guilt of healing is tightly entwined with the occasional disbelief that healing actually happened at all, or a disbelief that the experience was as damaging and painful as it felt at the time. Knowing the ways that other people suffer in depression, I sometimes look back and minimize my own suffering by thinking things like, "it 'only' compromised my academic career and social life." I know I should know better - that it's possible for it to have been both debilitating for me and different from others' experiences.

3. Control and lack of control.

-I feel mostly grounded and steady again. And yet, despite my consistent efforts toward health and healing, the improvement seems almost as incomprehensible as the depression itself. How did this happen? Why have I reached this point without using any drugs or medications? What ultimately made the difference, or was it just another change in the seasons of life? Will I ever know?

4. Breadth and depth of perspective.

-Despite the survivor's guilt, I have a relatively realistic and holistic perspective on the past. Except in my moments of doubt, I grasp the reality of the pain that I experienced and the kinds of things that happened in the midst of it - grief, shattered world views, injured pride/self-esteem, community transition and communal suffering. All of it makes sense in a way that defies even those doubts and feelings of irrationality which still linger.

5. Awareness of joy.

-Like painting with a full palette of emotion and sensation. Like the world is in color and motion, and I can actually tell. And it's not that I'm suddenly confined to happiness. Having the full range of emotions is liberating, and getting lost in any one emotion at a time does not feel particularly defining of who I am.

-I also now understand that, mid-dark night of the soul, I was still able to experience non-sunshiny forms of joy even if I wasn't always attuned to them or didn't know how to create them myself, so it was not necessarily an absence of joy as it was a matter of redefining and contextualizing it. Hence the "awareness."

6. Appetite and nostalgia.

-I have not only an interest in food again, but even sentimentality for favorites and specifically for nostalgic meals, like a pub's beef stew that made me homesick for the UK. Rarely could I experience any of that while depressed. It makes me look back and wonder, what was I eating? Was I eating? I don't even know.

7. Reading comprehension and memory.

-Words on the page actually register. I'm still a (lifelong) slow reader who doesn't always skim well, especially when I get invested in something... but I can actually get invested in something I read now. And remember it!

-Even if I don't remember all the details, I can generally recall how and where to access information I've recently seen. My work no longer feels like a literal impossibility.

8. Coherence in conversation and writing.

-Even audible words have recognizable meaning in a way that they didn't before, like my vocabulary has been restored. I can comprehend what other people say, express myself, and participate in actual conversation.

-I have a willingness to ask questions again. I didn't realize how much I'd missed it, how much a part of me and my learning style this usually is.

9. Creative arts and hobbies.

-Just recently I've played piano, painted, finished a novel-length draft and several short stories, and composed my first full song with lyrics and music. Mediocre quality as all of these projects may be, I don't even care. It just feels good to create. I had been doing some writing and piano-dabbling during the depression, but not to this extent, and those things were more of a lifeline than a joy.

10. Unconditional love.

-I'm experiencing boundless love and mercy for others' imperfections as well as my own. Right now no one can disappoint me, and I'm slow to see fault where there may only be a matter of unpredictability or circumstance. I want to hear all sides to everything, or even just be present to people when they can't articulate their experience. Obviously I'm in school for ministry, so I've always wanted to do both of these things, but now they have a new urgency and depth to them.

God Is the Child in the Backseat of the Car

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When I first met Frog Girl, she was old enough to be in Girl Scouts and young enough to need to ride in the backseat of the car.

As we drove, we talked.

At times I lived vicariously through her, seeing the world anew through her eyes as she navigated school and extracurriculars and a family and a social life.

And at times her questions and insights forced me to reflect on my own life - past, present, and future - in a way that I hadn't anticipated. She talked to me like I was Someone Who's Gone Before, like I had wisdom to impart, but so many of her ideas encouraged me, entertained me, and made me appreciate being alive.

While I waited for her to finish gymnastics or swimming, I would sit and muse about whatever wise, witty, funny, wonderful things she had said so far that day.

When I had a pen handy, I wrote them down. I did the best I could to capture her words and the inflections of her voice on a scrap of paper that couldn't do her justice.

