by Brionne Janae

I have lived the better half of the last five years with shame. A shame I didn’t know how deeply I felt until I sat sobbing in a Pentecostal church, my head resting on the chest of a woman whose name I don’t know, and had never spoken to until just then. Yet there I was in her arms as she rocked and prayed for me. I had only once before spoken honestly of the state of my mind in church, though I have spent a good portion of my life there.

The first time I shared my burden, I got the typical give it to Jesus prayer. I’m sure many of us who struggle with depression in churches, especially black churches, have heard it. It’s the kind of prayer that turns my blood, makes me want to stand in the pulpit, and shout. Jesus gave this to me. Jesus handed me this weight and never asked if I wanted it. I didn’t choose this. Give it to Jesus? You might as well say walk away from yourself, or get over it, or if the fire is so damn hot why don’t you get out of the kitchen. Because my whole life is tied up in that kitchen. 
But this woman Sunday before last, didn’t pray one of those prayers. She was specific. She prayed for my body, that I would have the strength to get out of bed in the morning. She prayed that I would not stop believing in the sanctity of my mind, she prayed that I would not feel the need to kill myself. She prayed that I would not be ashamed.

I am ashamed of depression, but mostly I am ashamed of how often I have wanted to stop living, to cease existing, to get in bed and stay there. When I was 19, I fantasized about stepping in front of busses. It was my first time living away from home, first time living without a car, and walking everywhere and catching the bus. I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, living for the first time with real space in my life for depression and anxiety to spill over into. I didn’t have to stress about my parents worrying about me, calling my gloom insolence, or using my angst as a mirror for their own. I started cutting, mostly as a means to cope with living. I knew if I decided to leave my body it wouldn’t be with a knife.

I would walk down College Avenue, and every time a bus would drive by, I would want to lean into it, and I'd be filled with this terror that I actually would. I didn’t really want to die. I just wanted to not be alive, to stop and rest a while, to be at peace. I’ve long stopped leaning into busses, but never spoken of that time or any of the ways I’ve imagined leaving my body, not even in my poetry.

It has always felt wrong to ask people to step into this with me. Wrong and terrifying. What if I tell someone and they decide the best place for me is a mental hospital? What if every conversation I have with them from then forward is with their eyes looking at me as if I were a wounded deer? What if I drag them down with me? What if they walk away?

I’ve always believed that it was my job to pretend that everything is good, even and especially, when it isn’t. I do this for the sake of those around me, but mostly for myself. I’ve internalized this belief so much that often when I’m confronted with a person who wears their depression on their sleeves, my knee jerk reaction is nasty. I think get over it. I think fucking filter yourself. I think just fake it like the rest of us. Fortunately, I have a decent filter, and have come to realize that what I dislike in them is, simply, what I am ashamed of in myself.

That afternoon, after I wept like a small child in that church woman’s arms, I tried going about my normal Sunday routine. I went to the cafe downtown where I like to grade essays and pretend to be productive. I went to the movies on a whim and saw whatever was playing next, and after as I walked toward the station, I detoured through Macy’s and bought a small silver cross on a whim. Or if I was continuing my usual dishonesty, I’d say because it was 55 percent off. I mean I payed $65 for a cross that was regularly $150. What a steal. But that is not why I bought the cross. As I meandered home I made myself a promise. A promise I make quite frequently: I will keep on in this fight for my life, and if I keep fighting then, God, you must be here with me. I’ve ended more than a couple poems with this sentiment.

Living with my mind constantly under attack means, that sometimes every day, and sometimes every hour, I am fighting for my life. I am asserting that I want to be here. It is my choice and I choose life for myself, knowing full and well, that abandoning my body looks so much easier.
And that’s what is hardest about mental illness. Here I am fighting for my life, making the most important choice I’ll ever make every day, and I’m ashamed of it, which means I tell no one, which means I fight, for the most, part alone. We don’t send soldiers into combat alone for a reason. People need people. We are fundamentally social beings. People with mental illness shouldn’t struggle alone. And so even as I have committed myself to life for the umpteenth thousandth time and purchased a tangible symbol of that struggle and commitment. I also need to commit to not doing this alone. To letting go of shame.

