Eagle Heart, precious lady, I'm sooooooooooo glad to hear you say that...it brought tears to my eyes. I wish I could reach through the wires and give you a big hug and tell you, in person, how proud of you I am and how honored I am to meet you.

Yes, please do remember to honor what you have done. And yes, depression does that to us, doesn't it? If you can find the teenieset, tiniest thing that worked for you, count it as a successful day.

While working at a Business Analyst job about a year ago, I had an opportunity to stay late and chat with a cubicle mate. I don't know how the conversation turned to depression...and it did. I was talking to a woman with a beautiful smile for everyone and the most encouraging words for all who crossed her path. Little did I know that she was what I call a 'functioning depressive'...she did that during the day, and shunted herself off to a blackened home every night.

As a natural coach, I tend to give assignments to folks and hers was to purchase a book we had discussed (Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting) and sit with the lights on in her house for 5 minutes. She agreed and when she returned on Monday she had done it...took me a bit of time to convince she had done well and when I did, she gleamed. So precious, ever so precious.

So if you put on socks, give yourself credit...get out of bed even for a few minutes, walk to the mailbox, smile without grimacing. Give yourself credit. It all counts honey, it all counts. And they are all steps that will help you on your journey. And they are all worthy of celebration!

Believe me, I practice this too...I'm grand at lifting others up and counting every step with joy and expecting absolute perfection from myself. One of the gifts of my adrenal collapse last year was teaching myself how to be nice to me. For weeks, I counted myself successful (at least that was the theory...I didn't always succeed...grin) if I made my husband's sandwiches and was out of bed for an hour!

Fortunately, I had a multi-person support term who served as accountability partners ... and when I forgot to celebrate my successes, they were there to do so and remind me to be as gentle to me as I was to them when they were walking a similar path.