This time, I wasn't afraid.
The first time I experienced depression, I thought it would last forever.
The second time, I knew better.
I was fifty-nine years old.
This time, it wasn't the end of a relationship.
It came from a different kind of heartbreak.
My middle daughter stopped talking to me.
That is another story—one that deserves to be told on its own.
But anyone who is a parent knows there are few pains deeper than feeling separated from your child.
A mother's love doesn't simply disappear.
It remains.
It hopes.
It waits.
I was already seeing a therapist.
As we talked about everything that had been happening with my daughter, she gently suggested I make an appointment with my doctor.
She thought I was slipping back into depression.
Deep down, I think I already knew.
I made the appointment.
Before I saw my doctor, I sat with his assistant and told her everything that had been happening.
I cried a little.
Not because I thought my life was over.
Because my heart was broken.
At first, it felt like a knife twisting in my gut.
Over time, the sharp pain faded.
What remained was something different.
I felt numb.
Flat.
I wasn't sitting around crying all day.
I simply moved through life without much feeling.
The depression itself felt familiar.
The heaviness.
The exhaustion.
The flatness.
Even my hands still shook from the medication.
But I was different.
The woman in her twenties believed depression would last forever.
At fifty-nine, I knew something she didn't.
This too shall pass.
Not because life suddenly becomes easy.
It doesn't.
Life has seasons.
Some are joyful.
Some break our hearts.
None of them last forever.
I had evidence.
I had survived heartbreak.
I had survived divorce.
I had survived closing my business.
I had survived losing people I loved.
Every difficult season had eventually given way to another.
I wasn't embarrassed this time.
I wasn't ashamed.
Maybe part of that was because society had changed.
People were finally talking more openly about mental health.
But I think the bigger reason was that I had changed.
I no longer believed depression was who I was.
It was something I was experiencing.
Not someone I had become.
Today, my hands still shake.
Sometimes I still feel flat.
But I am not afraid.
Depression has taken me to some very dark places.
But it has also given me gifts.
It has given me empathy.
It has given me compassion.
It has given me a deeper understanding of people who are struggling silently.
Most importantly, it has taught me hope.
Hope wasn't believing everything would be okay tomorrow.
Hope was remembering that every difficult season I'd lived through had eventually passed.
This one would too.
Depression may still visit.
But it no longer gets to decide who I am.
A thought to take with you
Have you ever faced something difficult the second time with a strength or understanding you didn't have the first time?
What has your own life taught you that helps you hold onto hope when things are hard?
Something come to mind?
If you'd like to share it, I'd love to hear what this story made you think about.