Mental Health Awareness Month – Let’s Talk

They tell you to “look on the bright side.” But what if that side feels unreachable—like a place you used to know but can no longer find? Depression isn’t always loud. It hides beneath productivity, humor, caretaking, and overachievement. It can wear lipstick, high heels, and show up early. For many of us who carry intergenerational trauma, cultural silence, or the burden of always being the strong one, depression shows up in disguise. And because it’s silent, we learn to suffer quietly—to keep going, to fake fine, to minimize our pain so we don’t disrupt someone else’s peace. At Tuesday Morning Love, I don’t believe in masking the hard stuff. I believe in naming it —not the polished version, but the version that sits in your chest at 3am when the world sleeps. This week, we’re taking a closer look at the many faces of depression—the ones that live in plain sight—and what it means to live with it, hide behind it, and begin to heal through it.

This space is for the tired. The overwhelmed. The ones who can’t explain why they’re hurting—but feel it in their bones. It’s for the person who got out of bed today and the one who couldn’t. For the one who’s never told a soul what they’re carrying. It’s for you.

Content Note: This series addresses topics of a sensitive and emotional nature, including trauma, narcissism, depression, and toxic behavior. While I am not a licensed clinical therapist, I speak from lived experience, academic grounding in psychology, and a commitment to becoming a trauma therapist. What I offer here is raw truth—honesty shaped by personal healing, continued study, and the voices of those who have survived and are still surviving. These reflections are not clinical diagnoses, but deeply human interpretations of how emotional wounds impact our choices, our relationships, and our capacity to heal.

Naming the Darkness

“Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced… It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope.”
— Stephen Fry

There is a name for the fog that moves in quietly and steals the flavor from your morning coffee. It is an ache that doesn’t have a clear origin. It is the feeling of being surrounded but entirely alone. It’s not laziness. It’s not weakness. It’s not a phase. It’s depression.

Depression often arrives in the aftermath of loss, heartbreak, or trauma. It’s passed down through families who lacked the language to name it, who avoided confronting it, allowing it to take root in the shadows of unhealed wounds. For Black and Brown communities, for queer folks, for anyone ever told they must be twice as good just to be seen, depression can become a quiet rebellion—a response to generations of emotional labor we were never meant to carry alone.

I’ve known these people for many decades. They’ve been family, friends, associates, lovers, and colleagues. I’ve known that ache intimately—not as a clinician or observer, but as someone who has lived it. Someone who smiled through conversations and kept the work flowing while quietly unraveling inside. Depression, for me, wasn’t always darkness. Sometimes it was silence. Sometimes sleep. Sometimes smiles. Sometimes, the heaviness in my bones I couldn’t shake. A feeling of floating just outside myself, hoping no one would notice how far I’d drifted. For a long time, through my early 20s and 30s, I didn’t talk about it. I lived through it. Because raising two children alone while managing a strange marriage doesn’t give you the space to fall apart, to pause, to be the one others can’t lean on. Strength, in my world, often meant survival without complaint.

And one day, twenty-seven years ago, in the stillness of a 3 a.m. morning, I didn’t complain, cry out, or leave a note—I quietly got in my car, left my husband and children sleeping in their beds, drove through the city, and tried to end my life by jumping off a bridge.

The Many Faces of Depression

That moment on the bridge, for me, didn’t come with warning signs or dramatic buildup—it came with quiet resolve, the kind that settles in when words fail to capture the depth of pain. I remember the stillness of that day more than anything. Not chaos. Not panic. Just a bone-deep exhaustion that whispered, this is the only way out. But something—grace, instinct, my father’s voice, and the memory of my children’s smiles—pulled me back. I didn’t step down with clarity or hope; I stepped down because some fragile part of me wasn’t ready to let go. I wasn’t ready to leave them. That part, as fragile as it was, marked the beginning of something I didn’t yet have words for: a different kind of strength. One that didn’t depend on hiding or performing. One that began with simply staying. I explore this cataclysmic moment in my debut memoir, Bridges: A Season of Surrender.