This mind I have, this temperament of my heart and soul, was given to me at birth. I did nothing to earn them. It has shaped and worked at me for better, for worse. Has made me more compassionate, and attuned to the world around me, even as I struggle to love myself and all the ways I move through this life. I do not need to be ashamed. I must commit today to finding new ways to exists in the world. Ways that allow me to be honest about what I’m feeling. Ways that permit me to ask for help when I need it. Ways that allow me to trust and believe that the world is filled with people like the woman from my church, people who will offer a hand up when it gets difficult to stand. I need to not only speak but live the words of Audre Lorde:

“….when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive”

Photo: Shutterstock

Brionne Janae is a California native, teaching artist and poet living in Boston. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in jubilat, Apogee Journal, Waxwing, The Nashville Review and Bayou Magazine. Brionne received her MFA from Emerson College, and is a Cave Cane Fellow.

by Bobby London

I am here sitting in my bed fighting my depression, trying not to bask in somberness for too long, pondering how I’m going to shatter ceilings with three generations on my back. I’ve always been nervous and scared about writing so personally about myself in such a non-intimate way, but I find myself in a writer’s block that only raw honesty can chip away. There’s a feeling of liberation that comes with being vulnerable, and of course there is also tons of anxiety that comes with that as well. I also wonder about the security culture aspect of this personal disclosure and how wise is it for me to discuss such things in a time when all keystrokes are being analyzed and stored for the State to use later. Maybe in the future I’ll regret revealing so much, but for now I will choose self-empowerment over strategic resistance.

Or maybe the act is both.
I think it’s interesting that when I talk about my depression in a public manner people usually feel the need to prescribe things to help the situation. As if I have a cold and I just need to drink some lemon tea or something, not understanding that depression is, at least for me, something that is structurally created. I am depressed because I live in a white-supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist world. I am depressed because people that look like me are constantly being murdered. I am depressed because the State has purposely made it difficult for black families like mine to survive. I am depressed because I have suffered traumas from white supremacy and the police state. I am depressed because the only way this will end is if we have continual revolutions. I am depressed because I don’t know if I’m going to know how it feels to be free.

I do not understand how more people aren’t depressed in this world. I find that people are quick to blame depression on the person who has it. I’ve been told often, “well you just got to focus on the positive”. Like, oh wow, why haven’t I thought of that? I’ll just simply ignore my circumstances and just find the good things in life, like peanut butter with chocolate or pool parties. Yeah, there you go, that’s it.

When someone declares that they are depressed there is this fear and uncomfortability that happens to those that are listening. People are uncomfortable with the honesty and self-awareness, they see the sadness as a weakness, as something to be addressed.

But, I am not weak, and my depression is not weakness.

The awareness is isolating. Which makes sense that social anxiety is such a common thing for black people and non-blacks in intentional resistance spaces. It feels as though this country and its cohabitants are constantly gaslighting you. When people ask me “how are you doing?” or “why are you depressed?” I wonder if this is someone’s extreme privilege and distance from my struggle that allows for them to be so naive, or are they just willfully ignorant?

My depression is not a mental health problem, it is not fixable by seeing a therapist, or popping any pills. My depression is the direct result of anti-blackness and all of the cruelty that this country has shown to black people. My depression is political and should be treated as such.