Sometimes she'd said so many clever, quotable witticisms that day that I knew I was forgetting some of them.

One day during my time working with this family, I thought back on my experiences of God - and, more specifically, my experiences of the silence of God. I had been struggling to make sense of a dark night of the soul that defied easy explanations. At first I'd known little except that it was somehow part of my journey.

Maybe, I thought, God is not so unlike the child in the backseat of the car who surprises me day after day with her interest in my life and her sense of humor and her thought-provoking lens.

When there are lulls in our conversation, the silence is still companionable. Just another part of our travels. No less real or appreciated.

And besides, it gives me a chance to savor all the gems I want to remember.

Reclaiming the Goodness of Darkness

Each year, First Presbyterian Church of New Haven prints a Lenten Reflection booklet with contributions from the community, one 200-word reflection for each of the forty days of Lent. I agreed to write one and was assigned John 8:12-20.

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¹²Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” ¹³Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.” ¹⁴Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. ¹⁵You judge by human standards; I judge no one. ¹⁶Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. ¹⁷In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. ¹⁸I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf.” ¹⁹Then they said to him, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” ²⁰He spoke these words while he was teaching in the treasury of the temple, but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come. (John 8:12–20)

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With our sights set on Jesus, the Light of the World, have we fallen into a system of light supremacy? Is a language of light as salvific and life-giving as the intentions of Christ?

Bodies and souls cry out to us: It's time to reclaim the goodness of darkness.

To reclaim the good darkness of the body is to affirm that Black lives matter, not only denouncing acts of violence but confronting even prejudices which are so pervasive that they are silent and unconscious. Jesus embodies his rightful authority because divine justice overrules legal privilege. Black bodies are their own living testimonies and God is their witness.

And reclaiming the good darkness of the spirit beckons us to live into a spiritual life of seasons, affirming the dark night of the soul as a time of renewal and transformation in its own right. As you meditate on God's splendor, do you find the eyes of your soul squinting in the light? Find a dark place to rest. Don't be afraid. Splendor may appear inviting, but you are no less safe in the depths of mystery. The God of day is also God of night, and that is good.

Breaking Ground

I had a realization of my own after the goodbye-themed inter-generational Bible study I led at church the other night.

In a time of lifting up loved ones who have passed on or moved away, I named my grandfather (my eulogy for him is posted here), and I explained that I called him Grandsprout because he called me Sprout.

What I've realized since Sunday night is that no one else in the world calls me Sprout and what that means. When my grandfather's dementia deepened to the point of no longer recognizing his loved ones, we ourselves struggled to hold on to who we were to him. When he died, the me who was Sprout died, too.

It was not only the loss of a beloved person but also the end of a relationship, of all the relationships he had with his family and friends.

And at the heart of our relationship, his and mine, was growth. A love of greenery and soil and earthy things. A wisdom of seasons and perseverance and devoted care. My grandfather watched me grow up, and I watched my grandfather grow his garden. These were the joys we basked in together.

So it's only fitting that, when I finally found the language to heal myself almost two years later, it came to me in the form of plant life. Specifically, it came to me in an image that my professor, Angella Son, included in her new book, Spirituality of Joy. Although it took on a different meaning for me than it did for her, the image of the moso bamboo tree inspired me to compose a song.

The lyrics are a conversation between a soul and God, throughout the sort of experience that is often known in spiritual circles as the dark night of the soul. But in this case, the process is likened to the growth pattern of the moso bamboo tree, which grows roots for five years before it even breaks ground (and then it hits some kind of plant puberty and grows about 90 feet in six months, but who's counting?). To the unsuspecting gardener, those first five years look to be a failure, like nothing good is happening and any hope of vegetation is gone.

But the God I've come to know through my grief is a God with dirty fingernails and all the time in the world. A God who knows the strength of roots and the goodness of brokenness when a seed is breaking open, breaking ground.

It's through writing this song that I began to live again, and it's only now that I realize that the person I came to be, in some way, is still and always will be my Grandsprout's Sprout.

