New Member (ups and downs).

[Guest guest]

My pleasure John,

I used to call these down times, my mid-life crises, but it arrived early and lingered on!

Should I find myself slipping again into that abyss, I will quickly shout for help this time,

and not try to deal with it just on my own.

Yes, we should feel comfortable in unbuttoning within a spiritual family atmosphere,

something that I am slowly learning to do.

I never knew my Jewish father, but I suspect I inherited more than my magnificent nose from him!

love

eric

Thank you, Eric, for being so willing to respond to what, in most

contexts, would be regarded as a very impertinent question. I am

sure that, on a list which enables folks to open their hearts and

minds to innumerable facets of the Great Discovery ( or

Re-Discovery), such questions do not have to be regarded in the same

light. My wife has been subject to the roller-coaster of highs and

lows which the condition referred to brings about; so I don't have

to be a genius to pick up oftentimes tiny clues. Please be assured

that I have enormous respect for your courage in adversity, having

seen its manifestations in the form of the crippling depression

suffered by my wife and many others. She, too, shows admirable

determination, despite the manner in which the condition creeps up

insidiously, or otherwise overwhelms dramatically.

I belong to an anonymous support group of people who, in the main,

have to resort to writing, snail-mail fashion, to a journal which,

for many of them, isa veritable life-line. Behind the demonstrable

sadness, clinical in nature - one might even say 'a dark night of the

soul' - there are so many talents and accomplishments for which the

sufferers cannot enjoy their just reward.

I have received a number of posts already; and I now feel more attuned

than I did when I d !

What an interesting family background ! I took my wife to one of

those antiques fairs some time ago and got talking with a guy who was

selling various interesting trinkets. It turned out that he hailed

from Dublin, and was Jewish. I learned that day, to my considerable

surprise, that there were lots of Jewish people residing in the fair

city. Just goes to sho how blinkered one's vision can be. Never

having visited the place, my 'snap' associations consisted of

stereotypes of Catholicism and an inflow of impressions from James

Joyce's work. How much more, then, do we need to clear our minds of

excess baggage where deeply ingrained attitudes and prejudices hold

sway !