Beauty in the Break

What Depression Really Feels Like

• Cesar Cardona & Foster Wilson • Episode 24

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Vulnerable is beautiful. In this conversation about mental health, depression, and healing, Cesar shares his life-long struggle with clinical depression. He describes how it manifested in childhood, relationships, substance use, and moments of crisis. Together on Beauty in the Break, Foster and Cesar break down what depression actually feels like inside the mind and body, why so many people don’t recognize their symptoms, and how tools like SSRIs, meditation, and Buddhist philosophy helped him move toward clarity and peace.

Foster brings essential insight into postpartum depression (PPD), perinatal mood disorders, and the alarming mental health statistics among birthing people, especially Black and Brown parents who face systemic inequities. Together, they unpack why depression often hides behind confidence and how to speak about suicidal thoughts with compassion. This powerful episode will help you better understand depression whether it lives in you or someone you care about. 

In this episode they explore: 

  • What depression actually feels like from the inside
  • The truth about alcoholism and depression’s chemical grip
  • How SSRIs transformed Cesar’s relationship with his own mind
  • The surprising connection between Buddhism, meditation, and healing
  • The moment Cesar nearly ended his life, and the tattoo that saved him
  • Postpartum depression statistics everyone should know
  • How to best support someone in a depressive episode

If you or someone you know needs support: 

Also mentioned: 

If this episode spoke to you, you will love The Eating Habits We Didn’t Choose where we explore disordered eating and food insecurity. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram. 

Cesar Cardona:

Foster Wilson:

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

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Depression doesn't just look like laying in bed all day.

Depression comes as a smile.

Depression comes as being the friendliest person.

And our job is to just remain brokenhearted about it,

because that lets us know that we matter.

When I listen to people talk, I don't think they know they are depressed,

or they don't know how depressed they really are.

No matter how dark it gets, you have no clue what's on the other side.

Hello, and welcome to Beauty in the Break.

I'm Foster.

And I'm Cesar.

This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open,

and how we find beauty on the other side.

So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone.

We are here with you.

Thanks for being here, and enjoy the show.

Welcome back, beloved, to another episode of Beauty in the Break.

And wherever you are in this world, I'm happy you're here with us today.

I'm going to say from the very beginning, my entire life I've suffered from depression.

It is literally the shadow that lives with me all of my life.

And I expect it to live with me for the rest of my life.

I think that we live in a society right now that feels highly anxious or highly depressed.

I don't have anxiety that much in my life, so I have depression.

This is how I can help.

It's by speaking about what it looks like from the inside.

Because people see me, and I tell them I'm depressed, and they don't get it.

Because I come across as an extrovert.

I speak well.

I'm confident.

I'm smiley.

I'm happy.

Yes, I am those things.

I also live with depression.

And I know it's always just around the corner waiting for me.

So you listening today, this may or may not be for you, depending on how close this is to your personal life.

I hope that today you feel seen.

If you have ever even dipped into depression for a moment, I hope you feel seen in either Caesar's story or my story.

And if this is not the right time for you, please turn this off and listen to something else.

We will dive into suicidal ideation a bit.

So if that could be flooding for you, then maybe skip over that part or go listen to something else.

Today, we want to unpack what it looks like to have depression waiting in your closet for you when you get home.

My depression is the reminder that every single morning could be the last morning I could be here.

When I wake up, the first thing I think about is how am I feeling?

What's going on?

Where's my thought?

There's an untouchable essence that's in my being when I first wake up.

I often wonder the percentage of being born with my depression and what happened in my early life that equaled my depression.

What was the concoction that got you to this place?

Right.

How much of it is what I was born with?

How much of it is what happened in my childhood?

I don't know the answer to it.

But I know that the feeling of depression I felt as far back as I can remember.

And in the beginning, back then, something felt good about it.

Really?

Yeah.

What felt good about it?

It's really hard to make sense of this, but I was at a play, like a musical, like a kid's musical thing.

