How would it feel to live through periods of emotional fragility and be surrounded by a supportive community, get up most mornings believing your life has meaning, and be confident that Jesus understands and holds your tears as sacred? It might seem an incredible dream, and almost impossible when we consider the feeling of utter emptiness, the collapse of the will to live, the devastating loss of self-worth that fills the heart of the person who lives with the heavy burden of depression or mental illness. Sr Kathryn Hermes knows the dull ache of depression firsthand and in Surviving Depression offers a practical method to progressively greater health and wholeness. Surviving Depression shows you how to take the first steps to healing and how to build into your life practices that will help you embark on a spiritual journey through the darkness. You will learn how to reconnect with your heart, build connections with others, grow in self-esteem, stop spiraling negative thoughts, and live with more inner peace and gratitude. This edition incorporates additional material that reflects new developments in wellness with regard to depression and is more grounded in the interlinking of God's life within us and our concrete psychological makeup. Practical tips for friends and family members of someone suffering with depression appear at the end of each chapter, as well as an entire chapter devoted to companioning a depressed friend. Things can be different. Surviving Depression will guide you from the winter of first diagnosis to the spring of new life.