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Shame can stop us from talking about things. So can guilt. For people like me, who like to talk about almost everything, this can feel awful. Others wouldn't dream of speaking about things close to their hearts, or buried down deep. Shame is not the same as guilt. [A very good book - John Piper's Battling Unbelief - helped me understand the difference.] Misplaced shame is feeling bad about something when we are not actually at fault. Depression is a prime example. I know I initially felt ashamed to be diagnosed with it.

I've never been one to shy away from talking...about pretty much anything. I'm a legend at oversharing, faux pas, feet-in-my-mouth, socially awkward conversations. Sex? Politics? Religion? Yes, I'll talk about all three, at once if you like, with people I have only just met. Well, I'm not quite that bad. But I'm close to it.

I've been upfront about my depression from the time I came to terms with my diagnosis. (I distinctly remember not being able to ring my parents when it first became a possibility that I had Post-Natal Depression (PND). Instead I sent a text message calling it 'mild PND'. Bollocks. It wasn't mild. But I didn't want to scare them, and I didn't want to be 'weak'.) Once I became sure of the diagnosis, and understood it a bit better, I was unsurprised to hear that many people don't talk about their depression. That was red-rag-to-a-bull for me, and I promptly decided I wasn't going to hide it, minimise it, shy away from talking about it. This presented other issues of course. I do need to be a little bit careful who I unburden myself to. Even writing this blog gives me pause at times. Because depression can be depressing! And awkward. Mental illnesses in general are less well understood by the general populace (as compared with physical conditions). They are more confusing for sufferers too. Because mental illnesses change perception, even of themselves.

I'm emerging from the 'mud' these days. I have a bit more experience, and a bit more distance, and consequently clarity. That's why I can write about it. If you had asked me to write this while I was in the thick of it, you would not have wanted to read it. I kept journals. Their raw contents are not fit for publication. I do intend to share some contents. But not yet. To be honest, they are scary to read. They are not me. They are another me.

Which brings us right back to the quandary of sharing. What to share, how to do it, and with whom? I don't have all the answers. I do know that talking about depression is important. And I do know that others have found it helpful to read about it or to talk about it with fellow sufferers.

There is a growing feeling that the media also needs to play a part in removing the stigma of mental illness. There is a chance that media laws may soon change to allow suicides to be reported as such. Currently, the media refrains from reporting suicide, ostensibly for fear that it will encourage more people to attempt it. But this silence is not actually helping. Suicide is still the leading cause of death for young men in Australia.

A new men's mental health campaign has recently started up here (http://softenthefckup.com.au/). I'm still a fence-sitter about its approach (it won't suit many men). But I applaud the message: men need to unburden themselves of stress and despair rather than bottling it up until they can no longer stand it.

I've been reading a very graphic, moving blog lately which chronicles one young Aussie mum's story. Lori's husband committed suicide after suffering a violent psychosis and she is left with their two very young children. She is an advocate of talking. If you are feeling brave, her blog is here. It is not for the faint-hearted. This woman has guts. What she has been through is hideous, and I'm amazed that she can write about it. But she is helping others by doing so. Her message is: speak.

So I do. So we should. Obviously not out of our experience-zone, but definitely, at times, out of our comfort zones. Because when it comes to depression, there is no sense in blaming, or feeling shame. It is what it is. It is complex, and different for everyone, and it is personal. But recovery can be a community effort. And it starts with knowledge, awareness, and talking.

What has happened to me is by no means uncommon. My story is not all that simple, although nobody's ever is. At least to me, it was nowhere near predictable. Maybe wiser people saw it coming. but no-one likes to cast doubt, or to wear the doom-sayer's mantle. So there was no real warning that I could hear buzzing on the airwaves.

I'm writing it. I hope it will help others. Sometimes we must learn by doing. At other times, we may dodge a bullet if someone has handed us a little piece of Kevlar just at the right time.

Backstory? Yes. There should be some. At the risk of skimping, I'm going to rush through this bit. I may come back to it later. Just picture me as an idealistic young woman for whom first pregnancy and early motherhood went fairly smoothly. Note the loving, supportive, actively-involved and fully-employed young lawyer who is my husband, standing just next to me. The cute little mini-version of him toddling around is our first daughter. We think she's fairly easy at this stage, because she sleeps fairly well at night. And isn't that what people talk about most?

We buy our first house, just as we embark on 'trying for' another baby. The day we move I don't feel very well. I'm dizzy. A few weeks later we realise we didn't have to try very hard for another baby. We are blessed.

The second pregnancy is nauseating. It is virtually impossible to describe how bad 'morning sickness' (VERY insulting name for it!) can be. You know that queasy feeling when you have gastro? Imagine that not really going away for months on end. That's some kind of approximation anyway.

But I cope. It's hard, because the one-year-old is demanding, and not at all good at daytime naps. (I'm very good at daytime naps. It's my gifting.) We live far away from family, although we have some very good friends. We get there.