And I remember the way the light hit one of the actors and they were in like a horse costume.

Just the way it hit them put me in this melancholy feeling.

This, oh, so sad.

But it was a happy play.

And the moment I hit that feeling, I just kept going back to it.

I kept looking at the lighting, hitting that, and focusing on that mindset again.

It set me on a road in a car that had a license plate that said depressed.

So it showed up into me naturally.

And then my external life made me want to go there more often.

Yeah.

I have known you for almost two years.

I've only seen your depression in a flash.

So I'd like for you to break down for me what it looked like before I knew you.

I know this about you, but I don't know what it looks like in practice, in the depths of it.

Right.

I have all of these really great tools that help me with my day-to-day now.

And this has been the most depression-less five, six, seven years of my life.

And very much the last two years.

Before that, my depression would last a day.

It could last a week.

It could last eight, nine months.

And what it felt like was this constant voice that is so loud over all the other thoughts.

You ever seen the videos of people who were in interrogations?

And the cop keeps berating them until they believe they did the crime?

Right.

My depression is that cop.

Keeps telling me, you're the reason for this.

See, you can't do this right thing.

That's not a good idea.

Just this constant reminder.

And the first day of my depression, historically, I would be very grumpy.

I could just feel grumpy because everything was a big eye roll to me.

And I knew the next day I was going to be depressed.

So my thoughts would start with telling me I was wrong.

I was a waste of time.

I can't do this right.

I should be dead.

And then it also comes as a feeling.

Everything is just too much.

It's just, I felt like I'm wearing wet clothes in the night, in the depths of winter.

It just feels like too much.

Does it get triggered by something in particular for you?

Or is it random?

It had, to my knowledge, it has always been random.

Oh, wow.

I have never been able to find a pattern for it.

That's the other side of it.

It's very much this trickster.

As soon as I had a gauge on it, it would not show up there again.

And it would go somewhere else.

There are some times where external life happens that causes anybody to have depression.

But because I already got one scoop of it, now I just got an extra scoop of depression

on top of it.

For example, when I was six years old, I met a girl who was in the same grade as me.

And I looked at her and everything in my body changed.

I felt so complete by looking at her.

I felt like I had known her for eternity.

Something about her just locked me in.

That's kindergarten.

By sixth grade, I saw her again because she had switched schools.

And I felt the same exact thing.

But I didn't know that was her until someone said her name.

And the same feeling came up for me.

And by two years later, after two years of trying to be her boyfriend, she was like, okay, fine.

And then we really fell in love.

As much as you could fall in love with somebody at 13, 14.

But I felt those feelings when I was six years old.

There was an escapism for me of some sort from the depression.

When I was 16, her family decided to move back to Europe.

And she told me, I want to move back here when I turn 18.

Okay, great.

Cool.

By this time, I was in a gang.

And I was working a job at the same time, juggling these two lives.

I saved up some money.

Her and I were talking about it.

And when I turned 18, she was going to be turning 18 the next month.

And I told her, I now have enough money to move you here.

We can start a life together.

You can go to school.

I'll work a job.

I'll leave all the street life behind.

And she said, no, thanks.

I am not feeling it anymore.

I'm not there.

By the way, I wasn't an angel that entire time.

I was still suffering from depression.

I wasn't healthy to her even because I was depressed quite often.

I lived with it.

It was either a storm or it was a fog.

There was minimal sunshine.

But when she did that, when she said that to me, whatever hope I had in my life was gone.

Not too long after that, I became an atheist.

About a week after that, I got my first tattoo on my wrist that says the word failure on it.

Because I felt like a failure.

Because I built up this life that I could have with somebody.

Finally, some sort of joy.

And it was taken from me.

I had all this stuff of hers that we had kept.

Scrapbooks.

And she had a ring she gave me that was hers.

It's up to Keith until she came back.

And I went to the park that we would go to a lot.

That was down the street from where she lived.

