Climbing Out Of The Well

Several years ago, I was deep in the throes of depression. I felt like I was at the bottom of a well and it was completely my fault that I shouldn't feel this way. I felt completely hopeless like I would never be happy again. And I felt so much shame for feeling that way in the first place.

I remember feeling like I was a terrible person for feeling the way I did and if I were better, smarter, wiser, or more spiritual, I wouldn’t be where I was then.

I remember my children trying to break through the dark fog to get to me as if their beautiful faces were looking down over the edge of the well trying to get me to do the hard work of climbing up because there was no easy way to get out, I just had to climb out on my own power.

I felt like their words and smiles were far away trying to reach the bottom of a deep well.

At one point, my husband said to me, I can’t do this for another year. I thought incredulously, ‘YOU can’t do this for another year? What about me?’

But, I thought about that over and over. I had felt like someone else had caused this situation and I needed someone else to fix it. As I thought about his statement, I asked myself if I wanted to go another year like this.

And that’s when I realized that no one was going to come to fix it for me, no one would come to tell me what I needed to hear, or help me in the ways I thought I needed it. So I decided to become my own hero and do whatever it took to climb out of the darkness, from the bottom of the well to the top. 

I read, researched, practiced, and slowly began to change. Eventually, I emerged from the darkness and started to feel like myself again.

Being successfully out of the well and into the light, it is now my passion to help people climb out of whatever well they feel like they are at the bottom of and to be more happy. It breaks my heart to hear of so many teens, young adults, and moms with depression or just plain unhappiness. I have seen some of this in my children, and at least 90 percent of the university students that enroll in my classes have depression.

I am not a therapist, and I cannot legally diagnose or treat depression, but I have a passion for helping people choose things that will help them be more happy and avoid things that are proven to make people unhappy.

That is why I wrote Choose Happy: Be This, Not That. I studied the things that worked and the things that didn’t work while climbing out of my own well of depression. I would much rather have people learn from my experiences instead of having to learn it the hard way as well. 

Get Choose Happy: Be This Not That to learn the secrets my research uncovered.