Depression rarely looks the way people expect. It’s not always a breakdown, a hospital stay, or a dramatic cry for help. Sometimes, it’s high-functioning—wearing mascara, attending meetings, folding laundry, or cooking a full-course Thanksgiving dinner. It’s the straight-A student, the team leader, the mama who “handles everything”, never misses a beat, and cries in the shower. Sometimes it’s hasty and obvious—a collapse, a disappearance, a plea. Sometimes, it delivers deadlines. Sometimes, it keeps up appearances so well that no one suspects the daily weight it takes just to get through the day. But more often, it’s quiet. It’s the overachiever who keeps stacking accomplishments, hoping the weight of success will drown the ache inside. It’s the person who always knows the right thing to say—because they’ve learned to listen for everyone’s pain but their own.

Throughout high school, my peers nicknamed me “Smiley” because I was always grinning from ear to ear. If I wasn’t smiling, they knew something was off. Smiling felt like second nature—my default setting—even as I juggled more than ten extracurricular activities, leading several of them. Even when the emotional and physical chaos at home felt unbearable, the smile I wore in public never cracked. That’s what smiling depression looks like: the world sees confidence, composure, and competence, while inside, everything is quietly falling apart. It’s perfectionism as protection. Overachievement as a distraction. Success as a mask. Because when you seem to be doing well, no one thinks to ask if you’re truly okay.

Types of Depression

Depression isn’t a one-size-fits-all experience. It’s a shape-shifter. It manifests in various forms, each with its own weight and complexity.

There’s situational depression, when grief or hardship knocks the wind out of you, and your soul can’t seem to catch up. There’s clinical depression, a biochemical imbalance that clouds everything, even joy. And then there’s high-functioning depression—the kind that hides behind ambition, perfectionism, and practiced smiles. The kind that fools even your closest friends. Depression is not just sadness; it’s a kind of emotional paralysis. A deep numbness. A slowing down of the soul. It’s losing interest in what once lit you up. It’s canceling plans not because you’re busy, but because joy feels like a foreign language. It’s waking up exhausted after eight hours of sleep. It’s forgetting what it ever felt like to truly feel like yourself. As Dr. Brenda Penninx notes, “Depression is not simply the presence of sadness. It’s the absence of vitality” (Penninx, 2015).

Perhaps the cruelest part? Its invisibility. The way it blends in with life. How others can look at you—accomplished, smiling, stable—and never guess that you’re unraveling inside. That’s why understanding its many faces isn’t just important—it’s necessary, because what we can’t see, we often fail to name, and what we don’t name, we rarely heal.

What Depression Can Sound Like

It doesn’t always say, “I’m not okay.”

Sometimes it whispers:

• “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
• “I’ve been busy.”
• “It’s not a big deal—other people have it worse.”
• “I don’t want to bother anyone.”

Depression often hides behind deflection, humor, or silence. It can sound like a canceled call. A late reply. A perfectly pleasant, “I’m fine,” when the truth is anything but.

Sometimes, it doesn’t say anything at all. It just stops reaching out. Stops dreaming. Stops caring about things that once brought joy. And because the world doesn’t always pause for pain, people living with depression become experts at masking it—showing up for others while slowly slipping away from themselves. That’s why awareness matters. You don’t have to hide here.

If you recognize yourself in any of these unspoken sentences, take a breath.

You are not broken. You’re burdened. And it’s okay to let that truth rise to the surface. Healing starts when we give ourselves permission to stop pretending.

Therapy saved my life.
No one came to save me. I started therapy a year after the bridge incident—during a time when I’d crashed, hard, like waves against stone. I had nowhere else to go but inward. Therapy gave me language for the pain I had long learned to normalize, and space to finally unravel what I’d spent years holding together with sheer will. It became the mirror I never knew I needed—the one that helped me see myself clearly, beyond the trauma, the masks I wore just to get through the day, and the survival mode. Therapy didn’t fix me. It found me. It helped me name my wounds without shame and begin the lifelong work of becoming whole.

Meditation saved me, too.
It brought me back to my breath when the noise in my head got too loud. It taught me presence in a world that kept pulling me away from myself. Through writing, silence, stillness, and deep listening, I began to rebuild a relationship with the part of me that still believed healing was possible. Both therapy and meditation didn’t just help me survive—they helped me return to myself.

I’m deeply moved by the work of Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, whose brilliance as a clinical psychologist and courageous vulnerability as someone with lived experience, as well, offer a rare and necessary bridge between research and the raw, emotional reality of mood disorders. Her book An Unquiet Mind reminded me why we write: to bear witness, to reveal, to heal.