And I drank a ton that night that she broke everything off.

Went to the park and barehanded at night dug a hole by this tree.

It was a pretty deep hole.

I could get down to about my elbow in it.

And I took all that stuff and I hit a root where the tree was.

And I pulled the root up without uprooting it.

Stuck all that under it to kind of fasten it into that dirt.

And then covered it.

Wow.

And sat there and just kept drinking.

That's an external thing that brought my depression on.

Yeah.

But I was depressed nonetheless.

Before and after.

Was that the rock bottom of depression for you?

No.

Definitely not.

Well so how did you climb out of that hole?

Literally.

How did you get out of that depression?

Particularly with the circumstances being so dire and so personal.

Well I had already assumed and felt level of abandonment growing up.

And then I was always moved from my parents to camp to New York to be with my other family.

And I wanted to be moved around.

There's always a separation, separation, separation.

So I was already in accord with that.

And then I could choose this person though.

And she also abandoned me as well.

So I didn't really work my way out of it.

I just existed with that.

Not too long after, like I said, I became an atheist.

And it's not anything against atheists.

But it was a projection of my solitude, my isolation, my depression.

To think that I'm alone in this world, then I am probably also alone in the external world also.

Well in some way that gives you a blanket of sorts in the depression.

It's not healing the depression.

It's just saying, oh, I belong here.

It's like owning it kind of.

Which can be a bit of medicine to own it.

And say, here I am.

This is mine.

I'm not going to resist it anymore.

I'm going to just exist within this that I have.

I accepted it completely.

Yeah.

I became the shadow rather than recognizing I have a shadow.

Right.

So external stuff for sure.

But it was with me regardless.

Whether she'd have been in my life or not.

It put me on a trajectory of more alcoholism and a lot of heavier, darker times in my life.

But I probably would have gotten there anyway.

Walk me through one day of living with depression for you.

First thing first.

You wake up and immediately there is this intellectual and emotional, ugh.

It feels like that.

In the least comical way.

It sounds comical, but it's the least comical way.

It's an eye roll of emotion, of thought.

It's a, oh no, sort of feeling.

And it's not, oh no, I have depression.

The feeling is, oh no, life.

That's what depression feels like.

And then you say, oh no, I have depression.

But I would have to take inventory of how easily it is for me to get out of bed.

How much energy do I have?

How much energy do I have now versus the next 20 minutes?

Can I distract myself with my phone or with television or something?

So I can try to escape depression from keeping me trapped in this corner.

He raises his hand up and I can kind of shoot under and kind of try to get out.

Finding that first thought sucks.

And it made most of my life a crapshoot.

Why would I want to go to sleep?

At least if I'm awake, I can control what happens the next day.

Which is probably some of why I would drink to stay up late.

And then when I started passing out from drinking, I started using drugs to stay up late.

Because I didn't like sleeping.

Well, let me just point out for the person who is not aware that they have depression.

And their feeling is, oh, no life.

Without the caveat of, oh, I have depression.

This is a thing that is potentially treatable.

Or at least awareness.

You're going, oh, no life.

And that's incredibly terrifying.

To not even be able to put words around it.

I imagine there are people who feel that way who don't even know that they're depressed.

They just believe that's how they feel.

I think the majority of people don't know that they're depressed.

When I listen to people talk, I don't think they know they are depressed.

Or they don't know how depressed they really are.

It's very tricky.

Depression doesn't just look like laying in bed all day.

Depression comes as a smile.

Depression comes as being the friendliest person in the room.

Because you don't want anybody to feel the same way you feel.

Yeah.

Depression hurts the most for me.

Because it's me giving this to myself.

You can have a bully growing up and it's like, I can avoid this person.

But I can't escape me.

Fuck.

And it's horrible.

I want to say also to any person listening, it doesn't seem like there's a way out.

I guarantee you there is.

Guarantee you there is.

You listening right now.

How sad you are.

How dark you feel.

