Musings on: Dealing with depsession from a Wiccan standpoint #1

Every day I get up and light a candle. Being a Shamanic Wiccan, I have found that this process has been incredibly helpful as of late. I have turned away from many things in the past 2 years. One of them being multi-layered intricacies within ritual. I have pared down due to necessity. I have pared down to mirror the needs of my own life. I have pared down because I am too tired to do any thing else. I have paired down to hopefully find a renewed sense of faith and hope. So once again, I light a candle every day. Some are the color of black to acknowledge the darkness that presses in, some are green to remind me that it's the little patch of shamanic grass that grows beneath my feet that keeps the darkness at bay, some are blue to bring the oh so rare peace during sleep. When depression hits, there seems to be no way out, you believe in nothing...... not in divinity, not in humanity, not in yourself. It's been weeks of sleeping too long, eating Wendy's constantly, going to work and coming straight home, refusing to go out dancing, and having anxiety attacks. I felt so lost and abandoned that in a frenzy I pulled down my Yule altar. I stood there staring at my stained wooden altar top. The emptiness felt far more appropriate. It reflected where I was. I felt like that lovely Yule altar was a complete lie. A perfect form of denial. The bare altar felt like an acceptance and a facing of my grief. It felt like someone who understood and was not trying to fix it, change it, or run away from it. I left it like that for days. Then I discovered the book By Candlelight by Janina Renee. It is a lovely book that has loads of simple and poignant candle lighting rituals for a multitude of situations. It was the ritual for grief that caught my eye. It was the ease, simplicity, and acknowledgment of what depression and grief does to a person that made me pick up this book. If I heard one more person try to offer me advice, tell me it was going to be ok, or that I would be a better person in the end for all of this, I was going to punch them in their oh so concerned faces. (As you can tell anger goes along with depression.) This ritual allowed me to truly be where I was. Not where everyone wanted me to be. It also left room for the possibility of change in the future. Nothing fancy...just the truth with no pressure. I highly suggest the powerful act of candle lighting for anyone who walks with depression by their sides. I have discovered that little flame goes a very long way. It proves to me over and over again, that with a single act, the edges of depression can be pushed back if only temporarily. And take it from one who knows, temporarily counts....it counts in a big way.

Danica Connors