Introduction

“Hello, my name is Jela and I have depression.“

That is what my therapist told me to say. “I have depression”, not “I am depressed”. Because my depression is not the only thing to define me and because I am so much more. Only some days it feels like I am not. Like this is all there is.

It is not always the deep dark pit of despair, at least not anymore. But it is still ever present, influencing and permeating every aspect of my life.
Because I know that if I do not take care, if I do not pay attention, I will slide downhill. Not “I might”, but “I will”. And while I am getting better at stopping the slide or at getting out of the dark hole where everything sucks, it is still much easier to just stay vigilant. This still is work, but stopping a slide is more work and getting up from the bottom is really hard. And the further down the slope I am, the harder it is to get back up and the less energy I have and the less I think I deserve the effort.

So self care it is. But self care can be hard.

This book will not take care of yourself for you.

It will not have all the answers and it will not magically generate time and energy. Which would be awesome. But I will share some of the things that I learned along the way.

I am nowhere near done learning and practicing, but I am halfway there. And that is more than I thought I would be able to say when I started this journey.