How overwhelmed you feel with your thoughts, your feelings.

I promise you, there's a way through.

Once I'm out of bed after all of these thoughts, which feel like shards of glass in my brain,

then it's a matter of how much energy do I have to go and be in the world.

You're nervous because you don't have the energy to deal with people.

You're nervous because what are you going to mess up?

Every single thing you took joy in now for some sort of savior or safety.

Gone.

Devoid.

And your brain will find a way to tell you this thing is not as great as it was.

Sometimes I would listen to Jimi Hendrix because I loved Jimi Hendrix growing up.

And I would be depressed.

And I'd say, I want to go hear Jimi Hendrix.

First thought, well, you can't play music like him.

So why would you want to listen to it?

Second thought, well, if he's helping you so well, you're still depressed.

So is he actually helping you?

And then you're frustrated on top of it.

You're like, can you just stop?

Can I just breathe a little bit?

Two things.

Sometimes I'm just low energy and I'll just meet the person where they are.

But most of the time in my upbringing when I was dealing with depression heavily, I would be nicer to everybody because I didn't want to show that's what I was feeling.

And I didn't want to hear people tell me like, for the most part, wrong information.

Get over that.

You have so much to be happy about.

That's white people things.

You're thinking too much.

None of those things help.

Well, there's a misconception that depression is something you can control.

Yeah.

That if you just think better thoughts, you'll feel better.

You don't have to be that way.

And it's clinical depression.

It is a diagnosis of a mental health disorder that is not dissimilar from an eating disorder is a mental health disorder, which is not dissimilar from diabetes being a health disorder.

It's not within your control.

There's treatment.

But it's not something that someone can change by thinking happy thoughts, having gratitude, being appreciative for all that you have.

You have so much to live for.

I mean, there are people who have beautiful lives, beautiful families, great partnerships, great jobs.

And the external doesn't matter because it's clinical depression.

I think as a society, some of what we enjoy watching celebrities downfall is a reminder that human frailty is the universal language.

Some of us like it because it makes us feel better.

And if that's the case, hey, guess what?

You're depressed.

Just letting you know that if you find joy in someone else's misery.

But I think some of it also is a reminder that this person seems like they have everything and still they're depressed.

It's also a secondary thing to let you know that the external stuff is not going to get you there.

And I tried it.

I snorted it.

I drank it.

I slept with it.

I yelled it, screamed it, fought it.

You name it.

I tried to find my way through it in the most unhealthy ways.

And by the way, the things that help me now, they're helpful tools.

They are the scaffold to the building.

But I still have to build it and maintain it.

How did you transition into being able to get treated for this?

Were you ever diagnosed?

Yes.

I got diagnosed when I was 18 by a doctor.

And then again, some years later, they offered me, the one in 18 offered me medication.

And at the time, I was one of those people who were like, I don't need medication.

Or what if I run out?

Because I had read this not too long before that.

I read this article in a magazine in Florida about this photographer who had serious depression,

ran out of his medication, and then ran into the beach and drowned himself.

The odds of that are scary.

Yeah.

Because you just need one time to slip up.

That's it.

That's it.

I give you a bag of Skittles and say, one of these has poison in it.

Would you try any of them?

Right.

It's hard.

But that's not reality.

That's not necessarily what happens.

They wrote that story.

And it's a sad, super sad story.

But on average, that's not how it works.

More than on average.

That went on for a while.

18 until I was about 24.

And I moved here.

About 25 or so, I met this guy who was a music producer.

I let him hear my music.

And he said, you have a lot of feelings about this song in particular.

I can tell you're in it.

I go, yeah.

I tend to lead to the sadder stuff.

I like the sad songs.

I like writing sad songs.

I suffer from depression.

He goes, you taking medication for it?

I go, no.

No.

I feel like I got to feel this real.

He goes, stop there.

Get over yourself.

Take medication.

Be good to yourself.

Get that stuff taken care of.

Meanwhile, I was like, I know, but blah, blah.

