Jessica Kantrowitz > Quotes

“It’s like when runners collapse at the end of a marathon. Their exhaustion makes sense if you’ve seen the race. But with depression, it might not be evident from the outside how much you’ve endured up till the moment of collapse. You might not even realize it yourself. It takes miles of running hard to get to the point where your body completely shuts down. Many of us have been running hard for years, pushing ourselves to our very limit. We’ve kept calm and carried on, and now we just can’t anymore. Really, it’s miraculous that we’ve made it this far considering all we’ve been carrying.”
― Jessica Kantrowitz, The Long Night: Readings and Stories to Help You through Depression

“You have not yet fully found your place in your community. Your way of being present to your community may require times of absence, prayer, writing, or solitude. ..... Your community needs you, but maybe not as a constant presence . . . your community also needs your creative absence.[6]”
― Jessica Kantrowitz, The Long Night: Readings and Stories to Help You through Depression

“The Death of Leaves You are not the leaves which blaze with color every fall, then fall ground into the ground. Their death is not your death. No, you are the tree, which moves its energy down in autumn, to the roots, in ample store. Bare branches best prepared for winter cold and winter winds. That’s not to say the loss of leaves is not a loss. The grief of losing all your color, your connection to the sun is real grief. The stripping is a real stripping. But as every fall speaks of coming spring and every winter holds its end in its beginning your own sap will rise again in longer light nourishing every small branch and you, tree, human, living creature will grow green life again.”
― Jessica Kantrowitz, Blessings for the Long Night: Poems and Meditations to Help You through Depression