This past September, I got caught in a rip current while swimming in the Pacific Ocean. My husband and daughter were splashing with a boogie board near the shore, and I darted off in my wetsuit to swim amidst the churning waves. Suddenly, I was very far from shore, carried by a fast-flowing river of water that cut through in the opposite direction of those waves. My husband was signaling for me to get back, motioning that I was too far. I shouted for him to come and get me, an immediate instinct because he is so steadfast and always comes to my aid. He could not hear me above the din of the waves, but even if he could, there would have been nothing he could do. It quickly dawned on me that I was in danger.

I tried to swim against the current but the best I could do was stay in one place. A feeling was very powerful inside of me: I did not want to die. I did not want to leave my husband and daughter. 

Understanding that I needed to get out of the current, I angled my body towards a large monolith rock that beckoned to my right. I tread water to keep from going farther out into the ocean. A large wave hurtled towards the rock, and I relaxed my body so as to be carried by that wave. I grabbed a hold of a corner of the monolith and held on with all my might as the wave pulled back into the sea, tugging at me to come along with it. The crevice was slippery with moss and barnacles, but I managed to hold on. When the water subsided, I scrambled up onto the side of the rock and shimmied across its berth, pausing when waves would reach me again so as not to lose my hold and fall back into the water. The monolith ended in a calm patch of water about 20 feet from the shore. I jumped in and paddled shakily to my family, who were waiting dazed at the water’s edge.

My husband was confused and shaken up – what had just happened? My daughter did not want to talk about it. I was teary and jarred. And grateful – so, so grateful. 

This event happened during a struggle with clinical depression – the third of my life. My first experience with depression was during college, a typical time for that beast to rear its head. My second was also unsurprising, as it surfaced in 2020. I have taken an SSRI for many of the years in-between and seen a therapist as well. Last spring I started doing EMDR, a kind of therapy that uses tactile sensation to stimulate both sides of the brain to re-process traumatic memories. I was making a lot of progress processing grief and I had wondered if I could be emotionally safe without medication. My psychiatrist agreed that it was worth a try, and counseled me on how to wean off my medication. She also counseled me on signs that it might be time to consider restarting medication.

I had fully weaned off Lexapro by mid-June. One month later, I was experiencing ruminating gloomy and catastrophic thoughts. I thought that I was perhaps just struggling in my grief and trauma processing. Time ticked on and the symptoms intensified, but slowly enough so that I didn’t quite realize the dark sea I had found myself in.

I wish I could say that my near-drowning shook me out of my depression, that the darkness lifted like a veil. Unfortunately, it didn’t. As we drove home from the beach, I realized that the big ball of sadness that lived in my stomach was still very much there. That realization felt overwhelming and suffocating. Until a small thought crept in like light: maybe it was time to restart medication.

Like many others, my family tree has been torn apart by mental illness. Suicide on both sides throughout the generations, substance use disorders obliteraing branches, depression, schizophrenia, and lots of other unnamed, unspoken harbingers of despair. Most of these lives were lived before the advent of SSRIs and other psychiatric medications. Many people throughout my family tree were forced to abandon or neglect their children as mental illness consumed them. I was born from this family, with these genes and epigenes firing away inside my brain, along with the trauma of having witnessed some of its effects in the generations surrounding me.

I have read a lot about depression, and the voice that rings truest for me is the voice of Parker Palmer. In a beautiful conversation with Kate Bowler, Palmer described it this way:  “Depression isn’t just about feeling lost in the dark. It’s the sense that you’ve become the dark…there is no negotiating it. You’re it. It’s you.” 

This time around, I was headed towards inseparability with the dark. No amount of therapy, EMDR, walks and prayer, or time with friends could stop this hurdling. As much as that was hard for me to admit. As the Pacific ocean almost drank me in and I could see my life clearly, I could see where I was headed with my depression – a parallel ocean of despair.

And so. A brush with death did not throw off my depression. But the wave that brought me to the rock did mother me – it birthed me into an awareness that I desire to be fully alive. For my daughter, for my husband, for myself. I don’t want my daughter to be another limb on that family tree that is blown apart because her mother had no room for anything but depression. And I will do whatever it takes to be fully alive and to not abandon her. Now I have settled that score with myself: to be fully alive for me requires medication. The ocean baptized me into this truth.

I feel God present in this truth. Very, very much so. Blessed are those who mourn (Matthew 5:4). I feel the silver-lining of my sadness is that I know that to be true. Especially in my saddest moments, I felt the loving arms of God literally wrap around me, hold me and love me out of my sense of worthlessness. God was in that wave that brought me eventually to shore, and God was in the desire to be alive. God is in the branch of my family tree that can be mended, thanks in large part to life-changing medication. And I will never forget this. I think it has helped me to see the world in a new, panentheistic light – the Love that stitches together the universe is present within all.

It’s been two months since I restarted my SSRI medication, and that ball of sadness is gone. I am not completely free of the damning delusions that depression brings, but I am seeing my way to joy. I am laughing much more and feeling moments of lightness for the first time in many months. I still take my walks and do EMDR and spend time with friends and pray a lot, and I’m so glad to know I can’t live without those things along with medication. And I’m so relieved to feel so much better. 

Through it all, I’m learning to trust the person that I feel God wants me to be. The most surprising moment of this occurred during a prayer. I have been praying for as long as I can remember. I have heard many voices through my prayers – the voice of Mary, the voice of St. Agatha, the voice of Dorothy Day, and so many more…But for the very first time in my 40 years, I heard my own voice. It was very quiet, but it was very strong. It was the me that God created that has been inside all along. I’m not sure if such a moment will come again, but even if it was just this once in all my life, it was enough.