The opposite of depression is not happiness, it’s expression.

“The opposite of depression is not happiness, it’s expression.”

This sentence I heard in session with Kate Northrup last week stunned me.

I copied it to my notes. My mind wanted to linger there, savor its meaning.

In a perfect synchronistic moment, that same day Facebook brought to my attention a story from years ago:

On May 29, 2016 my first article was published in a digital magazine.

I cannot believe I almost missed this milestone anniversary: nine years ago I gave myself permission to start expressing.

This was a step that led to a major plot twist in my life.

Memories flooded in: I wrote that article months before. I polished it a thousand times and by April there was nothing else to add or to take away, but I still sat on it for another month.

It took courage, humility, and a certain degree of deserving to share with the world something that came from my deepest, most tender part.

It was also an act of survival: I could no longer remain a mute, people-pleasing sliver of myself.

The pain from hiding the most important parts of me, the discomfortfrom suppressing my voice became stronger than any fear of rejection that held me back until then.

This was the first step in a thousand steps that brought me back to life, because as I’ve learned since then: self-expression is life.

“Authenticity versus attachment” is the subject I often revisit in my writing, in my sessions, and in my own life.

Human children remain helpless for much longer than other mammals. Attachment to a care-giver guarantees survival.

Many of us learn in childhood that our unfiltered self-expression may rupture the bond with the person on whom we depend for our survival. We continue valuing attachment over authentic self-expression into our adulthood.

However, at some point in our development the need for authenticity becomes greater than the need for attachment.

And this moment is very confusing, very vulnerable.

Because this need for unfiltered self-expression – the need to use our voice to proclaim who we are – risks rupturing our attachments.

Because people who learned to love us in our people-pleasing and mute phase may become very uncomfortable hearing our true voice.

Stifling our urge to speak the truth, to stand up for what we believe in, or to disagree with mass consensus is not only an individual coping mechanism. We tap into collective levels of fear over millennia of human society.

The examples are too many, but to name just a few: Jesus Christ, Galileo Galilei, the Witch trials, Martin Luther King, Jr…

Speaking the truth was always dangerous.

To speak it, you have to be ready to die for it.

I felt the nudge to express some uncomfortable truths about who I am to people in my life, but found myself unable to. For years.

I spent some time blaming my father, then my husband for keeping me mute.

Until I learned that it was my own survival instinct that kept me from expressing, a mechanism that was protecting me from death.

2016 became the year when this obstruction of my self-expression was no longer ensuring my survival.

On the contrary, I’d been dying – slowly but surely – because I was disconnected from my own voice and with it from my essence.

Pressing that submit button – I remember so well the range of emotions I went through.

There was the paralyzing fear of rejection – as if my life was literally depending on acceptance by some stranger who would read my article. And at the same time there was also a feeling of euphoria – when I surrendered control over my destiny, and aligned with my desire to release my creation into the world.

Daring to fly requires trust into something that we cannot see or name. Through that gesture I learned the most important truth: that my inner knowing is connected to a magical power.

Trusting it, I dove into a complete unknown.

And I discovered that when I dare to act with respect to my inner knowing there is a safety net, and green light, and all kinds of miraculous synchronicities.

It was this step in the spring of 2016 that led to many similar steps over the years.

Daring to publish an article helped me to dare to use my voice at home.

It redefined how I show up to my relationships.

It transformed my life: from life focused on surviving to a life of thriving.

Allowing my thoughts, my words, my experiences to be known to others without fear of punishment and retaliation was an excruciating process.

It required healing of my relationship with myself – who I thought myself to be, where do I source my value, what is the purpose of life.

I had to learn to honor myself enough to let go of relationships that did not allow space for the evolving me.

I had to rehabilitate the muscles in my solar plexus, my throat, my mouth – to relax and allow the passage of energy via words, the energy that could no longer be contained as it was burning my gut and my mind.

At times the words were ugly and angry.

They caused violent reactions in people around me.

At times the familiar me was ashamed of the me I was becoming.

But the more I dared to speak, the more I was connecting to my power.

My depression evolved into my expression.

Today the superhighway of my expression is the pillar of my life.

Daring to speak healed the way I relate to myself, it’s healing my family, it created the foundation for my purpose in life, it nourishes my life and other people in more ways than I can share here.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for reading and for your resonance.