I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE reading your posts & a lot of what you write is so dead on with how people feel, including myself. Thanks for being so open & honest in your posts & for sharing some of your most intimate thoughts & emotions with us ♥
I can’t tell you how comforting it is to know there are others who are lifelong strugglers of living under “the dark cloud”. I live everyday hoping to beat this . I am 49 years old and have struggled with depression since I was a young child. I learned very young that trusting others to my inner feelings only led to the opinion that I was weak, or an attention seeker. No one listened so I just quit talking about it. I was a very lonely child. As I grew up and expectations to socialize grew, I knew I had to hide my secret. My feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and grief, we’re going to have to be hidden. I would have to act NORMAL. Hence, I began my career at being an actress. My role: playing a happy, fun, overachieving, happy, ever-pleasing, middle class, daughter, friend, student, girlfriend, coworker, wife,sister, and mother. To the majority of people in my life, I have been successful at maintaining my role. Unfortunately, to the few I trusted and let get too close, I got burned. Left with a shattered heart and an intense feeling of loss and a resolve to being alone the rest of my life. I have faught hard to beat depression. I’ve read books, seen therapists, joined groups, taken meds, etc…I’d give anything to beat it. No one wants to live this way. I have a great job, beautiful kids, my 3 loving dogs,etc…I’m very lucky and thankful. Everyday I see people and wish I could be them. Happy, loved by a man, out with friends, active, feeling ALIVE, needed, wanted. I have tried getting out, being more active, etc… But the cloud always comes back. It’s hopeless. My life is so empty and lonely and exhausting. I wear a mask EVERYDAY. To go to work, to go to the store, to be around family, even my own adult children. The only person I confide in is my doctor and therapist. Unfortunately, I don’t get to go to them as much as I would like, due to the the increasing costs. I find writing helps me but I’d love to have friends who I could talk to. I think so many people are consumed with their own stress and issues that listening to someone else’s problems is the last thing they want to do.
I pray for all of you that live under “the dark cloud”.
May you find happiness and sunshine. 😊
Hi Libba, I came across your blog by googling depression and shame. While I had depressive episodes earlier in my life, the struggle has been greater since I hady daughter at 42 years of age. She just turned 20 and it feels as if I have been mostly depressed for all those years. Over the last few weeks I have been struggling with feelings of complete rejection by my family. This has happened before, but it feels more final than it ever was. I seem unable to react emotionally this time. I am quietly accepting that they have little understanding of my condition. I am deciding, i think, to no longer be hurt by the shaming statements they periodically subject me to. I realise that whatever will happen next will happen probably regardless of anything that I can do. The torturous thoughts happen mainly the early mornings, so I put off going to sleep at night. Not a cpnscious process. Anyway, lots of your writing is very beautiful and it is soul reaching in a way I have not experienced related to depression. Thankyou
Libba – I LOVED your book the Diviners, and have been waiting for & visiting your blog periodically to see
your up-dates. I was saddened, and yet enlightened, to read your post on depression, My husband has been suffering from depression, in varying degrees, since taking redundancy from a job he once loved, and since then not being able to find anything (for 5 long years) and then finding a job but it being incredibly understimulating. Your description -as a talented writer – made me see so much better what he was going through, and I hope I have been a better wife and ‘shoulder’ since reading it. There were times he would follow me around trying to tell me how bad he felt – I didn’t really want to hear it, as I felt I was clinging onto sanity & a non-depressed state by about 3 fingernails. But your account, being one step removed as well as very well expressed, has really helped me empathise better and think of how better to talk to him and handle him. He has had cognitive therapy, and most of the time he is ‘up’ there like everyday folk, but it doesn’t always take much for him to slip under the black cloud again. Thank you for sharing and being so honest. I really think you have helped a lot of people.
It’s been a long time now since I first read your Gemma Doyle series. I was still in high school at the time when I picked up the stories you wrote a girl who, for all her extraordinary adventures, wanted ordinary happiness. I wanted to let you know I still think of your characters, and you, often. I will pick up the first book in the series again soon and let it take me to another place as it did when I was a teenager and wanted so much for magic. I now understand the magic has always been that women like you and I can share a true feeling through an entirely made-up story, one of longing, and understanding. I’m not a religious person, nor do I believe in God, but the only phrase I can think to give you is “bless you.” I bless you and your family and hope you are doing well. I hope you remember you have touched hearts on each day of your life.