He's like, no, no, no.

Take care of yourself.

Get the medication.

It's not going to change everything, but it will give you help.

And I still didn't listen for three, four years.

But I started at some point taking an SSRI, an antidepressant.

I was so nervous about starting it because I had thought

that, again, what if I run out?

But that was the first step for me to do some sort of work for myself.

What happened was my sad thoughts don't go away.

You're not just whistling Dixie.

They just don't have a grip on you anymore.

Like I say it often, those thoughts and any thought

is like a breeze coming through.

Your job is to let it flow through.

Before, depression was like the breeze came in with a bunch of sand.

So you could feel it rubbing across your face.

But now I'm like, oh, I have this thought and it would just pass through.

It leveled me out.

It didn't bring me too high or too low.

Didn't take long for that, for that to activate for me.

What got you into the room to get the meds?

I don't remember.

I don't remember.

Another thing about depression, you lapse memory.

There's a bunch of studies about people with depression and being very forgetful.

They forget whole stages of moments.

And then on top of that, I was drinking a lot and using a lot.

I don't remember what it was.

Something told me, you should go give this a try.

And even though I started taking it, I was still using substances.

So it wasn't even being used in its best capacity.

It's just interesting to me that you were using alcohol in these years before you had SSRIs

and then using alcohol once you had the SSRIs in your system.

But alcohol is a depressant.

It's furthering the symptoms of your depression.

Yeah.

It is an absolute depressant.

It does nothing but remove your dopamine from the chemical compound in your mind.

That's the part that was still in the fog.

That was the part that was still being led by the fog, I should say.

You drive slower when you're driving in fog, right?

So you're being influenced by that fog.

I was still being influenced by that.

Not to mention that when you drink, you feel like you feel great.

You think you feel fantastic.

It's the most fake happiness you could probably find.

I want to go back to your analogy about the fog and the storms for a second.

Because in my experience, as someone who is not clinically depressed,

knowing people who have depression,

A, sometimes they are the life of the party.

They are very peppy, very happy.

To speak to what you said of like,

it's unbeknownst to us that this person is suffering so deeply.

And we see it too when a celebrity dies by suicide.

And we're like, what do you mean?

Robin Williams, case in point.

My goodness, was he the most hilarious, funny person who brought so many people joy,

the epic talent of that human.

We were just in shock when that happened.

And now it's happened again and again and again.

There's a misconception in society that a depressed person is at home crying all day.

I don't find that to be the experience with people that I know who have depression.

In fact, crying is a really beautiful release of emotion.

It's actually allowing emotion to move through you.

But depression feels like there's something really stuck in somebody.

Does that feel like it resonates for you?

In a sense, you're stuck because the images came up for me.

You're in the middle of swirling thoughts.

They're moving so fast.

Right.

So you're stuck because you can't get through them.

You can't walk out of the circle because they're going so fast.

I dated a woman once who was a doctor from Brown University.

She said, you know, depression doesn't mean your brain slows down.

It's going too fast.

And you are bogged down because of it.

Whoa.

Changed everything for me.

I thought it was depressed.

Too like pressed.

Too flattened.

Too lower.

Too.

Nope.

It's precisely the opposite.

Your brain is just.

And you cannot get a grasp on something.

So then you're stuck because you're like, I don't know which one.

Yeah.

And anxiety is very similar.

Anxiety is a spinning of thoughts as well.

And overwhelmed and unable to do.

I'm not giving the clinical definition of anxiety, but I would lean more to anxiety than depression.

But it's also a spinning of thoughts.

Right.

You can feel that way.

They are very related in so many ways.

Anxiety is the trauma of the future.

Depression is the trauma of the past.

Yeah.

So walk me to, you get on the SSRIs.

Life is not all rosy and beautiful, but it's a tool that helps you quiet some of those voices

or not let those voices stick to you in the same way.

Those thoughts.

Right.

