and an update on the St John's Wort

Has it really only been a few weeks since I started the St. John's Wort? Well, for a little while there, I really felt like it must be working. I felt a bit better. But these last few days, PMS has hit full force and I am weepy and discouraged, overwhelmed, anxious and irritable. And, it's not helping. So that stinks.

I have long thought that PMS contributes quite a bit to my cycles of depression, or at least makes it all worse. But I've never actually charted it to see for sure. Something I need to do sometime.

I hate feeling like the mommy-monster.

What I'm Reading

I am reading this book right now and finding myself near tears on almost every page. It is painful to read, because I identify so fully with it. But it is also nice to feel like I am not alone in feeling like such a complete and utter failure and struggling as a mother.

Part of me still feels a tug of resistence in accepting that it is the disease that is causing these problems for me. I still hear echoes of disbelieving and judgmental voices in the back of my head that think that I should "buck up" or that "everyone feels that way" and I have "no good reason" to be depressed. It is hard to ignore the fact that some people don't "believe" in depression as a disease: friends, family, doctors, religious leaders. That makes it hard.

I will write more about this book as I finish it. As of now (I'm about half-way through), I would recommend it to any mother struggling with depression and I would wish I could persuade every person who knows me (or knows any other mother with depression) to read it. If I were brave enough to recommend it to them. And if they would read it with an open mind.