I think of Sandra Bland often, the picture of her mugshot still haunts me. It shows the capability of the state, the level of fascism, and organized badge wearing white supremacists. When I watch the video of her arrest, the whole time I thought that could have been me. It reminded me of a recent event where I was encircled by heavily armed police officers and threatened to be arrested for cop watching and asking the police officers why they were using excessive force on a man that you could hear his waling from down the street. Even though I had my press badge on me they told me that they would gladly arrest me. I told them that if they arrested me that I would take them and the LAPD to court. More police officers arrived in riot gear, with shotguns ready in hand. I was intimidated, and successfully bullied away from the scene.
I think about what if I would have stayed and was arrested, would they have murdered me, and if so, would they try to cover it up as a suicide? I wonder if they would use my depression to aid in their cover up.

I know that we live in a surveillance state, but I refuse to be silenced about the violence that is consistently being inflicted onto me and others. My resistance is strategic and I’m allowed to be vulnerable. So if the State ever wanted to kill me and tried to rule it as a suicide, here it all is – your “Exhibit A”.

by Kayla Thompson

A few months ago as I was flipping through channels, I stopped on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I’ve seen the movie and read the book several times, so I scrolled through my Twitter timeline as the movie functioned more as background noise than entertainment.

When the Dementors took the screen, I couldn’t help but look up from my Twitter feed. To me, the Dementors were the most evil creatures in the world of Harry Potter. A beast that sucks the happiness right out of you? Yeah, that’s fucked.



I watched as the Dementors attempted to suck Harry’s soul into the depths of Demenetor hell, and I thought, “Oh shit, this is the embodiment of depression.”

I don’t know how I didn’t make this connection before. Maybe it was because I would never admit that I was depressed. Maybe it was because the world told me I was a strong black woman—even when I was just a broken black girl. Maybe it was because when I was younger. I had no diagnosis to tell me why I felt like my “soul was being sucked into the depths of Dementor hell.” But when I witnessed the vile beings create an icy atmosphere of depression and despair, I knew that the experiences created by this fictional demon were very real.

“Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you.”

I’m black. I’m a woman. I’m young. And I’m clinically depressed.

I wasn’t always clinically depressed. At first I was just deniably depressed. I was hopeless. I was terrified, lonely and broken. And although I was filled with all of these clear indications of depression, I was a black girl. So I had strength. I had love. I had conviction. I had magic. I continued living in denial of my mental health issue because black girls have super powers, and magical beings can’t be broken by punk ass “bout of sadness.”

When my dad was shot and killed my family cried and mourned and looked to his only daughter to be the stronghold for his remaining children.

“You’re so strong, take care of your brothers. They are all you have left”

When I felt the deep rifts of sexism and misogynoir, I steadied myself from its blows by excusing the behaviors of the perpetrators.

“Men are sexual beings. It’s not your fault, but be more careful when you [insert any normal human action] and you’ll be alright.

When I refused to inject myself with painkillers during labor, pushing out my nearly 6-month grown still-born daughter, I was told that I’m so strong to endure that type of pain.

“I couldn’t imagine going through something like that. How are you staying so strong?”

I was not ok before my confrontation with trauma, and I certainly was not ok afterward.

I always felt the presence of my personal Dementor. The demon always stayed far enough away I could only feel its happiness drain. An ever-present feeling of icy despair. Not close enough that I was converted into a soulless shell, but enough that I felt its power nip at the edge of my aura no matter where I went.

And the Dementor followed me everywhere I went.

Some days it was so far off, that my happiness was able to shine a little brighter, and a little longer, and I was able to pass as the strong black woman the world christened me to be.

Other days the Dementor lurked right outside of my reach. It was so close that I couldn’t see the light outside, the beauty inside or the love around me. My vision could only perceive the dark cloak of my tormentor. All I could feel was my soul being sucked to hell.

Because society tricked me into believing that I embodied some magical Patronus. I believed I had some superhuman ability to ward off my depression, while simultaneously going to the rescue of anyone being attacked by a figurative Dementor.

I ignored and denied the presence of my depression for as long as I could, but black girl magic can’t save your soul. And eventually, the Dementor gets close enough to perform the Dementor’s kiss, then you’re fucked—permanently.

