Category: Healing Through Creativity

Content that focuses on the healing power of creativity, both for yourself and others. This can include guest blogs, interviews, or your own experiences with art as therapy.

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Where its at? Two hemispheres and a spinal cord!

Black and white image of Bert's eye's close up and cropped

A Personal Share

I was doing some editing tonight and this text flowed out of my hands and I thought it worthy of sharing.

Over 18 months time:

I continue to live through the longest period of unemployment since starting work as a paper boy at age 12, in 1983. I was, and still am, mentally processing a divorce I did not want after 22 years of marriage. I left my family and home behind where I helped raise my 3 boys becoming homeless, living in my car.

 

All the while fear, anxiety, and depression were present. Suicidal Ideation was a constant companion through much of 2024. There were no weeks off. Not one week where it wasn’t pondered a few days. Never took action, my mind finding some weird calm meditative state in that head space. Strange to admit that the mindset of suicidal ideation became a comfortable, even peaceful headspace to soak inside of.

 

All of this is to say—these experiences have changed me significantly, but you would never see the change, its not superficial, its deep to a quantum level and deeply cathartic. It was a change that had me fetal, rolled up like a pill bug, weeping from the fear of being abandoned and fear of failure for hours at a time, over a period of months.

 

Long, lingering periods of loneliness despite people all around. Only people I spoke to was anyone at a register—other than those 2 minute or less interactions, you more alone than you have felt as a human, for months on end.

 

I saw homelessness from an entirely different perspective, and honestly know how every one of those people you see on the streets feel. I need to work on putting that feeling into words. It’s very complex, and now I can understand why people never make it back to society on a level I didn’t know existed.

All of the description of these experiences, while not complete by any means, allowed me to pierce the veil of manufactured lies and truly understand, deeply feel, and begin the long uneasy process of shedding my manufactured ego and send of self.

 

If you’re not the voice in you’re head, and you’re not the one who is hearing it? Where are you?

I can sum it up this way. I’ve learned to work the waves and not fight them.

The waves keep coming, and I flow like water. I fall down and get back up.

A personal share will become a regular thing here. Sometimes text, sometimes video. Ya never know.

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Living with Depression: A Raw Year-End Reflection on Mental Health

Building with sign asking "how are you really?" Photo by Mitch on Unsplash
“How are you really?” Living with Depression.

As 2024 draws to a close, I find myself in a starkly different place than where I began, both mentally and physically.

The contrast is jarring – like comparing two different lives, two different selves, separated by twelve months of persistent struggle.

Today, like so many days before it, I’m engulfed in a major depressive episode. The intensity is particularly acute, with the familiar yet dreaded trinity of symptoms making their presence known: dissociation that makes the world feel like a badly tuned television channel, ideation that whispers dark thoughts I’d rather not hear, and anhedonia that strips away any possibility of joy or pleasure. These unwelcome companions have become as familiar as old friends, though they bring nothing but heaviness.

As time passes, I’ve become increasingly aware of the profound disconnect between how depression is perceived by others and its stark reality. There’s a pervasive misconception that depression is merely a temporary state of sadness, something that can be overcome with a good night’s sleep or a pleasant distraction. If only it were that simple. Depression isn’t a cloud that passes over the sun – it’s more like living in a world where the sun has forgotten where the Earth is.

The notion of creating an end-of-year video has been weighing on my mind too. It’s the kind of project that should feel manageable, even meaningful – a way to document this challenging chapter of life. Yet the mere thought of it feels like trying to scale a mountain with legs made of lead. I’ve spent the entire day pushing against emotional numbness, searching for a feeling, any feeling, beyond this perpetual sense of dread. The energy required for such an endeavor has been completely consumed by the basic tasks of masking and survival.

What many fail to understand is the relentless nature of clinical depression.

It’s not about having “bad days” – it’s about experiencing every single day of the year through a lens of varying symptoms. Some days bring emotional numbness so complete it feels like being wrapped in thick invisible cotton. Others are marked by exhaustion so profound that even breathing feels like an Olympic sport. Then there are days when anxiety joins the mix, creating a cocktail of mental health challenges that would bring the strongest person to their knees.

The symptoms themselves are like unwanted guests who never leave, only changing their seating arrangements. One day might be dominated by the inability to concentrate, while another might feature the complete absence of focus. Sleep either eludes me entirely or becomes an appealing escape I can’t seem to wake from. The weight of existence itself becomes nearly unbearable, yet I continue to carry it, day after day, because what other choice is there? (more on that later)

This year has been a masterclass in endurance, in learning to exist when existence itself feels like too much.

Every accomplishment, no matter how small, has been hard-won against the undertow of depression. Every smile, every moment of connection, every task completed has required strength that most never have to summon.

As this year comes to an end, I find myself not in a place of resolution or triumph, but in a space of raw honesty about the reality of living with persistent, major depressive disorder. It’s not a battle that ends with the calendar year, nor is it something that can be neatly wrapped up in a hopeful bow.

It’s a continuous journey through darkness, punctuated by moments of varying intensity, demanding a resilience that must be renewed with each passing day.