I can tell you the exact moment it all began to unravel. I was at my Mums' Group. [Whatever bad press such groups have received, let me tell you that mine was a stellar bunch of completely wonderful, warm, genuine and real friends. We met for six years and still keep in touch.] Ok, so I was at Mums' Group having a cuppa. The toddlers (approaching two years of age) were playing nearby and I was breastfeeding my second daughter; she was a perfect little two-week old.

A friend of the host dropped in, and marvelled that I was 'out and about' by myself with two children under two, a couple of weeks after giving birth. I basked in this admiration. I considered myself a strong person, and able to cope with a lot. This was the kind of affirmation that sustained me, and to some extent contributed to my identity. Not good.

The friend asked about the labour - four and a half hours, I told her. "Yeah, Sal coughs them out!" someone said. I laughed, but a penny dropped. Perhaps my front - the one I wasn't actually aware of until that moment - worked so well that it even persuaded my friends that I was finding all of this easy. People were talking about labour being easy for me. I would concede to 'uncomplicated' and 'relatively short'. But NOT, emphatically NOT EASY.

Nor was having two kids. I'd always imagined that two wasn't many. But when my husband went back to work, I realised I was out-numbered. And that could be dangerous.

That very afternoon my toddler ran onto the road while I stood on the footpath helplessly holding my new baby. I was distraught, and overwhelmed suddenly with feelings of failure. The 'what-if's were quite insistent. That morning, my eldest hadn't wanted me to buckle her into her car seat, and suddenly that mattered too, and the feeling of rejection stung. Now I sort of shrivelled up inside a brain of rage. I was all contained within a blanked face. And I didn't really notice.

to be continued

A friend, a lovely friend, who blogs here, found my blog yesterday. Being a kind and helpful sort, he recommended that I get all technical and track visitations. (To my blog, that is. Nothing extra-terrestrial going on here.) Will was kind enough to send me a little tutorial via Twitter, so that I could, you know, quickly and easily add the tracker. 


An hour. Blerk. I don't understand HTML at all. I mean, I completely admire it, and I find all those computer-whizzy people quite astounding and interesting. I have one friend who tweets about it, and I don't understand a single syllable, but I enjoy reading his tweets nevertheless. (One likes to feel that one associates with the intelligentsia.)


I began to wonder what it was about the HTML that I didn't like. Was it the <arrows> and strange fragments of not-words? Was it the blank spaces which, as I later discovered, as just as important as the letters? I think it was the feeling of being in a half-familiar world. A world which, given half a day's tutorial, I technically could understand, but which I had no interest in learning about. 


Limits to knowledge annoy me - always have. I can remember vividly learning as a small child that in heaven, when Jesus sets everything to rights, we will understand everything we need to know. "I'm in!" said my soul, and the rest is (complicated) history. 


Limits to understanding also frustrate me. One of my pet hates as a child was being misunderstood. In truth, this is still a problem for me. And I can see that trait in my eldest daughter too. It's linked somewhat to a strong sense of justice. But that's a story for another day.


Several events have thrown me lately. I posted a photo of my childhood teddy on facebook last week. My Dad saw it and corrected the spelling of his name. It seems, for thirty years, I have thought my teddy was Ralphy. In fact, he is named after a dog in Richard Adams' Plague Dogs. And so, it turns out that my teddy is in fact called Rowfy. It's a similar pronunciation. All these years I have just thought my parents didn't really annunciate their 'l's very clearly (sorry Mum and Dad). As I remarked to my sympathetic sister, "I feel almost as if I've found out I'm adopted!" Of course, this is a completely over-the-top remark, but it does tip its hat toward the depth of surprise I was experiencing. 


So, what have we learnt? (Erhgh. That phrase doesn't half give me the shivers!) Several things, which probably could be written out in a little poem, but won't be, because I've other important, cheese-related articles to be writing.

• Learning is a lifelong and worthy pursuit.
• Knowlege is wonderful, but until that Great Day, we won't ever have enough for our own liking.
• When faced with uneasiness, we could perhaps let go of perfectionism, or whatever else is getting in our way, and learn to learn like a child again.
• To knit.

A Long Time After


A bit of a working title. It's an idea James and I have had, to write (perhaps together?) about our experiences of depression. It sounds depressing, I know, but the idea would be to make it extremely practical and readable; something that anyone could pick up and get something out of. Anyone who would like to know more about depressive illness, parenting, marriage, and surviving all three. And all the bits in between.


The working title comes from something one of the girls said...about them being born so close together, and their brother being "a long time after". One reason for a larger age gap between second and third children was my first incidence of depression, which began during my second pregnancy, but was only diagnosed when my second baby was about two months old. 


It also has to do with the fact that sometimes we only have profound realisations "a long time after" events. Just as we only think of that witty riposte long after we have finished a banter with someone, our brains often continue covertly to cogitate on happenings, only dishing up 'the goods' later on.


So, just as Kel Knight on Kath and Kim dictated his "idea for a sausage" using his trusty dictaphone, I intend to use this space to start some drafting.