On plants and healing.

Haycinth smells like tears to me.
The kind of tears that symbolize the realization that something hurts and that it can be named and therefore it can be healed.
But that healing sometimes requires cutting or changing a pattern or running.
Healing is rarely easy.

When I was 17, I encountered seasonal depression for the first time in my life. My boyfriend at the time did some mean things (as 17 year old boys are prone to do,) and I just went crazy for a while. My brain was telling me awful things, things like I wasn't good enough, no one liked me, everything was dark. The first time I was SAD, I did shameful things to try to make the emotional pain go away. I cut the insides of my thys with broken glass, so no one would see, I walled myself off, and I cried in public for no reason.

Sometime in March of that year, I found an album that for some reason entranced me. I don't know why, but the music along with some friends led me back into the world of sane people. In the middle ages, they believed that certain chords could turn people to the devil. This sediment was repeated with the fear of Jazz, Rock and Roll and Marylin Manson. I don't know if this is true, but I do know that music can heal. This is why I teach it. I have been forgetting lately, but this is why.

It has been over 10 years, and each winter depression/anxiety comes back, at some time, in some way. Some years are worse than others, and as I sat at the Dim Sum table and cried in front of 12 of my closest friends... because my husband ordered chicken feet, I realized that I have stepped away from the world of rational people. My self imposed tigers are coming for me to rip apart my sanity and self worth.

The bright spot is that once you name them, you can beat them back. They don't like the light, so once spring comes, they rarely make an appearance. I will chase them away. I'm going to a yoga class this afternoon. I'll make an appointment with a counselor tomorrow. Work can't continue to come first. And I will not pass up an opportunity to surround myself with flowers and friends. Daffodils should begin blooming with out being forced sometime in the next 2 weeks. I don't remember where I buried them last year, so I will be watching.

And I'm looking for a new album. It has to be highly melodic. I'm looking for upbeat tempos but with words that express anger, shame, sorrow, and above all hope.

I need an album I can relate to. An album that reminds me that I am not alone in this darkness we call winter. An album that promises that the first flowers of spring will bloom for real soon.

Blessed Be,
Michelle