Ultimately I was forced to look my personal demon right in its eye, and name it. I had to seek help. I was not strong. My love waned. My only conviction was that things would never get better. I wasn’t a fucking wizard. I didn’t have a wand. There was no magic.

Naming my depression was the first step to healing. I always felt it was my duty to make sure everyone else was ok, and in the process I denied myself love because I was giving the little I had left to others.



Depression is not a sign of weakness. Seeking help is not giving up. You give up when you allow the depths of your depression turn you into a soulless shell. Naming my depression. Acknowledging my depression. Seeking help for my mental health issue proved to be my biggest show of might in my life. Yeah, I live with a Dementor, but the only thing it’s kissing is my ass.

So to all my magical Black girls, naming your depression is not a repudiation of your strength. It’s loving yourself in your full form. It’s having power to acknowledge all parts of yourself, despite what the world may say is a weakness. And as we know, for us, loving our full selves in this world that constantly ignores us, beats us, and denies our personhood is a type of magic.

Photo: Shutterstock

Kayla Thompson grew up in St. Louis, MO and graduated with a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Webster University. She currently teach 4th grade.

by Dee Rene

I prepare for the holidays like I’m bracing for impact: Buckle down. Grin and bear it. It’ll be over soon. Although I enjoy the excuse to eat too many sweets, the holidays often hurt for a multitude of reasons. A few years ago, one of my favorite family members passed away, leaving a noticeable empty seat at the table and missing dessert from the spread. Thanksgiving dinner is now cut short, as everyone dashes out for Black Friday sales. Or, like this year, I had to return a gift for a boyfriend turned ex right as the holidays rolled into town.

by Iresha Picot

She yelled all the time.

Yelled about the house not being cleaned.

Yelled about my school work.

Yelled about spending too much time on the phone.

Yelled that the music was too loud.

She just always yelled.

I can remember thinking about cutting her vocal box out of her once. Or a few times. I told her this in a fit of rage, when I was about 16. She just looked at me and yelled some more. I am pretty sure that Audre Lorde was talking about my mama when she said, “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing”.
My mama didn’t always yell. When I was a young girl, my mama was noted for her laughter and the jokes she told to not only her own children, but to the children who would come over to our home. They loved my mama’s jokes and her eagerness to make everyone laugh.
I have fond memories of my mama as a child. She used to let me rest on her lap all the time or ride me on the back of her bike as we went on adventures through our small country town. As the youngest of three girls, I used to have her all to myself when my sisters would go off to school and my dad went to work. And we had fun. Going to her girlfriend’s home, to the beauty salon, out to eat; wherever my Mama went, I was right there with her. Even when my sisters came home from school, there were good times to be had by all. On Saturdays, she would walk the three of us, hand and hand to the Three Guys restaurant for pizza across the train tracks from our home; telling us jokes the whole way. On Sundays, we awoke to pancakes being cooked, and the Alvin and the Chipmunks record being played on our record player. We danced, and laughed. We enjoyed our Mama.
Then things changed. My dad became addicted to crack cocaine. Things became hard. My mother started to laugh less. She started yelling more.

Her workload increased as well.

With my daddy’s addiction, his paycheck would be depleted in two days. Sometimes the same day. Bills weren’t getting paid, and we struggled. We moved at least once a year. Sometimes twice. Our electricity was never on. We couldn’t even afford the $25 dollars for our books at school. My mother started working 2 to 3 jobs to compensate for my father’s habit. She rarely slept, going from one job to the next. We hardly saw her and when we did, we stayed out of her way if we didn’t want to be yelled at. Even moments that seem to be fun times with my mother turned sour. I can vividly remember on one of her rare off days watching our favorite television show, Martin, together. We went from busting it up, laughing loudly at Martin’s punch lines, to her becoming upset. Her mood could change like a light switch.

