I am aware that I often live my life by pushing down the hold button. Or waiting until

• the time is right or I lose more weight –
• or when I have a better profession –
• when I feel better about myself –
• or when I am rescued by that prince on his white horse. (OK, the older I get the more I’ll just take a man that has a pulse. No white horse necessary.)

So many Some Days. So many “When ____ happens, then I’ll ____.” Go on, fill in the blank. I bet you have one too.

Am I trying to sell myself a bill of goods?  One magical day, my life will improve. It will get better. It will land at the magical place where there is no fear. I will be READY! Wait a minute..Wow –that’s just way too overwhelming to even consider the journey to get me there!…and Push back down goes that hold button once more.

Yes, I let lots of stuff stop me.

I slept with my dad at my side for months. I was so scared he would go away that he promised to hold my hand all night – that way, I would always know that he wasn’t leaving like my mommy did.

Flash forward to 2010. I’m a perfectly healthy 46-year-old (OK, OK you can scratch the “perfectly” part. That might be a bit of a stretch) with a 55-year-old sister and a 51-year-old brother and a 82-year-old father who someone forget to tell. Neither does our 80 something stepmother know her age.

Together they play out the greatest love story ever written. Forget the movie “The Notebook” – my parents out story it!  For 20 plus years, they still have a deal that you never go through the house door without kissing one another.

My Dad has cut out hearts from construction paper, hung them in strategically located places and lured his love downstairs to pancakes made with love. This and similar acts  like it have played out between them for years.

My blog is about Light, Laughter & Life. I suppose you’ll see those woven into the copy but if all bets were on? Well, I’d put my money down on the the LIFE part.

When I was 9, our mom chose to take her own life.  She was found the next morning by one of her children. That split second set in motion the immediate, violent and lifelong shift in the lives of all who loved her; our Dad, my brother my sister. All three are my best friends and I love them unconditionally and passionately.

I am blessed. I’ve not lost anyone as an adult. But it only stands to reason that since we all die; as we age together it is more and more likely, inevitable even, that I will begin to lose people I love.

Not that it’s a totally original idea, but I‘ve stopped watching the news.

Let’s face it – the news is generally depressing. And I’m thinking, we really don’t need that.

I figure that if the news is important enough, I’ll hear about it from the people in my world. And if it’s not important enough? I truly don’t have a need to know about it. I can’t control it. I can’t make the bad news not happen – I can’t make it go away.

At the beginning of my little experiment, I stood back and took in the big picture and it alarmed me.

When I am depressed my skewed outlook shadows any good thing I might have. It makes me 100% responsible for legitimate set backs. It’s as if everything wrong in the world was somehow my doing…as if  I were responsible for keeping the world spinning on its axis.

You may be doing very well and be accomplished, but if you have depression, chances are your negative thoughts are never more than a heart beat away, always ready to pounce. These hurtful thoughts about ourselves, our world and our future color everything and not in a way we’d like. For me, it’s always a conscious effort to halt the runaway thinking.