This is the next post about my journey through depression; if you missed the first part, it's here.
Let me start off this part with a lesson I taught a couple of years ago in my ward's young women's class.
I brought in four dishes: One filled with juicy strawberries, one full of marshmallows, one of dog food, and one containing Comet (the super toxic but highly effective kitchen cleanser).
I asked the girls which dish would be the best for them to eat, and they all obviously pointed at the one with the fruit in it.
I talked about each dish in turn, starting at the strawberries. "Obviously, we want the majority of our diet to be filled with wholesome foods--strawberries, if you will. When we eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins, we have healthy, strong bodies. Our immune system works well, so we don't get sick easily, and we usually have more energy, as well."
I moved over to the marshmallows. "If you eat a few marshmallows once in a while, it's not going to hurt you. You could probably even eat a handful or two every day and still keep your figure up, depending on your genes and your metabolism. Marshmallows aren't harmful unless that's a large portion or a majority of what you're putting into your body."
I then pointed at the dog food. "When Jack was a little kid, he used to love eating dog food, for some reason (to be honest, each of my kids has gone through that phase. Not sure why). He would go and grab a handful as often as he could get away with it. I'd often find him with little pieces of dog food in his mouth--yup. Super disgusting. Dog food is called 'DOG food' for a reason--it's not meant for human consumption. In fact, it's gross.
"While it's not poisonous and probably won't kill you, it still would make you very sick if you consumed it. Dog food, while primarily made of things that aren't bad, still has ingredients in it that could harm us. This wasn't meant to go in our bodies."
I picked up the Comet and shifted it around so the girls could smell it. "This stuff, on the other hand, is downright poisonous. I saw an episode of 'My Strange Addiction' once where there was a woman who liked to eat this stuff."
The girls gasped, appalled. I nodded.
"Yeah--she'd put it in her hand and lick it off. Her teeth were rotting, her esophagus had been burned away, and she was completely unhealthy. It made such an impression on me--why would someone knowingly eat poison? Why would they ever want to put something like that into their body? She didn't get high off of it, she didn't get any kind of buzz or anything--she just liked the way it tasted."
I shuddered and set it down, then turned to face the girls.
"Now, we can obviously draw a metaphor from this. Our spirits need constant nourishment, just as desperately as our bodies do. The kind of media we take into our minds and souls can have levels of nourishment as varied and wide as the kinds of food I just showed you.
"The strawberries represent good, wholesome media. These are books, movies, and songs that leave you feeling better than you felt before you partook of them. You've all seen movies that left you feeling positive, motivated, inspired, or pensive. We've all heard songs or read books that left us feeling that way, I know. These are the ones that nourish our spirits, that help us to grow and become strong.
"Now, marshmallow media is harmless, fun, entertaining, and funny. I recently heard a song that was a total marshmallow song, in my opinion--Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Call Me Maybe.'"
This was the big song at the time (you know, the one the radio station played every half hour or so), and the girls all laughed, knowing exactly what I meant. I laughed, too, just proud of myself for knowing what kids these days were listening to at the time.
"It's harmless. It's catchy, it's fun, and there's nothing wrong with listening to music like that once in a while, or even every day. I love my cleaning Pandora station, and it's full of marshmallow songs.
"But--when marshmallows are all we are feeding our spirit--when we're spending the majority of our time on harmless, fluffy, easy-to-digest materials, or in another term, distractions, we're not going to have the spiritual growth we need to get us through hard things.
"The next media source--dog food media--is, I believe, the majority of media out there. We all have our favorite TV shows, the ones that are mostly good with only a few innuendos or just a couple of bad scenes. We all have movies that we watch that aren't that bad. And I know that I, for one, have several songs on my playlist that I just kind of bleep over the bad words or don't really pay attention to what the words are saying because, after all, the melody and beat are catchy and, really, the words aren't that important anyway. But these messages--these ingredients--aren't meant for our spirits' consumption. And they will make us spiritually ill if these are consumed."
The girls were nodding at this point, and I moved on to the last dish once again.
"Last but not least, there is media out there that is absolutely poisonous to our souls. This media--books, movies, songs--is designed with the intent to kill our souls. Pornography absolutely falls into this category, and if any of us are partaking of pornography, we will eventually feel our souls rotting away.
"No matter what kind of spiritual diet we're on, we can always change it. That is where Christ's Atonement comes in."
I moved on to bear testimony of the Atonement and its power to change people's hearts and minds, and then the lesson was over.
It was a lesson I was pretty proud of, to be honest (as a teacher who was ratherlazy focused on content rather than extras, it was big for me to even take in the materials needed for an object lesson), and those metaphors have stayed in my mind ever since.
This past year, when my mind was so dark and dim, I partook in a LOT of marshmallow and dog food media. I lived off of Facebook, music, and especially TV--media that could numb me from the hard things I was feeling and thinking. Without naming any particular TV shows, I'll just say that I picked shows with witty writing, interesting story lines, creative characters, and very little depth. During my hardest nights when I was alone and Steve was working, I would put the kids to bed, turn the TV on, and then sometimes end up staying up until 2, 3, or 4 in the morning, binge-watching these TV shows.