She would suddenly look up and realize that the house was dirty and the yelling and cursing would start. “Why is the house so fucking dirty?” or “I work all damn day and no one washed the dishes.” It got to a point where we started to enjoy her being away from the home. It was peaceful.
She also developed these control issues. Probably because her own life was spinning out of control. She couldn’t make our plight much better, even by working several jobs. She couldn’t stop her husband from smoking crack. The only little bit of control she had was overpowering her children. If we didn’t do something my mama wanted, she went into her rages. She hid the home telephone when she went to work, and we were trapped in the house without being able to communicate to anyone. She did this, too, with simple things such as the soap powder. If she was mad at us, we couldn’t wash clothes. This was the same for the iron, the cable cord, the soda. She had to have control over everything. Over us. But not herself.

I have great empathy for my mama’s plight now. She struggled to raise children in poverty by herself, and in return, she developed mental health problems. As a mental health professional, I now understand that my mother was suffering from stress related mental health issues. My mama was unhappy in her own life. Even with a husband present, she was raising her children up as an overworked, Single Black Mother. She fell into her own stereotypes. In Black communities, Black women aren’t supposed to crack. We are not supposed to become depressed, even when we experience poverty, poor and unstable living conditions, psychosocial challenges, and white supremacy.

Just because we are Black and Woman.

Black Women, as the keepers of children, suffer silently. They have to be present under this system to raise vibrant children. It is a difficult task, at best, because if our children do not flourish under our rearing, it is the mamas who have to answer for those failures. As the great bell hooks stated, we must “cherish our mothers,” not just uphold them for the things that they do for us, but also assist them in making their load lighter. If we see a mother struggling, we have to be there as a community to lift her up and when we see her not doing well, we have to be able to assist in creating a space for her to be able to say that she is tired and needs help. Yes, we need to cherish mothers.

After I wrote this piece, I decided to not only share the content with my mother, but to also include her voice. What follows is an interview that I did with her when she came to visit me on 5/14/15.
Conversation with my Mama

Iresha: What were some of the struggles you faced with basically raising your children by yourself?

Mom: Trying to pay the bills. The bills were always on my mind. It was a constant worry. Also, for five years, I did not work, and with your father’s drug problem, not only was I thrown into having to go to work, I had to work 2 to 3 jobs, which means I always had to go to work and leave my children around.

Iresha: The name of this piece is called “The Mama that Yelled.” Do you think that you yelled a lot when you were raising your children?

Mom: To be honest, yes. I didn’t know that at the time, but I see how it affected you now. My mother yelled, and her mother yelled. We were just a yelling family and it seemed normal. But yes, I can say I yelled at you all a lot.

Iresha: Do you ever reflect back on that time and wonder what you could have done differently? If so, what are you doing now with your children to change those patterns?

Mom: I could have been a better mom with my attitude and did family things with my children.

Iresha: Do you think that you suffered from depression at that time?

Mom: Absolutely. I just had so much on me and it was kind of hard. I was away from my family in DC and so I had no family here in Virginia for my own personal support. Your dad’s family helped me out a lot with raising you all, but I had no one to talk about my husband being on drugs and having to struggle. I cried all the time. I cried in the morning, at work. Especially, when your father would come home on pay day and there was no money. He had spent it on drugs.

Iresha: What advice would you give mamas, raising children by themselves?

Mom: Whatever you do, put your children first. Be a good mother to your children. And for the mothers and their own health, use your support systems and look to God; because to me that is looking up.

Photo: Shutterstock

Iresha Picot, M.Ed, BSL is a Licensed Behavior Specialist and Therapist in Philadelphia. Iresha is also an activist, with a lot of her work concentrating on prison abolitionist and birth work as a Doula. Her Doula website is 52ndstreetdoula.com

by Dee Rene

“When did things get this bad?”