What other tools did you use in your journey to a place that I would consider quite healed

in my experience, but I don't know how you would describe it.

Yeah.

Healed is probably not the word I would use.

I would say healing because it's a constant journey.

I am better than I ever felt in my life.

I also didn't even expect to feel this good in my life.

And like a shadow, I always know it's going to be there.

So it keeps me in a middle space.

I don't chase happiness because the other side of that is sadness.

And those are two opposites, quote unquote opposites.

To chase one is to try to push the other one away.

And I'm a fan of being all things.

So I chase peace.

My intention is to find peace.

So my way into that, somewhere than less than a year after that, I became a Buddhist.

I started taking those antidepressants.

Then that accident happened to me or the assault happened to me.

And then about six more months after that, I started practicing Buddhism, which is a meditation.

And then the practice of the philosophy of Buddhism, which is watch your thoughts.

It's an implication of you're not your thoughts.

You can watch them.

You are the screen.

Your thoughts are the movie that's projecting on it.

You are the gold.

Your thoughts are the ring that is made out of the gold or the necklace.

But you're the gold, actually.

Buddhism helped me get to that place.

What's coming up for you?

Just thinking about the hotlines you can call.

I thought to myself, what would my depressed self think about if someone told me to call that number?

My brain would do everything I can to not call that number.

Wow.

It would tell me all reasons to not do it.

How do you get over that?

I hear that.

I mean, I really believe that.

I know that these lifelines are so crucial and yet underutilized given the fact that it is this particular disorder we're talking about has its own agenda.

Yep.

It has so many facets to it.

I don't know that I have the answer on how to get over it.

Well, yeah.

That's not my question.

Not how to get over it.

But how to get through to reach someone who needs it.

I'm torn between this sort of stuff because, like most things, people are not going to get through something until they find it in themselves to get through it.

That's true.

And at the same time, we can point the way also my entire life, especially even as a person who has had multiple thoughts about ending his life.

If someone came to me and said they wanted to do something like that, I would do everything I can to be there with them, to help them see that they're more than just that option.

And if they still did it anyway, I would understand completely.

There's a bit of a tangent that I go on sometimes about people saying suicide is a selfish act.

And I actually find the selfish act to be the person that tells them, stay here in your misery longer because I'd like you here.

That's right.

That sounds more selfish than the person who's saying every single thought is my enemy.

For me, the working through is going to be endless.

And I'm okay with that.

There's a Buddhist story.

There's a Bodhisattva named Siti Garba.

The Bodhisattva goes to this hell realm.

And it's a myth.

We all, as Buddhists, believe it's just a story.

We don't actually believe this happened.

Goes to the hell realm to bring out her mother.

And when she's down there, she sees all the suffering beings.

She comes back up.

She sees the Buddha, saves her mom and says, when I was in there, I saw immeasurable amount of people suffering or beings suffering.

I'd like to go there and bring them all out.

I won't stop until I get everyone out.

The Buddha says, it's immeasurable.

There's no in number to the amount of suffering beings in that realm.

Bodhisattva Siti Garba says, I know.

And I want to go in there and I won't stop until everyone gets out.

The metaphor there is I'm going to continuously participate in the sorrows of the world without any assumption of an endgame here.

I will just keep healing from my depression.

I will just keep healing from the negative thoughts in my head.

And then in my best moments, I will turn to every individual I see and make them feel safer than they've ever felt.

Because if I can give them one glimpse of that joy, it might be something that they can hold on to.

And I've done my job with them.

So my work through has been that, recognizing it.

My friend did an ayahuasca trip recently.

And she said the leader told them, your job in this life is to be heartbroken over and over and over again.

Which is to say, to open your heart wide enough that you're allowing it to be broken and rebroken and rebroken.

That is pulling the walls down.

That is not putting stuff up to protect yourself.

It reminds me of that story.

It's like, this job is never ending.

We're not going to rid the world of suffering.

In our sort of dumpster fire years right now, we feel like the suffering is just endless.

