CRAFT AS HEALER

A Portrait of Depression

IT IS A PAINSTAKING, almost impossible affair to try to explain one’s experience of the dark underbelly of depression when one is in the midst of it. And the nature and content of these low moods are so changeable from one bout to the next that developing insight into one’s predicament is, whilst not impossible, certainly something that requires both personal persistence and the initial help of a supportive individual who can assist one to build a narrative through it. These individuals, however, are rare and not easy to find.

In the late 1980s I went to stay with my sister and her family in Melbourne for a few weeks. Though I had developed some insight into my situation, and spent quit a few years in the revolving door of the mental health system, my condition remained untreated (pharmacologically, for almost 15 years) and the symptoms of the ailment were entrenched.

I had begun to sew a little by then and I realised that making something with my hands aided me, like the smoothing stroke of ointment on an open wound. So, I took along some raffia straw, some white cording and a book on basket weaving techniques and I began to weave a shape into existence. It was simple and repetitive and it became a way of communicating to my family that I was there – the unfolding straw form was proof of my existence and a contribution of sorts.

As the days passed and I was made mute by despair, it became a lifeline for me during my stay there. Each day as the others went off to school and work it allowed me my own measure of industry, a way of participating in the daily life of that little home. With my bleak thoughts and few remaining interpersonal skills, I experienced moments of rest – and glimpses of hope through the rhythmic weaving of the straw shape unfolding before me.

In later years and upon reflection I look back at that time fearful for that young woman and the cascading horrors of breakdown yet before her. I still wrestle with many of the symptoms of mental ill health but I manage them now, by means of a combination of therapies and medication, and careful living.

I have learnt that my ability to weave a coherent narrative of my life has strengthened as I have matured through adulthood, and each time as I surface from the tempest of ill health this understanding is further enhanced.

It seems that over time our brain is capable of undergoing the neuro-plastic changes that will enable us (if we are willing to listen to the prompts) to appreciate in ever widening spirals of greater complexity a broader understanding of the world, and how our lives fit into the matrix of diversity that surrounds us.

And as I have become capable of this wider-angle perspective I am permitted a modicum of peace.

Sometimes only distance and self-knowledge enable us to make better sense of what has happened and what makes us who we are. And perhaps it is so that suffering can be a journey deeper into the heart of life – if we choose to make it thus.