Opening the door to my apartment after a stint in the hospital from a mental breakdown was sobering. Everything was the same as I had left it, a pot in the sink, a jacket tossed carelessly over the couch, and yet nothing was the same at all. There was no work to go to on Monday because depression had swallowed me whole and I was now on disability. There were no classes to prepare for because I hadn’t been able to keep up with the course work when things fell apart. Friends were gone, family deaths and romantic love was nothing but a festering painful memory.

Welcome to rock bottom. Bad days had come and gone but I had managed to find a way to survive. Somehow this was different. I had no idea where to go, what to do, who to call or even where to start.

Rock bottom is that devastating moment where you realize there is no lower point, although you are sure it could be worse and that things are “worse” for other people, this is the lowest it’s ever been for you and moving from this place seems impossible. However, if you resist the urge to make rock bottom a grave, you may see that rock bottom can ultimately benefit your life. J.K. Rowling spoke the truth in her Harvard Commencement Speech when she said, “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I built my life.”




Here are some lessons I learned when I hit rock bottom.

You must deal with yourself. No more distractions. No more money. No more friends and fun. It is just you and your mess. Stop blaming anyone else and stop getting lost in hypotheticals of how things in the past could have been different. All you can deal with is right now. Now what? Rock bottom is not the time to call yourself a failure but it is the time to admit when you screwed up. Separate your worth as a person from the actions that led you here.

You discover the beauty in starting over. Rebuilding is daunting but you can find encouragement in knowing that now you have a chance to rebuild in a way that you truly desire and need. Rebuild friendships or let them go. Find your dream job or finally go after what you really want. Now is the time, as your life has been stripped of what you once held so dearly, you can evaluate what is really important. When you get past the crippling pain, find the strength in letting go and the beauty in starting over.

With your back to the wall, and your resources depleted, you learn one simple truth about yourself – you can overcome the worst moment of your life. It becomes fuel for survival. No one is stronger than the person who reached their breaking point and lived to tell the tale. Limits become fluid and you understand that slamming into the wall of life hurts like hell but recovery is possible.

Rock bottom makes you an example of survival. Someone else is waiting on your survival through your darkest times so that you can encourage them about how to crawl out of the hole.




Although you won’t see it in the moment, hitting rock bottom can actually improve your life. Rock bottom can become a mirror, a clean slate, a testimony and a teaching tool for others. Give yourself space and time to hurt, to understand and assess your pain, to grieve your losses, and then… get up. Get back up and live your life because if you are still breathing, rock bottom is a stepping stone and not a grave.

By Margo Jefferson for The Cut

In her latest book, the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Margo Jefferson offers a new definition of "Negroland." “Negroland is my name for a small region of Negro America where residents were sheltered by a certain amount of privilege and plenty,” she writes in the introduction to her new memoir. Chronicling her affluent upbringing in Chicago, which hits shelves September 8, Negroland is a sharp reflection on the intersection of race and class in mid-century America.

by Dee Rene

One difficult part of friendship is watching your friend suffer and not being able to help them move through it. A friend with depression seems to be slowly drowning and you feel like you aren’t able to send them a lifesaver.

Several weeks ago, the world learned that entertainer and game show host Wayne Brady suffers from clinical depression and had a serious “breakdown” this past summer. As a self-proclaimed social media maven, I read through various comments of support and understanding for Brady online. But I also came across many shocking replies from African-American women about depression. I cannot exactly explain the feelings of total disbelief that I felt as I read through the numerous responses of: “What has Wayne Brady have to be depressed about?” or “if I had Wayne Brady money, I wouldn’t be depressed.” Then, of course, there are those who believe he should just “snap out of it.” I paused for a second and wondered why in 2014 is it that the African-American community is in perpetual denial about clinical depression and the reality of living with it.

Finding happiness at twenty-two as a queer, mixed race woman of color has been nothing short of a two-decade struggle. Growing up in a household with a white mother and an emotionally unstable black father – who mastered the art of invisibility quite swiftly upon brining me into the world – created a unique set of insecurities.