Growing Underground
Music and lyrics by Kimberley Fais, 2013

You plant. You feed. You water. I sleep.
Then I stretch, and I breathe, and take root in the deep.
Even though I can't see, You promise me
I'm not going under. I'm just growing underground.
I'm not going under. I'm just growing underground.
And I will grow out before I grow up.
It's a long way out.

You've got time in Your hands and dirt in Your nails.
You see what succeeds when everything fails.
It's hard to believe what You promised me.
I'm not going under. I'm just growing underground.
I'm not going under. I'm just growing underground.
And I will grow out before I grow up.
It's a long way up.

Deep and dark down here, where I weep with joy,
I'm not drowning out Your still small voice.
Little do I know I'm right where I should be.
I'm where You're tending me.

You planted. You fed. You watered. I woke.
Then I stretched, and I breathed, and through the ground I broke.
And I rose, and I grew. You said: "I promised you--
You were never going under. You were just growing underground.
You were never going under. You were just growing underground.
And I watched you grow the roots that would let you grow up.
Look at you now. . . ."

Hell Is the Suffering of Being Unable to Love

God, forgive me. And forgive me, brothers and sisters, for I have sinned against you.

In the midst of it, I believe I have glimpsed hell.

I find it necessary to interject that in all of my encounters with dark nights of the soul or perceiving distance from God, I'm not sure I have ever had the sense that any one was a literally hellish experience.

They were pretty invariably disconcerting, painful, sad, confusing, and all-around not ideal. They hurt. When they did not just plain hurt, they left me feeling sort of hollow. ("Is nothingness light or heavy?") And yet there was always something suspiciously good lurking in the background.

Each time, I discovered - whether I came to the conclusion during the experience or only long afterward - that there was something extraordinarily good not only in the God who got me through the dark nights, but even in those seemingly grotesque dark nights themselves. Those "nights" reminded me of my humanity and the Divine's divinity. They helped me to relate genuinely to other hurting humans. They made me realize that my clearest experiences of grace and love were no less real to me just because my mood had changed. Apparently one need not "feel" God constantly in order to honor one's past (and future) encounters. That was news to me.

Yes, in God's mercy, even my most harrowing spiritual droughts ultimately bore fruit.

But there is one moment - at least one that stands out from any other - when I experienced what I can only describe as hell on earth.

I've long thought that the phrase "hell on earth" best described the dangerous, poor living conditions inflicted on the oppressed persons of the world, and perhaps that is still the case. I have been fortunate enough in this life not to believe that I can gauge the hellishness of true social and systemic injustices. That may be an analytical exploration for another time.

But that isn't the sort of hellishness I'm talking about now. I'm referring, rather, to Fyodor Dostoevsky's hell:

"Fathers and teachers, I ponder, 'What is hell?'
I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love."

-Father Zosima, The Brothers Karamazov

On a few occasions, I worshipped in a certain church in which I felt generally uncomfortable - theologically (different interpretations, teachings, and priorities than my home-churches'), liturgically (different style, content, and vocabulary), and spatially (different physical and social atmosphere). Considering how ecumenical I am in my approach to many church matters, this extraordinary discomfiture alone made a significant impact on me. It scared me and fascinated me.

During one particular service, the sermon wrenched my heart. To the gathered community, it may not have been remarkable; it may have been legitimately inspiring and galvanizing. To me, it was nearly unrecognizable as a Christian teaching, and I felt spiritually distanced from some of my fellow Christ-followers.

After the message came perhaps my favorite practice: Communion. But there was one problem. I was still so angry.

"But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be
liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable
to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.
So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother
or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go;
first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift."

-Matthew 5:22-24 NRSV

My first anger-induced inclination might have been to refuse Communion - something I had never done before - because of those who blessed it that day.

This quickly dissolved into a more realistic, less self-righteous realization: I could not accept Communion in that moment because of the anger within me. As though to deny me the indulgence of letting my non-participation slip by unnoticed, by the time it reached my seat, the plate bearing Christ's Body was empty.

As the usher disappeared in pursuit of a filled plate, I wondered what I should do when he returned. Surely he would remember that the fed had ended with the one before me, and instead of the plate being passed along my row for me to decline quietly, he would extend it directly to me. Would I still refuse?

