Sitting With Shadows: A Spiritual Meditation on Depression

Sitting With Shadows: A Spiritual Meditation on Depression

By Kateb Nuri-Alim Shunnar

Let’s not whisper this. Let’s say it plain.

This is a meditation on depression not a battle plan, not a hiding place. Not a pep talk either. This is a soft place to sit. A place to breathe. A place to tell the truth.

We’re not here to fight the darkness. We’re here to sit beside it, look it in the eye, and say,

“I see you, but I still believe in my return.”

Because whether it comes as a slow drizzle or a full-blown storm, depression knows its way into the room. Sometimes it shows up uninvited. Sometimes we open the door without realizing. Either way, it lingers. It reshapes our world until everything looks foggy and far away.

And let’s be real: some of us are walking around with depression dressed up in perfume and work clothes. We laugh. We nod. But inside, we’re carrying whole oceans no one sees.

Maybe what you're feeling is that shapeless heaviness… the kind that makes sunlight feel too bright, and even the smallest task feel like a mountain. Maybe it's a fog of meaninglessness, where your “why” seems to have packed its bags and left without a note. Or maybe it's a slow sadness that doesn’t have a name just a weight, like something sacred and broken sitting on your chest.

Whatever it is, don’t rush past it.

Don’t dress it up in fake joy or throw glitter over it.

Sit with it. Invite the Creator into that space.

Not to erase it. But to help you breathe through it.

Let this be a soul invitation:

Sit in a quiet room.

Lie back.

Let your hands rest beside you or across your belly.

Let your eyes be soft or closed.

Let your spirit exhale.

Start with your breath nothing fancy. Just slow, deep inhales through your nose.

Feel the air fill your chest, and as you exhale, imagine it carrying even a drop of the sadness away.

Just a drop.

That’s enough for now.

Now think just think on all the things the Creator has already walked you through.

Storms that didn’t drown you.

Nights that didn’t take you.

Emotions that felt endless but passed.

My grandmother Celestine, bless her memory, used to say,

“Even the darkest room can’t kill a candle if it’s determined to burn.”

And Lord, that woman knew dark rooms.

She’d sit on the porch during her own low days, look at the sky, and say,

“God ain’t scared of my sadness. And I ain’t gonna pretend joy I don’t feel. But I will sit here ‘til peace comes pokin’ its head around the corner.”

There’s a kind of power in stillness, especially when the world tells you to move faster, be productive, smile harder, fake it 'til you make it.

But this reflection?

It’s a sacred pause.

A moment where you stop pretending, stop performing, and just allow your soul to whisper what it really feels.

You don’t need to be “strong” in the way the world defines it.

You don’t need to have it all together.

You just need to be honest. And present.

That’s the kind of strength that invites the Creator to come close.

Let me tell you a folktale one passed down from an old wise man in a small village under the Sahel sun.

There once was a traveler named Oji who carried a basket on his head, so large and full that people called him “The Burden Man.”

Everywhere he went, he asked for help, but folks just nodded and walked on by. One day, he stumbled into an old woman sitting near a stream. Her eyes were cloudy, but her smile? It saw everything.

She didn’t offer to take his basket.

She didn’t tell him to put it down.

Instead, she said,

“Sit. Let your basket rest beside you. Let’s name what’s inside.”

One by one, she asked what he carried grief, shame, fear, rejection and as he named them, they got lighter. Not gone, but lighter.

Finally, she told him,

“Sometimes healing don’t come by dropping the weight. Sometimes it comes by learning how to carry it differently with company, with conversation, with care.”

Depression may not vanish in a breath.

But breath after breath, moment after moment, it begins to loosen its grip.

Not because it’s afraid of you but because you are no longer afraid to face it.

And the Creator?

The Creator is that whisper that stays with you even in the silence.

The presence in the pit.

The flicker in the cave.

The stillness in your storm.

Now here’s the hard truth I’ve had to face myself and I’ll say this not just as a writer, but as Kateb, a human being who's walked through some heavy days:

Sometimes what deepens our depression isn't just what happens to us but what we try to handle all by ourselves.

I get it. We want control. We want solutions. We want quick fixes, magic answers, shortcuts to healing, and some kind of guarantee that everything’s going to make sense now. And when it doesn’t? When the waiting room feels endless, when the breakthrough feels delayed, we start trying to patch things together in our own strength.

We start playing God with shaky hands.

But the truth is we were never built to carry it all alone.

We were never meant to be self-sufficient islands.

We were meant to lean.

To surrender.

To trust, even when our circumstances don’t match our expectations.

Even when it looks nothing like we prayed for.

What if the healing begins not when we fight harder, but when we finally let go?

Not give up but give it over.

Because trust me I’ve done it the other way. I’ve tried to fix, force, figure out, and forge my way through situations I had no business managing on my own. And every time I did, I only dug the hole deeper.

It wasn’t until I released not just the pain, but the pressure to solve everything that I could even feel the Creator’s presence again. That still, reassuring voice saying:

“I never asked you to do this without Me.”

So maybe today, we don’t have to have all the answers.

Maybe we just need to take our hands off the wheel for a moment, breathe deep, and whisper:

“I trust You, even here.”

And if that feels hard to say start smaller.

Try:

“Help me trust.”

Because even faith the size of a mustard seed can move the heaviness.

And even a cracked-open heart can make room for healing.

Let go, not because you’re weak.

But because you’re finally wise enough to know:

Healing doesn’t come from more control. It comes from more surrender.

And here’s a little personal proverb from me to you:

“The soul don’t need to be fixed. It just needs to be listened to, held like rainwater in cupped hands, and believed in again.”

So breathe.

Sit.

Cry if you must. Laugh if you can.

Let your healing be human. Let it be slow. Let it be sacred.

And remember: you don’t have to climb out all at once. You just have to stop digging.

Lean back into the light that still remembers you.

It hasn’t left.

It’s just waiting for you to say,

“I’m ready to come home… to myself.”