Writing nonfiction allows me to connect with readers in a profoundly human way, with transparency and intention. It invites intimacy, honesty, and healing—both for myself and for those who find themselves in the work. My purpose for writing has always been to offer language for what is often kept in silence—to find the words that live in the body before they live on the page. I survived so I could speak truth into the lives of others. My hope is that my story reaches someone who needs it and reminds them: you’re not alone, and survival is possible.

This is why we must talk about it. Because the face of depression might look like someone who “has it all together”—or not. Silence breeds shame. And shame breeds suffering. As Dr. Vikram Patel reminds us, mental health care must be accessible to everyone, because “there is no health without mental health.” Mental health matters deeply to me because surviving suicidal ideation twenty-seven years ago marked the beginning of my journey with gratitude. From that moment on, gratitude became my anchor—my reason to keep going.

The Healing Journey: From Numb to Noticing

Healing doesn’t always arrive with fireworks. Sometimes, it’s getting out of bed after three days of not caring. Sometimes, it’s brushing your teeth when the weight of existence makes even small tasks feel impossible. Sometimes, it’s sending a single text that says, “I’m struggling.”

Those are victories, too.

In so many of our communities—especially among Black and Brown folks, women, men, single parents, caregivers, and trauma survivors—there’s a deep-rooted expectation to “stay strong.” To carry generations of pain with poise. To perform resilience even while breaking inside. But the pressure to keep going—without rest, without grieving, without help—silences our cries before they ever leave our lips.

Woven into the fabric of our daily lives, we’ve been conditioned to carry pain quietly, becoming experts at appearing “fine” while slowly decomposing inside. Mental health remains taboo in too many homes. And vulnerability still gets mistaken for weakness. So, we perform. We survive. We suppress. Until we can’t.

But healing doesn’t ask for perfection—it asks for presence. The journey out of depression isn’t linear. It’s not about “snapping out of it”—it’s about slowly turning back toward life, moment by moment. It’s learning to notice the sun on your skin. The sound of laughter. The way your body softens when it feels safe enough to exhale. Trauma-informed therapy can help untangle the stories your nervous system has memorized for survival. For some, medication becomes a bridge back to balance. None of it makes you weak. It makes you brave. Healing is sacred work—and it deserves time, tools, and tenderness.

One of the most powerful truths you can hold onto? You don’t have to earn rest; it’s yours! You don’t have to explain why you’re tired—like I did to a husband who never saw me and never cared if I was well. You don’t have to justify why it hurts or why it burns. Your pain is valid, even if no one else recognizes it. Your recovery matters, even when it’s quiet. And your life is worth fighting for, even on the days when you feel like disappearing.

So, if all you did today was try—that is enough.

Let this moment be a soft interruption. You don’t have to smile through it. You don’t have to achieve your way out of pain. Your truth is enough.

You are allowed to exhale.

Mental Health Hotlines, Podcasts, & Crisis Support

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (U.S.)
Phone: 988
Website: 988lifeline.org
Provides free, confidential support for people in distress, available 24/7.

The Trevor Project
Phone: 1-866-488-7386
Text: Text START to 678678
Website: thetrevorproject.org
A leading organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ+ youth.

Black Line (Black & LGBTQ+ support)
Phone: 1-800-604-5841
Website: theblackline.org
Provides a free, confidential, and healing-centered space for Black people and communities, offering support for emotional and mental health.

Trans Lifeline
Phone: 877-565-8860
Website: translifeline.org
A peer support hotline for transgender people, offering support for a range of issues including suicidal ideation, discrimination, and mental health.

Crisis Text Line
Text: 741741
Website: crisistextline.org
Text-based crisis support for anyone in the U.S., available 24/7.

Podcast: UnF*ck Your Brain
Website: unfuckyourbrain.com
A feminist podcast that combines mental health with social justice, focusing on how to free yourself from internalized patriarchy and social conditioning.

Podcast: Therapist Uncensored
Website: therapistuncensored.com
This podcast breaks down complex mental health topics such as attachment theory, trauma, and emotional regulation with a focus on healing.

Podcast: Black Girls Do Therapy
Website: blackgirlsdotherapy.com
A podcast created by Black therapists to promote healing for Black women, discussing mental health, wellness, and self-care.