I LOVED your Gemma Doyle series. Seriously. I read ALL of them in a week and a half. I was that obsessed. And I could definitely relate to Gemma too. With strawberry-blond, I have some of the problems she has. And her emotions and feelings were spot-on to how people think and feel about things. Because most authors don’t put those *little* lines in there that could change your veiwing of a character. I loved Gemma. Her sarcasm cracked me up since Book 1. If I was feeling empty or despressed, I would pick up (which ever one I was on) and I would feel much better. I would be laughing on the most bluest days, all thanks to you, Libba. I have to compliment your writing. The Gemma Doyle Triology is so ingulfing and well-written that I would feel the exact emotions as Gemma. And when Gemma did something embarrassing or not right, I would literally cringe and get second-hand embarrassment😂! Not joking about that at all. I have to say when I finished ‘The Sweet Far Thing’ I felt empty and depressed. Sad, I know. And then when I got to ‘A Conversation with Libba Bray,’ I was dying. I laughed so hard I sneezed. (Idk what that means just go with it.) Same thing happened when I read the ‘About the Author.’ Over the series, I bookmarked the pages where sayings and quotes jumped out at me. I wrote them down.
I just have to say, after this entire passage, this series is my favorite series of books. And I have read a lot of books. Libba Bray, please, please, PLEASE write a fourth one! That would make me and MANY others soooo happy.
Thank you for sticking around and reading this super long passage, and if you didn’t, I wouldn’t blame your cause I wouldn’t have read it either hahaha.
Yeah, we chatted about that a wee while back. I’ve got the Ten Years Box Set but lost the lid! I also had the Eddie’s Head with the flashing eyes but got fed up with the head blinking at me all the time and threw it out. I’m such an idiot sometimes… But I’ve still got all the albums and that’s the main thing (I keep telling myself)
Hi Libba. I have read Gemma Doyle series. I loved them. When I finished, Just I sad. Please say me Gemma will be a movie. please please please. I want to watch her and her friends at cinema. Turkey readers love you.
shared with as many of my poet friends as I could remember – they esp loved:
“a box of matches and no chaperone” & “A breakfast of gunpowder and a handful of stars”.& “You have barked up the wrong bitch.” if you are now (in fact anyone reading this) at AWP, please go to Booth 612 and tell April Alvarez you need to come to Sewanee this summer – I promise that the tearful Statue of Liberty mounted on a ’95 Crown Vic for the July 4 parade will be only part of the magic – please feel the love ;~}
Libba Bray 
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE reading your posts & a lot of what you write is so dead on with how people feel, including myself. Thanks for being so open & honest in your posts & for sharing some of your most intimate thoughts & emotions with us ♥
I can’t tell you how comforting it is to know there are others who are lifelong strugglers of living under “the dark cloud”. I live everyday hoping to beat this . I am 49 years old and have struggled with depression since I was a young child. I learned very young that trusting others to my inner feelings only led to the opinion that I was weak, or an attention seeker. No one listened so I just quit talking about it. I was a very lonely child. As I grew up and expectations to socialize grew, I knew I had to hide my secret. My feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and grief, we’re going to have to be hidden. I would have to act NORMAL. Hence, I began my career at being an actress. My role: playing a happy, fun, overachieving, happy, ever-pleasing, middle class, daughter, friend, student, girlfriend, coworker, wife,sister, and mother. To the majority of people in my life, I have been successful at maintaining my role. Unfortunately, to the few I trusted and let get too close, I got burned. Left with a shattered heart and an intense feeling of loss and a resolve to being alone the rest of my life. I have faught hard to beat depression. I’ve read books, seen therapists, joined groups, taken meds, etc…I’d give anything to beat it. No one wants to live this way. I have a great job, beautiful kids, my 3 loving dogs,etc…I’m very lucky and thankful. Everyday I see people and wish I could be them. Happy, loved by a man, out with friends, active, feeling ALIVE, needed, wanted. I have tried getting out, being more active, etc… But the cloud always comes back. It’s hopeless. My life is so empty and lonely and exhausting. I wear a mask EVERYDAY. To go to work, to go to the store, to be around family, even my own adult children. The only person I confide in is my doctor and therapist. Unfortunately, I don’t get to go to them as much as I would like, due to the the increasing costs. I find writing helps me but I’d love to have friends who I could talk to. I think so many people are consumed with their own stress and issues that listening to someone else’s problems is the last thing they want to do.
I pray for all of you that live under “the dark cloud”.
