I have decided to take a break from much of my online activity. I find myself in a place where I need to draw in a little and heal, and have given myself permission to simplify. I do not know when I will next post here. It could be tomorrow, it could be months from now. I give myself the freedom of choice. If in some rare instance you might want to reach me, please use the form on the contact page.

I am holding the world in my heart, with wishes for love and healing everywhere.

Love Jane

I have found a sanctuary in my new homeland. It is a place of magnificent old growth trees, which talk softly to me as the angels and sprites float under the canopy. At a time when I am struggling to find roots, nature has once again done it magnificently for me.

Even should my irrational fears of losing my voice come true, nature will speak for me.

Suicide is an especially difficult topic for me. I have known three people who lost the battle to depression and successfully ended their lives. I use the word "successfully" ironically. As a survivor, I know there is no victory in losing the fight, and to this day I am still haunted by the lives of these three beautiful, complex people - lives that held so much promise but were lost in the grip of depression.

I have been unearthing old materials about depression that I hosted on the web some ten years ago, deciding that they are still important - perhaps more than ever as so many people, especially teens, lose themselves to the impersonal disillusionment of the age. I mourn each loss and feel it as keenly as if it were the losses of those I was privileged to know for such a short time.

During my research to update these materials, I was heartened to know that there is now a day to recognize and promote Suicide Prevention, and it just passed on September 10. Although I am late, I feel it is still timely to reflect on suicide, on the great hole left by people who commit suicide, and why we should do everything in our power to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

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Befrienders International (also known as the Samaritans) offer 24-hour telephone counselling services. This service is non-political, non-religious, and non-judgemental. Find contact numbers for your country at Befrienders International. They offer 24-hour suicide prevention counselling in English at jo@samaritans.org. Note that this e-mail service is confidential, and endeavours to reply within 24 hours. For e-mail support in a language other than English, check their Email befriending. They also have useful links to helpline networks around the world.

Lifeline International also offers 24-hour telephone counselling. Find contact numbers for your country at Lifeline International. Lifeline in Australia can be reached at 13 1114.

With an Australian focus, but helpful for young people in general is Reach Out who offer good advice on what to do if your friend threatens to take their own life. Another important emergency service for young people and children in Australia is the Kids Help Line, which can be reached at 1800 55 1800.

Please believe that your crisis WILL pass and that the conditions (including depression) that precipitate suicidal impulses can be treated and eased.

For further encouragement on why it's better to live, please visit if you are thinking about suicide - read this first. It provides further guidance to on-line discussion and support groups and mailing lists, and some excellent essays for sufferers and people who love and support them. Another excellent site with similar resources may be found at Mental Help Net

This music video by Good Charlotte, while difficult to watch in parts, may help you to understand that you're not alone in going through these painful feelings, and that your going would cast so many others into darkness. You are loved more than you know, and as this video shows, you leave behind a trail of devastation. Hold on, and get help and talk about it to people who care about and love you. There are so many people out there who love you, so just hold on...

It's important that these links and phone numbers are kept up to date, which can prove difficult on the ever changing World Wide Web. If you find a link which has changed, please contact me promptly, so I may fix the link or find another service if possible.

This is my attempt to present the personal face of depression, to balance the increasing number of depression pages put together by the medical establishment and pharmaceutical companies. My goal is to collect together resources that may help those in the grip of depression. I also include links to personal depression pages, to educate non-sufferers about what it is like to live with depression. It is my hope that understanding will lead to more compassion and reduce the loneliness and isolation that causes many men, women, teens and children to suffer, and sometimes die, in silence.

My co-authors and I are individuals living with depression. These pages represent our personal attitudes to, and experiences with, depression. Whilst trying to maintain a positive aspect to these pages, some of the content - personal writings, essays, and links - examines lives afflicted by depression.

If you are feeling suicidal, I urge you to seek professional advice from a qualified and compassionate psychiatrist or medical practitioner. Do not give up hope if you do not find these qualities at first - there are good doctors out there - and people who care. Please refer to links on the Emergency Help to get help now, or call your local emergency service (911 in the US and Canada, 000 in Australia, or check your local phone book).

These pages are NOT a substitute for professional medical care and advice. Please take care of yourself and do not suffer in silence. There are trained people who care and can help you.

A friend of mine is fond of the saying: "The only permanent thing is change." That maxim has been true of my life recently, and will be for some time to come, I am certain. Words have circulated in my head. I have planned journal entries that flow seamlessly while I am measuring the streets of the neighbourhood with my feet. Yet, when I sit down to write, the words are censored: they choke, and somehow I do not make time to allow them to flow. Inside, I am snarled in the weeds, stagnant, unable to move, while outwardly I seem to be making progress, as evidenced by the movement of one foot before the other.

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Day 4 of NaNoWriMo 2006 and words are beginning to flow after a slow start. I've found the creative process very difficult this time. I seem trapped in an earlier time when my imagination was discouraged, and it's proven very difficult to break that way of thinking. The act of creating a fantasy world in my head seems somehow shameful - somehow not what I should be doing - and yet at the same time I think this is the key to my healing.

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This year I will again be taking part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo 2006). For those not in the know, this is a phenomenon in which many tens of thousands of writers worldwide get together virtually (and in some cases, in reality) to write a 50,000 word "novel". NaNoWriMo is about the selfish pleasure of committing oneself to "a room of one's own" as Virginia Woolf put it and writing without censure, without editing, and sometimes without plot, but always with the delight and discovery of writing at its most fundamental level.

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