Vachon Imagined

When we are feeling depressed, it is a state of being.

It is not permanent.

No matter how many tools we have at our disposal, no matter how much we learn, grow, or understand, we still move through difficult seasons. Anyone who is honest about life knows this. It is often called the valley.

And the valley exists because something is above it.

We recognize we are down because we know there is another place. Another way of being. Another experience waiting beyond where we currently stand.

When I am there, I can see my thoughts above it. I can feel my body within it. I can sense that the spirit of life is allowing this experience to exist.

I do not always have control over when it comes.

When it arrives, it arrives.

And I have learned to say, okay.

Not because I want to remain there.

Not because I have given up.

But because resistance does not always bring understanding.

Acceptance is the first step toward moving through.

When I am in those moments, I have learned to ask forgiveness from the people around me—not because I have done something wrong by feeling what I feel, but because I know people can miss the version of me they are used to.

The bubbly one.

The energetic one.

The one who brings light into the room.

Those parts of me are real.

But they are not all of me.

I am also the quiet moments.

The tired moments.

The moments when I need to be held by life instead of constantly offering myself to it.

No matter where we go or what happens to us, we are always walking with ourselves.

Our thoughts.

Our feelings.

Our memories.

Our experiences.

The entirety of life moving within us.

We walk through the valley willingly.

We walk through the heights willingly.

Both are part of the journey.

Although we may not always understand why we are asked to experience one or the other, somewhere within us we know they are meaningful.

They are necessary.

They teach us.

The valley does not mean we have lost our way.

It is where we learn how to walk with ourselves more gently, more authentically, offering ourselves hope and compassion.

It is where we learn to laugh again.

To laugh at the ways we take ourselves too seriously.

To laugh at the ways we are harder on ourselves than anyone else could ever be.

To recognize the beauty in being human—the ability to fall, to rise, to learn, and to begin again.

The places we most want to escape can become the places where we discover the deepest parts of who we are.