I’m Samantha and I am twenty six years old. I’m currently scampering around the east coast, serving tables and tending bars. Trying to pay off college loans while finding a job that I like. I have always struggled with poor mental health and want to share some phases of my life that included deep depression and how I found solace in meditation. I began therapy at the age of ten. My parents were a young couple who split before I can remember. I often felt I was the root of their problems. While I was blessed with amazing parents and stepparents, bad incidents still found their way into my life, leaving scars on my mind, body, and soul. I was exposed to abuses early on, and was bullied throughout middle and high school. I started to hate myself, my life, and was simply going through the motions in life.
When I started college, I finally felt I was on top of the world. I made amazing friends, fell in love, studied abroad and learned so much both in and out of class. I had developed healthy eating habits and relationships. One of my favorite courses required us to sit with a hospice patient for a few hours each week. We met as a collective group to share our experience, thoughts on readings, and do meditation. I didn’t realize how valuable meditation was to me until two years later, when I started facing acute episodes of depression.
That same semester, I lost a friend to an accident, another to suicide, an uncle, a family pet, and felt overwhelmed with grief. I was dissociating, ruminating on my past, and using coping mechanisms from my childhood therapist. As if it were not enough, my boyfriend passed, making my world collapse. I got back into therapy and started taking anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants. Riddled with grief for weeks, I tried to take my own life. I took a semester off and went back home to spend time with my mom and family at her house. They live on an island, so the sunshine was my plan to help me escape. A few weeks later I returned to school, was laughing again, and even graduated on time. I thought things had returned to “normal”.
Shortly after, I scored an amazing apartment, car, and was living the dream. Unexpectedly, hurricane Irma hit us hard and I lost everything. I immediately went back to past thinking cycles, had thoughts of self-harm and sought help the only way I knew how – therapy. I was institutionalized for 17 days. Upon discharge, I was pumped full of prescriptions and had nine mental-related diagnoses, including bipolar disorder, depression and psychosis. My parents took me for a second opinion where they reduced both my diagnosis and prescriptions. Feeling relieved, I slowly detoxed back to “myself.” After 8 days of my new medication, however, I had a serious adverse reaction that affected my eyesight, falling back into deep depression.
I listened to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks during this time, and although always a spiritual person, I was now looking at things from a different perspective. I began reading everything I could get my hands on and stumbled on old course work. There was discussion on the power of meditation for depression and various other problems. So I contacted my old professor and asked for guidance. I didn’t like how numb I was to life and how much I didn’t feel like myself. I also realized I wanted to live – so whether a hoax, or if I was meditating on a higher plane I was ready to give anything else a fair shot.
I’d love to say I mastered it in a week, but there was no “Ah-Ha!” moment for quite some time after that. I began meditating every day. Sometimes even four or five times, sometimes for only five minutes. I tried to stick to it, as I had read and listened to many testimonies of the healing powers of meditation. There were times I felt silly. I would get mad if I could hear traffic going by and couldn’t tune everything out. I was constantly having to remind myself to be patient if my foot fell asleep and to reconnect with my breath. There were weeks at a time I thought I was wasting my time.
My “Ah-Ha!” moment was just a few weeks ago when I asked myself where I felt safest. Without hesitation I wrote “when I’m with my own thoughts.” I immediately felt this wave rush over me, and I began to sob and laugh at the same time. Five years earlier, I tried to take my own life for the first time because my own thoughts were my biggest enemy. I cannot explain the euphoria that overcame me, and the way I saw my life flash from where I was to where I am, but something magic had been happening every time I meditated.
If you’re just starting your meditation practice, don’t worry if you cannot sit still. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t do it every day. Most importantly, don’t compare your practice to others. While it is beneficial to ask others for advice, you may hear the same advice ten times before it actually resonates with you. What I find works best for me if I am meditating for clarity, is to acknowledge what thoughts come to mind, and let it go. After my meditation, I only analyze the thoughts I can remember, for anything else my subconscious decided was just noise.
Being aware of your own thoughts is both powerful and beautiful. Meditation has helped me be present; to not live in the past or future. Meditation got me out of depression, and has allowed me to experience that I am not my thoughts. While I do still attend therapy, I am not dependent on any prescription medications. Using alternative medicinal practices such as meditation has helped me immensely with my mental health. When I do find myself ruminating on the past, I am able to heal by taking a few minutes to re-center and be aware of what is resurfacing, rather than storing the pain for later with a pill.
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