Russell.male.45

With Love and Light

My past is not much different from the other contributions I have read, my father was diagnosed as a "manic depressive" when I was 4 or 5 and he spent a number of years in a mental institution. When he was released he spent the next 12 or so years making life pretty miserable for my mother, younger brother and I. This all came to a head one night when he was abusing my mother and I went to her aid...he came at me with a pair of scissors. Needless to say I left home not long after this and so started my own torturous journey, not helped at all a short time later when my father took his own life and left my mother a shattered 'guilt-ridden' shell, a younger brother who seems too scared to enter into any meaningful relationship and me a shy introvert with a number of self esteem issues.

I used the next 20 years to practise sabotaging myself. Luckily for me I mainly chose to do it with my career rather than my personal relationships, although I had a couple of close calls there too come to think of it. I would start a new job full of excitement and anticipation at the career prospects and future and then before long I'd "discover" all the things I didn't like about the job or the people or the company and start looking for a new job and guess what...the same thing happened there. I didn't realise this pattern at the time but now looking back it is so obvious, I mean 12 jobs in 20 years takes some doing eh?. I even got so good at the 'sabotage game' I could get them to 'fire' me or the company go into 'receivership'. Anyway, the good news is it doesn?t matter what has happened in the past, it is what you do with that experience that counts.

About 2 years ago, not long after my first serious contemplation of suicide, I somehow got the strength to decide that enough was enough and I would actually seek help (being a man, asking anyone for help was not in my psyche at that time). Interestingly, someone actually had to tell me I was "Depressed" because up until then I thought I was just "Different".

This flash of light probably happened during one of my Un-depressed moments, which, by the way, were getting fewer and fewer, when I could at least partially rationalise that anyone who had been married to a beautiful woman for 20 years and help raise 2 beautiful daughters and live moderately comfortably for that time really didn't have a logical reason to feel like he was worthless enough to take his own life and then 'justify it by telling himself that "everyone would be better off without him!"

So, wanting to cover as many bases as possible I embarked on a journey of trying both traditional and 'new age' treatments including antidepressants, energy healing and re-birthing. Two years later the good news is that I no longer SUFFER from depression. Please don't misunderstand me, I still feel depressed from time to time but I have developed my self esteem to a level where I accept how I'm feeling ALMOST (I am still in training) all the time.

The single biggest mind shift that occurred for me was a session with Kim Fraser, an energy healer who also practised Sacred Alchemy. After this one session I was inspired to develop my own spirituality through meditation and self development. Through Kim I was introduced to the next biggest mind shift, a Seminar called FREE TO BE ME facilitated by 2 wonderful angels in Sydney, Barbara & Terry Tebo. Along the way I learned a lot about myself through another new friend, my re-birther Robyn Fernance who continues to feed me "good food for thought" on a regular basis including Louise Hay's work on Learning to Love Yourself.
That brings me up to date and my latest discovery, Neale Donald Walsch's book 'Conversations with God', a book that I believe will be held in higher and higher esteem as our consciousness evolves.

Somewhere in there (about 4 months ago) I tried to 'run away' again when it all seemed 'too hard' and it was on that night on a strange beach on the North Coast with the full moon coming up over the magnificent Pacific Ocean that I realised that running away wasn't the answer, it was only temporary respite at best. The answers weren't "out there" either, there weren't any magic cures, pills or potions...the answer was with ME and how I thought and what I did. And that?s when I really started to use the tools I had been given by all my wonderful teachers, Kim, Robyn, the Tebos to name a few.

Now, 4 months later I can honestly say that I am happy with who I am, no, I am more than happy... I LOVE MYSELF. I know this will probably sound simplistic, even a bit crass, but I believe this simple (simple, but not necessarily easy!) goal of re-learning to love ourselves is not only the cure for Depression but also just about any disease known to man (including cancer, arthritis, heart failure and even war & poverty).

Thank you for allowing me to tell my story.