For a moment, I feared that he would take it personally. I got over that quickly enough and passed the refreshed plate.

But the weeping and gnashing of teeth, deep in my being, refused to cease.

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell,* behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, "Surely the darkness shall fall on me,"
Even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

-Psalm 139:7-8 NKJV

* Here other translations read: "the depths" or "Sheol." A discussion for another day.


In my rebellion and inadequacy, I may have been tempted to believe that I had - if only inadvertently - escaped God's love. But I had not.

The love of God sought me out in my hell. It was the love of God which far surpassed my own frail attempts to love, and nevertheless met me where I had entrenched myself. For even when I could summon no love in myself for this Otherness, the Holy Spirit - in that unrelenting, no-nonsense sort of love - convicted my heart.

If God had not come with me to my hell, I fear I would not have known how to climb out of it nor remember that there was even an alternative to it. The weeping and gnashing of teeth in my core meant that I craved the love I still knew could be. Only that unconditional love, willing to reveal itself to me in the unlikely place, my undeserving state, could show me what pained me and what I must do.

And I realized then, as I passed the Communion elements along without partaking, that God was calling me to do what I honestly dreaded: love those - yes, even those - whom I find so difficult to love.

Familiar words? Of course they were. I was a Christian, after all... wasn't I? But oh, what that call meant to me in that moment! Never had I been so angry - so hopelessly, helplessly, irreparably angry; so willing to refuse to take part in a community; so determined to disagree, to declare that they said they followed Christ yet surely they were doing it wrong!

Never before had I found myself so incapable of granting grace, and in such desperate need of receiving it.

An Open Letter to God

Hi God,

Driving along the Interstate one day, doing nothing particularly blessed or interesting or special at the time, I embraced a promise that I have been struggling to receive. This has been a difficult season in my life, sometimes for reasons even I do not understand, yet I know your love is strong, your intentions are good, and your joy and mercy will prevail.

You know in the last several years I have experienced strange variations of the so-called dark night of the soul, each time so unique in the way that I was aware of your absence and aware or unaware of your presence. I know that dark nights are not all that rare, and I'd figured each person's experiences are unique to them, but I never dreamt that one person could have such varied experiences under a common category. This year, the theme has been a sense of your absence and in the most bizarre way to me yet; with it came a deep sense, somewhere in me that I can't identify, in which I - thought, believed, heard, understood? - 'This' is important. This is not eternal; you will feel differently again. It is part, and only part, of the journey. Continue on it.



I had never been aware of your "distant presence" before. In the past, we have wrestled. I would try to pin you down and before I knew it you'd wriggle free, amorphous and magnificent as ever. You never seemed to want to pin me. You took more joy in the movement, the tumbling, the energy. Even when I was stubborn and doubtful and angry, you loved me; loved that I brought my questions and frustrations to you.

Later on, we wrestled again, but instead of actively participating, I broke away, wandered off. I didn't want to fight anymore. Unfortunately, it wasn't just that I didn't want to fight you, but also that I didn't want to fight for you. And while at the time I occasionally recreated the scene in my mind to show you as the one who walked out, it became clearer to me that, even in my longing for you and recent growth in you, it had been me who had to get away. It was soon after something of a spiritual transformation, simple and yet significant, and perhaps I was scared, or resistant, or even unsure that what I had discovered was real. And even when I thought I had dug myself into a pit, you reached in and swept me up into your arms. All I had to do was look up. There you were.

But this time, it has felt like you have withdrawn from me, even without truly abandoning me, and I still don't really know why.

Have you left this time? Or am I recreating the scene in my mind that way to spare myself the truth that I have strayed again? I have so many questions, and I find it difficult to bring them to you when I can't seem to tell where you are. I don't know how you will come back to me, or how I will come back to you, or why I'm in the midst of a dark night even as I keep finding myself to be where I ought to be.

And while I knew when this experience began that this is indeed part of the journey, part of what I must learn, whether so that I can do the work you would have me do or simply so that I can be the soul you intend for me to be - I think I "know" it now. Thank you.

Looking forward to this being more of a dialogue again. Wrestling match would suffice as well.

With love,
Kimmery