Kindness, Litmus Tests, and Madam Depression
Pinch your thumb and index finger together tightly until there’s no space between them. Now loosen up just enough to let the tiniest sliver of light through.
That is the margin by which I missed graduating from high school with honors — one one-hundredth of a point.
It was my own fault. I pretty much slept through my junior year. I mean that quite literally. I ditched classes left and right to sleep in the library. I made up some lost ground my senior year, but still missed honors by a smidgen.
More than thirty years have passed, and it still bothers me. I graduated from college with honors — but not high school.
Why was high school a sleepwalk?
Depression. Madam Depression has been my most constant companion for nearly forty years. We’ve become quite the dynamic duo. She’s a hanger-on like no other. Once she got her grip on me, she has never, not for one minute, truly let go.
Infection
At times, medications have quieted her voice, but after a while, she always sneaks back in — like a festering infection you can’t quite kick. Eventually the medications need to change, then change again, and again. In earlier years, I tried things that harmed me, desperate to find anything that hurt more than the pain of depression. Self-medication, self-harm… very poor responses to the very real pain depression brings.
I vividly remember the day my psychiatrist said, “For some people, we don’t aim for a seven or eight in terms of mood. Sometimes, a steady five or six is a victory.”
I knew she meant me. She’s seen me through hard times — the times I hurt myself physically, the times I hurt myself in my own thoughts and actions.
These days, I can say with some contentment that Madam Depression isn’t the loudest thing in my life. She just exists in the background — a nagging squatter who feels entitled to steal my cable, my happiness, and my joy.
Over the years, I’ve always known exactly how dark things were by one simple litmus test:
Can I write?
Fifteen years ago, I wrote a science fiction novel — three times. The same one, three times—each version bigger, heavier, more out of control. I drowned in it. Madam Depression kept whispering that I couldn’t have finished it well, and even if I did, no one would have read it anyway.
I haven’t written since then.
Yet those characters still beg for life. They sit on the sidelines in my head, patient and eager, warming the bench and watching for my signal that it’s finally their turn.
Then, on September 13, 2025, I met the young woman whose simple question changed the direction of my life. She refocused my vision outward—toward the calling of Kindness.
Within half an hour, the idea for this blog sparked. Within a day, I had written the first piece. Since then, posts have been flowing weekly, sometimes daily. I’m writing in my sleep. I’m writing in the shower and while driving. While I’m writing one blog post, another one is banging on the door. Even Spam calls give me ideas.
Everything that happens becomes a new possibility. A deer crosses the road? “I’m going to blog about that.” A guy swerves around a line of cars to intentionally run a red light (true story)? Oh, I’m definitely blogging that.
Here’s the mind-blowing part: Madam Depression is losing her footing.
She’s no longer taking up so much space in my heart and head that nothing else can fit. Her sludge of despair and hooks of malice are weakening. Where she once wrapped me in barbed wire, whispering that I’d never truly feel joy or freedom, the metal is rusting. The shackles are cracking. The chains are dropping away.
And she’s wrong — gloriously wrong.
The moment I chose Kindness, something shifted. I stopped looking so much at myself, stopped asking “What’s wrong with me?” or “What’s in this for me?” and started looking at the people around me.
“What can I do for that one person right now?”
I stopped saying, “Woe is me.”
Is Kindness a cure?
Maybe not for the chemical imbalances of depression — those are real, scientific, measurable. But it is absolutely a force that redirects my mind, my energy, my attention, my sense of purpose.
For me, Kindness passes the litmus test as a method of treatment — because right now, Madam Depression is less a coffin and more like that stray piece of toilet paper stuck to your shoe.
Fiber Optics and a Steady Seven (December 2025)
Madam Depression may have been stealing my cable, but I’m upgrading to fiber.
Yesterday, after 25 years of walking this road together, my psychiatrist read the words I’d written about you, the litmus tests, the chains starting to shake loose. She looked up, floored, and said it made her whole day. (And this was at 8:30 a.m., before the world had even caffeinated.)
Too often she has to tell her patients that a steady five or six on the mood scale is a hard-won victory — the best some might ever hold. So when she asked where I am now, I paused, listened to the quiet in my chest, and said, “I think I’m at a seven.” For the first time I can remember. Not a fleeting high, but a sustained hum of light. A true, honest to goodness 7 out of 10. That’s not just teetering on more good than bad. Or, how I’ve too often looked at it, at least it’s not more bad than good.
She smiled and shared something I’d half-suspected: kindness isn’t just my north star; it’s science-backed medicine. She mentioned a Duke University study on the “Three Good Things” intervention — where folks jot down daily positives, often laced with acts of kindness — and how it measurably eases depression, burnout, and that bone-deep exhaustion. Turns out, turning outward doesn’t just rust the barbed wire; it builds resilience that sticks.
Kindness passes every test now — not because it erases the chemistry, but because it redirects the current. From woe-is-me to what-can-I-do-for-you. From squatter to stray. And seven? That’s the view from a clearer window: parties thrown, banners waved, words flowing, mirrors held for others… and finally, one for myself.
If you’re reading this and Madam Depression has her hooks in you too — start small. One good thing. One kind turn. The upgrade is waiting. Remember, cable carries a signal based on electricity, it’s something easily disrupted and corrupted. Fiber optic is based on light — and light always extinguishes the darkness. It never happens the other way around.
Let kindness be a light in the dark places for you. I am so grateful for the path of kindness, those who travel it with me, and to a seven. I see eights on the horizon.
Continuum of Kindness 
Leave a comment