How to keep the meaningful parts of creativity after depression

You say you’ve come through a depression that was both debilitating and strangely vivid and creatively expansive. During that time you immersed yourself in creative work — writing poetry, painting your feelings and reading books that echoed your inner world — and found a depth that felt honest, vivid and alive.

Now that you’re feeling better you worry that intensity and clarity are slipping, and that the wider world seems preoccupied with consumption, indifferent to injustice and lacking in empathy. Eleanor notes that depression can fuel its own expression; it’s absorbing and can feel like a secret, unifying perspective.

That intensity, she warns, is a kind of magical thinking: darkness often presents itself as truth, but it isn’t the only path to depth. There can be as much intensity and truth outside despair as within it — whether in art that is brighter than melancholy or in writers who write about joy, friendship and wonder — because love, relief, awe and attention can also oxygenate your creative life.

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