During the period in my life when I suffered with depression I kept myself separate from the outside world. Day after day I plodded along doing what I must to survive while on the inside I was totally consumed with my suffering. I was completely focused on how lonely, sad, and miserable I was.

One day I got tired of the drama and went for a long walk around a lake at a National Forest. Immersing myself in nature allowed something within me to shift. Completely surrounded by beauty and the wonders of life for the entire day I hardly thought about my suffering, my aloneness, my depression.

While that one outing did not cure my depression it did open the door to what actions I could take to make myself feel better.  Every day I continued to enter into the natural world.  With each outing I felt freer and more connected to all that is alive.  Simply watching a mother duck and her babies, or a dragonfly, or the sunlight dancing on the lake brought me happiness.  It was a very good start and a wonderfully positive habit that I maintain today.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed if all we concentrate on is instant gratification, technology, negativity, and our loneliness. It’s easy to collapse into ourselves, our problems, and the negativity. Simply taking time to sit in nature is often just what we need to open the door to allow light into the darkness so we remember there is a way out.