African Americans Doing Feminism: Putting Theory into Everyday Practice

14. Diving Deep and Surfacing: How I Healed from Depression

Chapter 14 Diving Deep and Surfacing How I Healed from Depression Vanessa Jackson I had very strong women models in my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt. They used to say, “When you fall down, get up. If you fall down again, get up. And don’t be ashamed of falling down.” —Carrie Saxon Perry, in B. Lanker, I Dream a World Feminists focus on depression largely because, for several decades, both researchers and mental health professionals have repeatedly identified depression as a problem that particularly affects women.1 However, most theories of depression ignore the possible role of gender, and depression is presumed to represent some kind of disorder or dysfunction within the individual. Popular, medically oriented theoretical perspectives on depression emphasize that its origins can be traced to the biochemistry of the brain. But, unlike tests for other health conditions thought to originate as a biological disorder, there is no medical procedure (analogous to a blood test or brain scan), independent of subjective (or “clinical”) judgments made by clinicians, to determine whether or not someone should be diagnosed with depression.2 Traditional approaches to depression suggested that something was always malfunctioning inside a woman’s brain or body. During the 1960s and 1970s, to transcend the limitations of that concept, feminist theorists associated women’s mental health issues with their oppression in society. Feminist interpretations of and practices regarding depressed women linked personal experiences of bad feelings, troubled states of mind, and overwhelming fatigue to the political 227 228 Vanessa Jackson contexts in which women were attempting to survive.3 Feminists used consciousness -raising groups, self-help groups, action groups, and in some cases radical feminist therapy to teach women how to become experts in their own mental health by addressing the sociopolitical systems that worked against a healthy disposition. Being depressed, according to these feminists, involved a continuum of both positive and negative feelings. In the midst of distress, a woman could find hope in her situation through women-only groups that encouraged both personal and political empowerment; these included assertiveness training, selfdefense groups, and reproductive health workshops, as well as special support groups for incest survivors, young mothers with children, and lesbians. Most important, feminist approaches to women’s health (mental and physical) upheld the validity and importance of women’s personal experiences. Gender-sensitive understanding helped women, who had traditionally been dealt with as objects of treatment, to become active participants in their own healing, using a variety of traditional and nontraditional treatments. As a Black feminist therapist with a largely African American, female clientele, I believe that if a better understanding of Black women and depression is to develop, it must explicitly include models that show how our depression is shaped at the interface of public and private life, as well as how our distress and well-being have gendered and cultural origins. I know firsthand—and researchers have empirically demonstrated—that for depressed women, voicing long-silenced experiences can play a crucial part in their empowerment.4 In what follows, I share my experiences with depression and descent as an African American feminist, mental health consumer, and mental health professional. Falling Down in the Dark Falling down, as if plummeting into a deep, dark place, is the perfect metaphor for depression. I was lying stretched out on my kitchen floor at 4:30 am one day, wondering if I would ever get up again. At that moment, on that cold, hard floor, I finally admitted I was immobilized by an emotional pain more serious than the occasional “blue funk.” My feminist arsenal of words like womanist subjectivity, agency, and multifaceted oppression and liberation could not serve as levers to move me as usual from painful emotions to my witty, intellectual, and optimistic Black feminist self. Nor could my political ideology alone get me off the floor. In that frightening moment I admitted how defeated I felt by life. However, it was also an empowering moment: Sinking to the floor and just being a small brown lump was an incredible release! For the first time in my life I was simply refusing to maintain the façade of holding it all together. My body was willing to do what my mind would not—stop and rest. 229 Diving Deep and Surfacing My depression started gradually, triggered by the unraveling of my marriage . Less than eight months into the marriage, my husband began...