My Longest Journey

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A Diary By Ann Samuel ISBN: 9781847471154 Published: 2007 Pages: 120 Key Themes: ethnic minorities, depression, memoirs, Christianity Description This book is an interesting account of one woman's battle with depression. It demonstrates the difficulty she had in finding herself and trying to understand herself. It is an extremely touching book and it deals with a variety of issues to do with religion and culture, as well as depression. About the Author Ann Samuel suffered from clinical depression. This book is a diary account of three years of her life while she was suffering from depression. She aims to give people hope and connect with other mental health sufferers. Book Extract 'My Longest Journey' symbolises the process of searching for my one hope of finding my way out of my cocoon, a skin that encircles my entire perception of the world. In one sense, it is really my protection against my own feelings of grief, grief ultimately over love, something that I longed for since childhood maybe, even at birth. In another way, it is about fear, my fear of an internal sense of feeling at risk or in danger that on an emotional level, makes it even more difficult to believe in feeling loved and secure. Yet, I feel in this way I am more human as I wrestle with these emotions, with the questioning, that I need to surrender. Yet, I only appear to partake of human experiences because my 'skin' cocoons me, it imprisons me, trapping me, in its inability to shed itself, to shed its chrysalis and turn me into a beautiful butterfly, to fly away home. I started to keep this diary which covers nearly three years of my life when I not long before got a picture diary from a book club as a free gift. I had already decided to keep a dream diary to get an insight into my unconscious world and this prompted me to write my conscious diary. I needed to express my feelings in a safe way to myself becoming my own personal therapist. So many emotions were building up inside me that I knew would explode if I didn't get them out. I needed to understand the pain inside me: grief, fear, loneliness, guilt, anger and shame. I wanted to make meaning of these feelings and learn how to tackle them. What could I gain from my pain? In writing my diary I was able to stand back and look at my feelings, even uncomfortable, painful, emotions that were once buried, forgotten, but now rising up like warriors to fight me but having to learn not to fight back. Furthermore, I was able to see the destructive ideas or teachings that plagued me in my insanity of fear, danger, punishment, shame, guilt or anger. Yet, my strong desire to come to terms with these feelings through a sense of restoration and fulfilment of the dreams I dared to dream one of which was to write and publish a book. My diary actually starts with my most recent entry as I am still going through this process but, it can be read from here (retracing) or from the back forward (tracing) as it has no endings just beginnings, a section of my life history. I am breaking with conventions here as I believe choice equals power. (