And the more we pay attention to it, the more heartbroken we are.

And the more we want to put up walls and we want to not look at it.

And our job is to just remain brokenhearted about it.

Because that lets us know that we matter.

Each individual matters.

And that someone's suffering matters to me.

Even if there is nothing I can do about it in this moment.

It's still my job to pay attention.

We are all tied by this string.

By this thread of human experience.

And we should be giving ourselves, giving each other that much empathy, sympathy, compassion.

Recognizing to save one is to save the self.

Makes me think, like, to know someone who is depressed and who is in the middle of their depression is not to try and fix them or try to save them, which is impossible.

Impossible and a very easy instinct for me and for anyone who has ever been, like, the quote-unquote therapist of their family or who is in a habit of trying to save people and fix people around them.

But is instead maybe to say, I see you.

You matter to me.

It's okay for you to be exactly where you are right now.

As present as you can be with them, without trying to make them move forward, is the best thing you can do.

There's nothing better than that.

Sometimes it's just letting them vent.

Letting them talk.

You mentioned that you have had moments where you've been suicidal.

Can you talk about the closest you ever got?

So, I went through these stages.

And the stages have gotten lighter and lighter and lighter.

But I got into a relationship.

I met them at the best version of myself.

I assumed that, great, this is the representation of the work that I've been doing, this person.

And it didn't end well.

And I was devastated.

Heartbroken.

Just shattered.

By this time, I was sober.

And when the breakup happened, my whole body went to that same rejection of the things that I knew mode.

The same way as when the woman that I was in love with when I was six until middle school, when she left, I just started rejecting all the things that were given to me to kind of throw it all out.

Even my religion, even whatever.

In this way, it was, I'm just going to start drinking again.

I'm just going to see what happens and whatever.

And it went bad.

It went terrible.

And I was super depressed.

My mother and father flew out here because they could tell how depressed I was in my voice.

The morning before she got here, I woke up.

And that depression was still there.

And for the first time, there was a verbal expression to myself.

Out loud, I said the words, I'm going to kill myself pretty soon.

Yeah, I don't want to do this anymore.

I'm tired.

I had tried so hard.

And I still ended up in a relationship that was not a fit.

But I was so convinced.

So my thought was, if I'm so convinced, even in a better mindset, and I'm still getting it wrong,

I don't know how far until I can get to this place, to the place that I feel is best for me.

It seems too long.

Let me out here.

Pull over, let me out.

I was really sad.

My mom was visiting, my dad, and they were really kind and gentle to me.

I cried in her arms.

I didn't tell them I was going to do this, obviously.

But I started thinking about how I'm going to do this.

I picked them up from the airport, but I couldn't drop them off because I had clients or something.

I was going to call them an Uber.

They're sitting on the couch.

I hugged them.

I said, I love you.

I go to walk out the door.

I turn to look at both of them.

And they look at me, and they start to smile at me.

And I had the thought, this is the last time they're going to see me alive.

And I felt so sad that they don't know this.

The innocence in their smile.

The unknownness in their smile.

Not knowing that this is the last time they're going to see me alive.

When I was 18 years old, I got a tattoo on the other wrist of the key signature, E flat major relative C minor.

It's the key signature that Beethoven used to write his third symphony.

And he wrote it just after he decided to not kill himself.

He locked himself in a place in a town called Heiligenstadt, wrote this letter that was a quasi-suicide note, decided not to, and then finished that symphony.

And that symphony has turned into the defining moment that transitions from the classical era to the romantic era.

And I put that key signature on my wrist so I can always see it to remind myself, no matter how dark it gets, you have no clue what's on the other side.

And I put it when I was 18 years old and I was finally 33 years old and it finally got use.

And I decided I'll just be really still for a long time.

Three months later, I met you.

Six months later, I became a public speaker.

Year and a half, almost two years later now, here we are sitting.