To be totally honest, I wasn't even watching these shows because they made me laugh (although they were always very funny), I was watching these shows because they had a numbing effect. They distracted me from the darkness of my life, and so every night, for hours at a time, I binged on dog food.
And then did it again the next day.
These TV shows didn't have anything really terrible in them (although I guarantee I would've felt quite uncomfortable watching them with my mom in the room), but they usually had a few sexual innuendos per episode. Quite often, they had very negative messages to send about what people in this world really are like and the impossibility of ever truly succeeding at anything.
With messages like that feeding my mind and spirit for several hours of the day, no wonder I was feeling depressed!
In January and February, I started (really, through the grace of the Atonement rather than through any show of self-will or self-discipline) to get some control over my TV habit. During this time, I became better acquainted with some friends who were involved in a personal development group, and these friends lent me several inspiring CDs to listen to.
When I began taking the time to listen to these CDs, which were full of positive and powerful messages, I started feeling less and less inclined to need to turn the TV on, and started turning towards wholesome food--strawberry media--more often. I found that when I got the taste for what wholesome messages and wholesome ideas really felt like, I didn't like the dog food quite as much as I once had.
Don't get me wrong--I still enjoy sitting down with Steve to watch TV once in a while at the end of a long day. But now, instead of watching five or six episodes in a night, we're content with one or two before we go to bed at a much more reasonable hour (except when I have crazy insomnia and need to write, apparently).
And instead of TV and radio and Facebook being the majority of what I'm taking into my mind, I find myself thinking a little more about the nutritional content of what I'm about to "eat" before I partake. I find myself clicking on my LDS Gospel App more often than on my Facebook or Buzzfeed ones, and when I get a little free time, I'm reading rather than reaching immediately for the remote.
It's been interesting to see the difference after doing this much more intensely for a month straight. I feel hopeful. I feel inspired. I am setting goals and hitting them, and I have plans for the future rather than just fears about what it might bring. I feel like me again, rather than the shell I was for so long.
And, nice little bonus--when I listen to positive messages, it gets me up and moving--so my house is cleaner than it's been for a loooong time, lemme tell ya.
I am incredibly grateful for a merciful God, who has given me exactly the messages, tools, and inspiration I've needed exactly when I've truly been ready for it. While I would have liked to have been at this much more cheerful and healthy place a year ago, rather than taking over a year to get here, I remember that I'm just blessed to be exactly where God wants me to be, when He wants me to be there.
How good God is to me.
And to you, if you're the one I needed to write this message for.
Let me start off this part with a lesson I taught a couple of years ago in my ward's young women's class.
I brought in four dishes: One filled with juicy strawberries, one full of marshmallows, one of dog food, and one containing Comet (the super toxic but highly effective kitchen cleanser).
I asked the girls which dish would be the best for them to eat, and they all obviously pointed at the one with the fruit in it.
I talked about each dish in turn, starting at the strawberries. "Obviously, we want the majority of our diet to be filled with wholesome foods--strawberries, if you will. When we eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins, we have healthy, strong bodies. Our immune system works well, so we don't get sick easily, and we usually have more energy, as well."
I moved over to the marshmallows. "If you eat a few marshmallows once in a while, it's not going to hurt you. You could probably even eat a handful or two every day and still keep your figure up, depending on your genes and your metabolism. Marshmallows aren't harmful unless that's a large portion or a majority of what you're putting into your body."
I then pointed at the dog food. "When Jack was a little kid, he used to love eating dog food, for some reason (to be honest, each of my kids has gone through that phase. Not sure why). He would go and grab a handful as often as he could get away with it. I'd often find him with little pieces of dog food in his mouth--yup. Super disgusting. Dog food is called 'DOG food' for a reason--it's not meant for human consumption. In fact, it's gross.
"While it's not poisonous and probably won't kill you, it still would make you very sick if you consumed it. Dog food, while primarily made of things that aren't bad, still has ingredients in it that could harm us. This wasn't meant to go in our bodies."
I picked up the Comet and shifted it around so the girls could smell it. "This stuff, on the other hand, is downright poisonous. I saw an episode of 'My Strange Addiction' once where there was a woman who liked to eat this stuff."
The girls gasped, appalled. I nodded.
"Yeah--she'd put it in her hand and lick it off. Her teeth were rotting, her esophagus had been burned away, and she was completely unhealthy. It made such an impression on me--why would someone knowingly eat poison? Why would they ever want to put something like that into their body? She didn't get high off of it, she didn't get any kind of buzz or anything--she just liked the way it tasted."
I shuddered and set it down, then turned to face the girls.
"Now, we can obviously draw a metaphor from this. Our spirits need constant nourishment, just as desperately as our bodies do. The kind of media we take into our minds and souls can have levels of nourishment as varied and wide as the kinds of food I just showed you.
