If you have been struggling with depression you may have been to countless therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, Reiki practitioners, faith healers ... and you may have read countless books. You may have tried to take up jogging, tried dieting, changed your relationships, tried to think positively, confronted your past,  ... and at times you may have felt as though you were finally getting a bit better - improving ... but then once again you have been thrust down into the pits of blackness. You want to die. You wonder why it never gets any better. You wonder why you can't live your life in the same way as everyone else. And you wonder what the answer is ...

This site is about understanding that when you're depressed it actually MEANS something ...
something that can never be reduced to a 'chemical imbalance' or a 'clinical condition' ...
not even to 'this problem' or 'that problem'.

This site is about understanding that depression is at the same time both a natural response and a natural solution, not of some sort of biochemical machine in the shape of a human body, but of the human being, a being who is both an inner and an outer self - a soul and an everyday self - that work together as an inseparable WHOLE. 

When we feel depressed we are feeling the weight of our questions and the world's questions, both those we can articulate and those we can't. We are asking ourselves who we are and how do we live in the world. It's message is that we need to take the time to go down into ourselves, to reassess things from a new vantage point, to listen to ourselves in a deeper way and digest our experience in new ways. It's message is that we are feeling adrift, unable to find within us a 'ground' or a solidity that we can, above all else, rely on and listen to. And the reality of depression is that it will actually take us to that ground. It will actually reconnect us with ALL that we are. Reconnect us with our soul.

We only stay depressed, caught in the mire of its desperate misery and suffering, when we feel that the weight of those questions and the weight of our lives is something we must fight at all costs.

This site asks the questions - 

'What actually IS depression?'
 'What actually IS a human being?'
'What actually IS the soul?'

There are so many paths, techniques, medicines, religions and gurus in this world but your happiness and sense of meaning does not depend on them. Your path to your Self is as singular as you are, and no technique or way in the world can possibly encompass that. There may be times when you need the comfort of a technique or a prescription-for-living, but ultimately you will not find your Self in them. If you do need the comfort or guidance of a person or a philosophy or a path, find one that above all values YOU, believes in YOU and acknowledges the profound Knowing, meaning and validity that YOU have within. THAT will be the sign of the truest philosophy and the truest path.

This is a site about my journey to that understanding and that wisdom, my journey to a life that I can live, one in which I can bear my beauty, my ugliness, and my desperation.  It is a site full of depth, art, reflection, wisdom, writing and soul. Go to My Story or Quotes and Notes.

- Marianne Broug, Adelaide, Australia, 2004-2008 -