May you find happiness and sunshine. 😊
Hi Libba, I came across your blog by googling depression and shame. While I had depressive episodes earlier in my life, the struggle has been greater since I hady daughter at 42 years of age. She just turned 20 and it feels as if I have been mostly depressed for all those years. Over the last few weeks I have been struggling with feelings of complete rejection by my family. This has happened before, but it feels more final than it ever was. I seem unable to react emotionally this time. I am quietly accepting that they have little understanding of my condition. I am deciding, i think, to no longer be hurt by the shaming statements they periodically subject me to. I realise that whatever will happen next will happen probably regardless of anything that I can do. The torturous thoughts happen mainly the early mornings, so I put off going to sleep at night. Not a cpnscious process. Anyway, lots of your writing is very beautiful and it is soul reaching in a way I have not experienced related to depression. Thankyou
Libba – I LOVED your book the Diviners, and have been waiting for & visiting your blog periodically to see
your up-dates. I was saddened, and yet enlightened, to read your post on depression, My husband has been suffering from depression, in varying degrees, since taking redundancy from a job he once loved, and since then not being able to find anything (for 5 long years) and then finding a job but it being incredibly understimulating. Your description -as a talented writer – made me see so much better what he was going through, and I hope I have been a better wife and ‘shoulder’ since reading it. There were times he would follow me around trying to tell me how bad he felt – I didn’t really want to hear it, as I felt I was clinging onto sanity & a non-depressed state by about 3 fingernails. But your account, being one step removed as well as very well expressed, has really helped me empathise better and think of how better to talk to him and handle him. He has had cognitive therapy, and most of the time he is ‘up’ there like everyday folk, but it doesn’t always take much for him to slip under the black cloud again. Thank you for sharing and being so honest. I really think you have helped a lot of people.
Hi Libba,
It’s been a long time now since I first read your Gemma Doyle series. I was still in high school at the time when I picked up the stories you wrote a girl who, for all her extraordinary adventures, wanted ordinary happiness. I wanted to let you know I still think of your characters, and you, often. I will pick up the first book in the series again soon and let it take me to another place as it did when I was a teenager and wanted so much for magic. I now understand the magic has always been that women like you and I can share a true feeling through an entirely made-up story, one of longing, and understanding. I’m not a religious person, nor do I believe in God, but the only phrase I can think to give you is “bless you.” I bless you and your family and hope you are doing well. I hope you remember you have touched hearts on each day of your life.
I LOVED your Gemma Doyle series. Seriously. I read ALL of them in a week and a half. I was that obsessed. And I could definitely relate to Gemma too. With strawberry-blond, I have some of the problems she has. And her emotions and feelings were spot-on to how people think and feel about things. Because most authors don’t put those *little* lines in there that could change your veiwing of a character. I loved Gemma. Her sarcasm cracked me up since Book 1. If I was feeling empty or despressed, I would pick up (which ever one I was on) and I would feel much better. I would be laughing on the most bluest days, all thanks to you, Libba. I have to compliment your writing. The Gemma Doyle Triology is so ingulfing and well-written that I would feel the exact emotions as Gemma. And when Gemma did something embarrassing or not right, I would literally cringe and get second-hand embarrassment😂! Not joking about that at all. I have to say when I finished ‘The Sweet Far Thing’ I felt empty and depressed. Sad, I know. And then when I got to ‘A Conversation with Libba Bray,’ I was dying. I laughed so hard I sneezed. (Idk what that means just go with it.) Same thing happened when I read the ‘About the Author.’ Over the series, I bookmarked the pages where sayings and quotes jumped out at me. I wrote them down.
I just have to say, after this entire passage, this series is my favorite series of books. And I have read a lot of books. Libba Bray, please, please, PLEASE write a fourth one! That would make me and MANY others soooo happy.
Thank you for sticking around and reading this super long passage, and if you didn’t, I wouldn’t blame your cause I wouldn’t have read it either hahaha.
Your faithful reader,
Emma S
disse:bons ps3) Quando o casal vai pro “tuboâ€, não teve um chapter que aparecia uma dupla de costas, que lembrava o Yukito e o Touya?é o 216… como nadeshiko é a mãe da Sakura clone achei normal eles estarem ali2) A espada que o Clone trás… Então é ele que ensina o Raitei…como a CCS!sakura dá o baculo a clonepensei: então CCS!syaoran dá a espada ao clÃo…possnevel não?
Yeah, we chatted about that a wee while back. I’ve got the Ten Years Box Set but lost the lid! I also had the Eddie’s Head with the flashing eyes but got fed up with the head blinking at me all the time and threw it out. I’m such an idiot sometimes… But I’ve still got all the albums and that’s the main thing (I keep telling myself)
Hi Libba. I have read Gemma Doyle series. I loved them. When I finished, Just I sad. Please say me Gemma will be a movie. please please please. I want to watch her and her friends at cinema. Turkey readers love you.
shared with as many of my poet friends as I could remember – they esp loved:
“a box of matches and no chaperone” & “A breakfast of gunpowder and a handful of stars”.& “You have barked up the wrong bitch.” if you are now (in fact anyone reading this) at AWP, please go to Booth 612 and tell April Alvarez you need to come to Sewanee this summer – I promise that the tearful Statue of Liberty mounted on a ’95 Crown Vic for the July 4 parade will be only part of the magic – please feel the love ;~}