"The strawberries represent good, wholesome media. These are books, movies, and songs that leave you feeling better than you felt before you partook of them. You've all seen movies that left you feeling positive, motivated, inspired, or pensive. We've all heard songs or read books that left us feeling that way, I know. These are the ones that nourish our spirits, that help us to grow and become strong.
"Now, marshmallow media is harmless, fun, entertaining, and funny. I recently heard a song that was a total marshmallow song, in my opinion--Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Call Me Maybe.'"
This was the big song at the time (you know, the one the radio station played every half hour or so), and the girls all laughed, knowing exactly what I meant. I laughed, too, just proud of myself for knowing what kids these days were listening to at the time.
"It's harmless. It's catchy, it's fun, and there's nothing wrong with listening to music like that once in a while, or even every day. I love my cleaning Pandora station, and it's full of marshmallow songs.
"But--when marshmallows are all we are feeding our spirit--when we're spending the majority of our time on harmless, fluffy, easy-to-digest materials, or in another term, distractions, we're not going to have the spiritual growth we need to get us through hard things.
"The next media source--dog food media--is, I believe, the majority of media out there. We all have our favorite TV shows, the ones that are mostly good with only a few innuendos or just a couple of bad scenes. We all have movies that we watch that aren't that bad. And I know that I, for one, have several songs on my playlist that I just kind of bleep over the bad words or don't really pay attention to what the words are saying because, after all, the melody and beat are catchy and, really, the words aren't that important anyway. But these messages--these ingredients--aren't meant for our spirits' consumption. And they will make us spiritually ill if these are consumed."
The girls were nodding at this point, and I moved on to the last dish once again.
"Last but not least, there is media out there that is absolutely poisonous to our souls. This media--books, movies, songs--is designed with the intent to kill our souls. Pornography absolutely falls into this category, and if any of us are partaking of pornography, we will eventually feel our souls rotting away.
"No matter what kind of spiritual diet we're on, we can always change it. That is where Christ's Atonement comes in."
I moved on to bear testimony of the Atonement and its power to change people's hearts and minds, and then the lesson was over.
It was a lesson I was pretty proud of, to be honest (as a teacher who was rather
This past year, when my mind was so dark and dim, I partook in a LOT of marshmallow and dog food media. I lived off of Facebook, music, and especially TV--media that could numb me from the hard things I was feeling and thinking. Without naming any particular TV shows, I'll just say that I picked shows with witty writing, interesting story lines, creative characters, and very little depth. During my hardest nights when I was alone and Steve was working, I would put the kids to bed, turn the TV on, and then sometimes end up staying up until 2, 3, or 4 in the morning, binge-watching these TV shows.
To be totally honest, I wasn't even watching these shows because they made me laugh (although they were always very funny), I was watching these shows because they had a numbing effect. They distracted me from the darkness of my life, and so every night, for hours at a time, I binged on dog food.
And then did it again the next day.
These TV shows didn't have anything really terrible in them (although I guarantee I would've felt quite uncomfortable watching them with my mom in the room), but they usually had a few sexual innuendos per episode. Quite often, they had very negative messages to send about what people in this world really are like and the impossibility of ever truly succeeding at anything.
With messages like that feeding my mind and spirit for several hours of the day, no wonder I was feeling depressed!
In January and February, I started (really, through the grace of the Atonement rather than through any show of self-will or self-discipline) to get some control over my TV habit. During this time, I became better acquainted with some friends who were involved in a personal development group, and these friends lent me several inspiring CDs to listen to.
When I began taking the time to listen to these CDs, which were full of positive and powerful messages, I started feeling less and less inclined to need to turn the TV on, and started turning towards wholesome food--strawberry media--more often. I found that when I got the taste for what wholesome messages and wholesome ideas really felt like, I didn't like the dog food quite as much as I once had.
Don't get me wrong--I still enjoy sitting down with Steve to watch TV once in a while at the end of a long day. But now, instead of watching five or six episodes in a night, we're content with one or two before we go to bed at a much more reasonable hour (except when I have crazy insomnia and need to write, apparently).
And instead of TV and radio and Facebook being the majority of what I'm taking into my mind, I find myself thinking a little more about the nutritional content of what I'm about to "eat" before I partake. I find myself clicking on my LDS Gospel App more often than on my Facebook or Buzzfeed ones, and when I get a little free time, I'm reading rather than reaching immediately for the remote.
It's been interesting to see the difference after doing this much more intensely for a month straight. I feel hopeful. I feel inspired. I am setting goals and hitting them, and I have plans for the future rather than just fears about what it might bring. I feel like me again, rather than the shell I was for so long.
And, nice little bonus--when I listen to positive messages, it gets me up and moving--so my house is cleaner than it's been for a loooong time, lemme tell ya.
I am incredibly grateful for a merciful God, who has given me exactly the messages, tools, and inspiration I've needed exactly when I've truly been ready for it. While I would have liked to have been at this much more cheerful and healthy place a year ago, rather than taking over a year to get here, I remember that I'm just blessed to be exactly where God wants me to be, when He wants me to be there.
How good God is to me.
And to you, if you're the one I needed to write this message for.
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