Many of you know that depression is something that I’ve carried, and cared for, for most of my life.

While the seeds of the depression were already there – I can look back and see the sadness that was arising in middle school, especially after a teacher groomed me for sexual abuse – I remember clearly the first crippling incident of depression, when it rose to the surface in sharp contrast.

I was 18, a college sophomore, and already struggling with bulimia. Yet something happened and I felt cracked open into a sadness and loss that swallowed me.

That depression trailed me for the rest of my college years and is something I’ve cared for, in various degrees, since.

Which came first – the depression or the eating disorders – is hard to know. But the seas that fed both were clearly already there.

I’ve been on the receiving end of much kindness, love and therapeutic support to care for this pain and loss that erupts as a heavy sadness – and to care for the eating disorders, my brave attempt to soothe this overwhelming terror.

I can feel the healing that has moved through my nervous system, and I am so grateful for the hands that have helped hold me and my pain. I send these souls a thousand thank yous.

Through each layer of healing, I receive a more nuanced understanding and compassion for the ways my sensitivity, depression and relationship with food has impacted my life. There is more acceptance and even more awe:  there is so much we each carry, and we carry it with courage, creativity, perseverance and love.

Being kind to our vulnerabilities

Depression, anxiety, and eating disorders are not easy wounds to carry. I know many of you care for these vulnerabilities, and with courage.

Our cultures and communities are not always kind to suffering – especially mental health suffering.

Sadly, this can be true even in healing circles – in the very places where we are looking for kindness, help and support. As my mentor Stephen Jenkinson once said, “The wellness community can be very intolerant of a lack of wellness.”

Because of this, I’ve spent the last 16 years advocating for a different set of eyes, a different way of seeing and holding suffering.

I’ve been blessed by teachers who have grown my eyes – people like Abby Seixas, my first mentor; developmental psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld; Bonnie Badenoch, my teacher of relational neuroscience; parenting teacher Patty Wipfler; and meditation teacher Tara Brach.

What they share in common is a way of seeing ourselves that is non-pathologizing, steeped in dignity, and that looks again at what we may shame or pejoratively label as dysfunction.

Our hidden wholeness

I’ve felt moved to remind us of the hidden grace and strength of ourselves and of anyone who cares for the wounds of trauma, and how they appear in our lives: chronic depression, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders, or any other suffering.

In my own life, my experiences with suffering have softened me. They’ve opened my heart more vastly than anything else I’ve experienced – not only to sorrow, but also to the joy and beauty of life.

God willing, depression has made me kinder and gentler and a bit more compassionate towards others. It has also made me more attuned to their noble beauty.

Some subtle changes to Growing Humankindness

Shining light on the noble beauty in ourselves – to remember Who We Are – is the underbelly of all we do at Growing Humankindness.

I often call this ‘hearing our deeper story.’ This deeper story is always more true and more merciful.

I’ve been making some subtle changes to Growing Humankindness and to my offerings this past year to attend more to this remembering – expanding out of the worlds of developmental psychology and relational neuroscience and into the realm of soul.

As you are sensitive, attuned people, you may have felt and noticed this shift.

I’m moving slightly move away from the nuts and bolts of healing food compulsions to tending this sacred fire of our inner nobility.

The understanding that I’ve learned from developmental psychology and relational neuroscience hasn’t gone away. But rather that teaching this neuroscience directly I want to support us in embodying it: to offer this warm relating to ourselves.

Here’s what these changes look like:

I’m writing poetry and essays on healing at O Nobly Born, the love letters of Growing Humankindness. And I have an idea to create a podcast version of O Nobly Born – a short, 5-6 minute reading of a poem, a thought, or a nugget of remembrance to nurture this deeper story – our remembrance of ourselves.

I’ve been getting support so I can birth books – starting with I Will Not Make War Against My Own Heart, my plea for a merciful tending of ourselves.

I also want to write a book version of my food classes, and perhaps a reader for gentle support for recovery. I have visions of collaborating with artists and healers, to join with others in leaving a trail of beauty, while tending what is dear to me:  a simple, ordinary life that honors the sacred.

My food courses – Emerge: Create a New Habit; Align: Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel; and When Food is Your Mother – are available as home study courses, and have so much wonderful help in them. I will continue to offer these.

And I’ve loved stewarding and fleshing out the Growing Humankindness community, where a group of soul divers have come together to nourish their well being.

In the community, we’re tuning our ears to listen for our deeper story, to reclaim how we see and hold ourselves. Yes, there’s support to shift out of painful habits with food – but this shift is held within this greater umbrella of wholeness.

What are you needing?

If you’re primarily wanting a coach who can help you eat more mindfully or cut out sugar, and my work no longer appeals to you, I understand. I wish you every good thing as you seek good help elsewhere or unsubscribe. There are so many resources to support you, so many people who can offer the medicine for the help you seek.

And if you feel resonant with my new direction, I look forward to unfolding this path with you.

Either way, it would be helpful to hear from you, to know if this new direction appeals or doesn’t appeal to you, and to know if you would be interested in reading books or a podcast. (You won’t hurt my feelings; feedback is helpful.)

I will be building a new mailing list for this shift, and will keep writing to keep you abreast of these slight changes. A new website may be in the works to make this shift more clear.

In the meantime, if you’re wanting hands on help, I talk about my offerings below, including an upcoming group cohort of my most popular class, Emerge: Create a New Habit. If you want gentle support to heal a compulsive relationship with sugar, this class is for you.

A new poem – Instructions for Depression

I’ll close with a link to my latest poem, Instructions for Depression.

I wrote this poem after both a hard day and after listening to another’s hard day. I was struck by how we never know what someone’s carrying until we ask.

And we can underestimate the small things we do each day, and how we impact each other. We have such power!

If you’re having a hard day today, this poem might meet you.

And if your day is overflowing with beauty and kindness, I hope you’ll be the outstretched hand that holds another.

In truth, our days are filled with both:  we’re both the hungry hand and the helping hand, and the days are easy, and hard. Even as the clouds of sadness hover over, I can feel the light, shining through:  the dawn is coming.

We look to the light.

And if you need something to lift your spirits, Melanie DeMore’s song, “One Foot/Lead with Love” does it for me.