It’s Mental Health Awareness month, and I feel there’s an aspect of our well-being that is often overlooked with the challenges of increased depression, anxiety, and loneliness in our era. And that’s spiritual health.
I think this post will be a bit meandering and not perfectly composed, but my spirit has something to say, so I’m sayin’ it. There’s a lot of soul-suffering and it’s time to shift to soul-satisfying.
It’s National Mental Health Day (October 10th), and I’m reflecting on what I see in our nation and our world. I could talk about anxiety or depression, the epidemic of loneliness, and mental health tips to feel better.
But all I can think about is our souls.
Two celebrity suicides prompt me to share my own story of depression, and how I journeyed from being suicidal to wholeness and happiness within.
I have struggled this week with what to write in this month’s blog. I can’t say that this is a unique experience; I often have challenges with the looming question of “what to write?”
But this week it was a bit different. The recent suicides in the news – Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain – made me stop to reflect on things.
I hardly knew who Kate Spade was, other than seeing her name on merchandise in local department stores. Anthony Bourdain, however, I was very familiar with. Our family enjoyed watching Parts Unknown as a bit of education about other cultures around the world – how they lived, ate, celebrated, and even mourned the tragedies that their nations had been through. It felt important for us to know these foreign lands and peoples who lived very differently than we do.
Though I have no idea why they ended their lives, one thing was very clear to me: fame and fortune didn’t make them happy. At least not in a lasting, sustainable way. Although I can’t say I have had fame and fortune, I have had many lessons in the pain of depression, and in discovering what made me truly happy, or at least content with my life. It didn’t come from making money or appearing successful, or even from a wonderful relationship. I had to find it inside myself.
