I was privileged to witness their intense feelings of joy.

Half an hour earlier she’d done a major stuff up in her horse’s float / trailer training, clipped the chain up behind his butt while he was still tight and tense and he’d gone beserk, busting the chain and banging his head on the way out.  When she got on the video phone to me they were both shivering with distress and she was in despair that she’d stuffed up this relationship that she’d nurtured so carefully and meant so much to her.

Minutes after phoning, she’d made a personal breakthrough into a deep understanding of all the threads that brought her to that moment and her horse had walked over to share and soak up a gorgeous time of intense joy together.  

And this joy was not a new thing, it’s now a normal part of her life.

Yet this is a woman who had suffered one of the worst cases of depression I had ever come across. 

She was at the end of a whole line of women who had experienced repeated trauma in their lives, that also had suffered from depression.  It had been a pattern of trauma related depression that had echoed down the ages, generation after generation.  In her case it had resulted in forty years of deep depression, often suicidal, prescribed cocktails of anti-depressants that weren’t able to completely numb off the feelings that would occasionally burst through the haze of the drugs.

So the intense joy she was experiencing with her horse that day  (did you hear me say that joy is now a NORMAL part of her life?) AND that she was experiencing that joy within minutes of a monumental stuff up – can you see why I think it’s such a big deal? 

Why depression as the subject for a joyful Christmas message?

280 million people worldwide diagnosed with depression and god knows how many more who haven’t ‘fessed up.  31.2 million prescriptions of anti-depressants last year in Australia alone.  Gosh we could solve the economic problems AND the doctor stress and shortage problem just by eliminating depression!

There is a simple happiness, even intense feelings of joy TO BE FOUND BECAUSE OF DEPRESSION.  That headline was very deliberate.  Depression is an alarm bell, an alert, a “heads up” pay attention please, you’ve been stuffing those feelings down too often, for too long – something is freaking wrong here and needs to be done differently.  And when we pay attention to it in the simple way that we teach here, then there is inner peace, happiness and yes, even those intense feelings of joy on the other side of every depression.

Yes you read that right – there’s an opportunity for those same intense feelings of joy that my friend was experiencing with her horse, in EVERY depression…

So maybe now you can see why I’m choosing recovery from depression as a subject for a Christmas message?

While I’m on a bit of a rant about feeling unnecessarily crappy, you should also know that the pretty post card picture of Christmas, ho ho ho and oh so merry, that’s served up to us by the advertisers, simply isn’t real for most people. 

Christmas is complex. 

If you’re not all “ho ho ho and merry Christmas” then these Christmas gifts are for everyone who could do with a bit of a lift.

1. Take 20 minutes today to get your own yummy feeling of inner peace with this totally free meditation. 
2.  Join us in our next (also free) “Dummy Spit Anti-Struggling Seminar” on the 15th January and use it to specifically step into more joy and happiness in your life.  You don’t need to be depressed to enjoy and benefit from this seminar.  You’ll learn how gobsmackingly simply it is to find the joy that my friend now experiences routinely.   The link will take you to register to get notified about those seminars as they come up.

Today’s photo is Whisky and his rabbit friend from the on line book (not an e-book) called “Holy Shit Is That Really True” aka  “I wish you Happiness.”   It’s the page that starts with the heading I’m not a fan of the word “trust”. 

Holy Shit is that really true?