\u201cSometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands,\u201d the poet May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the cure for despair<\/a> amid a dark season of the spirit. But what does it take to perch that precarious if<\/em> in the direction of the light? When we are in that dark and hollow place, that place of leaden loneliness and isolation, when \u201cthe gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain,\u201d as William Styron wrote in his classic account<\/a> of the malady \u2014 an indiscriminate malady that savaged Keats<\/a> and savaged Nietzsche<\/a> and savaged Hansberry<\/a> \u2014 what does it take to live through the horror and the hollowness to the other side, to look back and gasp disbelievingly, with the poet Jane Kenyon: \u201cWhat hurt me so terribly\u2026 until this moment?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n During a recent dark season of the spirit, a dear friend buoyed me with the most wonderful, hope-giving, rehumanizing story: Some years earlier, when a colleague of hers \u2014 another physicist \u2014 was going through such a season of his own, she gave him an amaryllis bulb in a small pot; the effect it had on him was unexpected and profound, as the effect of uncalculated kindnesses always is \u2014 profound and far-reaching, the way a pebble of kindness ripples out widening circles of radiance. As the light slowly returned to his life, he decided to teach a class on the physics of animation. And so it is that one of his students, Emily Johnstone, came to make Bloom \u2014 <\/em>a touching animated short film, drawing from the small personal gesture a universal metaphor for how we survive our densest private darknesses, consonant with Neil Gaiman\u2019s insistence that \u201csometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place\u2026 to make us warm in the coldest season.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n Complement with Tim Ferriss on how he survived suicidal depression<\/a> and Tchaikovsky on depression and finding beauty amid the wreckage of the soul<\/a>, then revisit \u201cHaving It Out with Melancholy\u201d<\/a> \u2014 Jane Kenyon\u2019s stunning poem about life with and after depression.<\/p>\n For seventeen years, I have been spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars each month composing The Marginalian<\/em> (which bore the outgrown name Brain Pickings<\/em><\/a> for its first fifteen years). It has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, no assistant \u2014 a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor makes your own life more livable in any way, please consider lending a helping hand with a donation<\/a>. Your support makes all the difference.<\/p>\n The Marginalian<\/em> has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week\u2019s most inspiring reading. Here\u2019s what to expect<\/a>. Like? Sign up.<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How the warm rays of hope and healing enter the dark inner chamber of leaden loneliness through the unexpected cracks of kindness. \u201cSometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands,\u201d the poet May […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-life"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 18:25:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ndonating = loving<\/h3>\n
\nnewsletter<\/h3>\n