The Shadow only wants you to see the never-ending pain before you, but the truth, however, is the same. After some time and some post-traumatic growth, we both can say, "Glad that light at the end of the tunnel wasn't a train!"

Depression isolates, alienates, and separates. It thrives in the darkness, severing connection for both the depressive and the depressive-adjacent ... And we indeed fell into a pit. But we didn't stay in that pit because we learned this valuable lesson--We don't heal in isolation but in community.

At 23, I had love figured out! As an English and German major in college, I had read the greats--Shakespeare, Goethe, Lord Byron, Fried, the Brownings, and so on .... As a Christian, I had read all the Bible said about love. I was steeped in the knowledge of love. My fiancée and I were in love and that was all we needed to make things work. Right! Right? Um ....