@zipporah, this spoke to me on many different levels.

How you made yourself sick: As a fellow creative/intuitive, I came to that realization too. As children, when we suppress our gifts, they make us sick (once we're older). We hold the gifts down, drowning them, burying them, letting them rot, until they become a curse. The only way to "lift the curse" is to confront that part of ourselves that we buried, and allow our gifts to grow. Since the gifts were buried, in the soil of our darkened hearts, that pain can be used as fertilizer, and we can use those painful experiences to make our gifts not only grow, but flourish.

I know that's full of cliches, but depression often is. You sink into those cliches. They become so profound, because you're living them.

At least, that's how it was for me.

Thank you for your thoughts. You've helped me realize some things.

It's like I was reading my own mind. Spelunking into my own gnarled heart.