Hello. You’ve caught me toggling between several deep thoughts but I collect enough of them to introduce myself as Rea, or Depression Auntie.
I’m a person living day to day in one of humanity’s most uncertain times. They are times when many are repeatedly in and out of crisis (material, emotional, existential). Yet, if you’re reading this you are surviving. I write so you’ll know that someone else is surviving, too, and ready to grouse with you about life’s unpredictability while moodily chopping vegetables.
Just because we’re surviving doesn’t mean we’re well.
I’m interested in the experience of living through hardship. During the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, I remember feeling myself developing Depression Auntie habits.
If my loved ones and I got through it, I would tell myself, I’ll be one of those people with odd habits, the way our elders who lived through the Great Depression in the US are described. In an ideal scenario, the children in my life would just laugh it off.
It’s 2024, and I do have such habits, but am fond of them. I’m proud of putting the green onion roots in water to literally grow a whole new vegetable several times, tending to basil in pots, cutting my own hair, finding re-uses for a bevy of objects, reaching out to a growing network of caring humans or what’s left of safety nets for when I need support.
My ways are not just odd habits to me, but prized ways of endurance, because there has not been an end to the depth of societal abandonment the still-ranging pandemic helped reveal.
I don’t expect times to get “better” on a macro level without a lot of people powered change. Among other things, folks are ekeing it out through
people in power downplaying the danger of COVID, making much of public life inaccessible to disabled people in the absence of face mask requirements and air filtration
rising food and housing costs that are wildly out of proportion with the wages and available work
extreme and catastrophic weather events due to climate change
An ongoing genocide in Palestine which the US supports
Over the years since 2020, my whole conception of what is valuable has changed. It’s community care over luxury, which doesn’t mean the absence of joy.
This is a project of sharing what frameworks and actions have helped me, and others I learn from, thrive as best as we can through hardship.
It’s about the tactics that have carried people through chaotic times for centuries, and how they intersect with the conditions of today.
Depression Auntie is planned as a website, newsletter and social platforms dedicated to:
no-pressure tips for surviving economic hardship
narrative writing about present and past experiences from me, a creative nonfiction aficionado
content that is intended to spark action and drive change
deep reading and reflection on topics like mutual aid, disability/healing justice, public health, anticapitalism and wherever the theme takes us