And I am in the most peaceful, calm place of my life because I stuck with the things that have got me here.

And I reminded myself that no matter what, I show up for myself.

And I am proud of myself for that.

And I say to myself as many times as I can, thank you for being here with me still.

That's pretty fucking beautiful.

Thanks.

I'm really glad you're here.

Me too.

I just turned 36 last week and my sister messaged me.

She's like, your birthday's coming up.

And the only thing I could text her was, it feels really good to be here.

I want to just hold space for you and for anyone who has ever been there.

And for anyone who's in the throes of this right now.

I feel for the person that is standing in aisle seven at Rouse that's staring off.

I feel for the clients that you've had that you've talked about that have postpartum depression.

You told me stats that blew my mind.

Yeah.

As a postpartum doula, I would be remiss to not mention that this statistic is really alarming.

Postpartum depression can happen to anyone, regardless of your history with depression or your mental health.

The stats on postpartum depression vary from state to state, but in many states, there are as many as one in five birthing people will experience postpartum depression or what's called PMADs, which is perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, because there is also postpartum anxiety.

And in very small cases, there are postpartum psychosis.

These are real mental health disorders that can happen after giving birth.

One in five.

Now that number is higher in black birthing people because of the systemic inequalities that we have here.

Black birthing people are less likely to be diagnosed and treated than the comparable white birthing person.

And I just want to call that out and state it.

50% of perinatal mood disorders go undiagnosed.

Whoa.

And it's really, really, really important to me that we talk about it.

And we talk about it up front.

And a lot of people are scared about what if I get postpartum depression.

But the really scary part is going undiagnosed.

Getting a diagnosis is a really freeing thing, as I've talked about many times on this show and all varieties.

I have a good friend named Angelina Spicer, and she is an incredible advocate for, in particular, black and brown perinatal mental health.

Her particular experience was that she went seven months with postpartum depression undiagnosed.

The day that she was given a diagnosis and someone said to her,

I would like you to check into a psychiatric ward to be treated for this,

she said, this is not a direct quote, but she said basically,

Hallelujah.

Thank God I'm going to get treated because I feel so bad and no one understands.

And I thought it was just me.

So making sure you're assessing if you are postpartum or you're going to have a baby,

making sure you're doing self-assessments for perinatal mood disorders and that you have professionals around to potentially diagnose you.

But most importantly, to talk about it.

Talk about how you're feeling with your partner, with your doctor, with your doula, with your midwife, whoever it is.

Talk about how it is changing over time and how that feels.

So people can speak to you about whether that is normal, typical, or atypical.

And here's something you really may not know, which is that one in 10 new dads will experience postpartum depression.

And that comes not in the first few weeks, but actually between the three to six month mark after a baby is born,

which correlates coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, with potentially a father returning to work.

Because in this country, we do not have paid paternity leave.

And so many dads are back at work after a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

The fact that I am a postpartum doula, and I did not know that fact until very recently, thanks to a very amazing colleague of mine.

I'm floored by that.

And so we are really not supporting men in this.

And any partner, by the way, regardless of gender, this can happen.

Postpartum depression, which is to say that depression could touch any of us at any point.

It could be circumstantial.

It could be not circumstantial.

So here we are.

Thank you for burying your soul here for everybody.

So we can all just add a slight amount of awareness to this conversation.

topic.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening.

And to you listening, you've given me a safe space to feel more comfortable to express this sort of stuff.

So thank you very much.

And if you're listening and you are someone you love, needs support, there is a lifeline.

You can text or call 988.

I will put other resources in the show notes as well.

There is help out there.

And it does get better.

And I think Cesar is a good example of that.

And a beautiful one of that.

Thank you for saying that.

Thank you for listening to Beauty in the Break.

And as always, be kind to yourself.

If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.

That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.

And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you next time.

Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.  

Our Executive Producer is Glenn Milley. 

Original music by Cesar + the Clew. 

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Cesar Cardona

Host
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Foster Wilson

Host