Six Questions to Ask Yourself When You're Feeling Depressed

I recently opened up my calendar to connect 1:1 with women considering joining me this year in my program, The Way of the Priestess I was talking with one beautiful woman the other week who shared, “Every day is feeling the same. Day after day. The same monotonous routine...” 


I get it. I’ve been there. When every day is a repeat of the last, and life is starting to feel like a never-ending cycle of cleaning dishes, answering emails, and getting stuck in traffic. Many, many times the monotony of life (especially as a new parent) has made me wonder, “What’s the point of all of this…?” 

Especially when I think of impending effects of climate change. The killings in the Middle East. The vast amount of mental illness, homelessness and suffering in our own country. How are we not all depressed? 

But I also know my soul came here for a reason, and I want to best utilize my time here on Earth.

I thought about what has pulled me out of those harder life moments. For example, sometimes depression lingers when we don’t fully feel our grief. Or take a step outside of our comfort zone. Or begin to really listen to our intuition and I began to write…

Here are 6 questions I think would be helpful to ask yourself if you’re feeling depressed:

What truly nourishes me?

Ask yourself - how am I really using my time? How often am I being sucked in to mindless scrolling, social media, advertisements, the news…things that were often designed to make us feel worse than we did before.  What could you replace that time with?


For me right now, it’s riding my bike. We recently got a bike seat for our daughter, and we’ve been riding on the bike trails near our house to watch the sunset. It puts me in a state of awe every time. The other day we even saw an owl at dusk. It swooped on a tree right in front of us, the closest I had ever seen one before. 

Getting into my body, and experiencing beauty never fail to pull me out of a difficult mood. Maybe this is your reminder that at the end of the day we can put down our phone and come back to the body. Yin yoga, a walk, your spiritual practices, that which helps you feel alive, connected, and in flow 

What scares me? 

I think the happiest people are the ones willing to step outside their comfort zone, again and again.  There’s nothing like a little adrenaline to make you feel ALIVE. And it doesn’t have to be sky diving.  What about making a new friend - you can invite that person you’ve been seeing at the coffee shop to an event, or to go on a walk. You could ask someone on a date. You could go to an event by yourself.  You could raise your hand and say something in a group of strangers. Or jump in the ocean in winter.  I think a lot of times the things that scare us are showing us where we have room to grow. 

What is my intuition telling me? 

Sometimes we feel depressed when we are consistently going against our intuition.  When we have a desire, a calling from somewhere and we say no to it, or make excuses to avoid it, something in our soul feels sad. It’s almost like we have a certain destiny to have certain experiences and if we keep saying no to those soul callings - we’re going to start to feel depressed.  So get quiet. Listen to the soft voice of your heart (I always here it after a good yoga class)... See what unfolds.

How can I ritualize and feel my grief?

I don’t know anyone who is not holding grief about something. The thing is in our culture, it has not been accepted to feel it, especially publicly. And sometimes all grief needs is to be witnessed. Could you make a ritual around it? Maybe there’s something you could read out loud, maybe there is something that wants to be buried, maybe we just need someone else to hold the space to witness what has been lost, before we feel ready to move forward. 

How can I be a student again?

Some of the happiest times in my life have been when I am learning something new. I remember my days of yoga teacher trainings, and learning to play the guitar and the ukulele were so invigorating. Being a student puts us in a beginners mind. It opens us to knowledge we didn’t have before. It expands us and allows our brain to be more open and malleable. So think about ways you can learn just for fun - maybe there’s a knitting group you can join, or maybe it’s this year’s Way of the Priestess program.

Where can I volunteer? 

The times I have been living at an ashram I remember hearing “the happiest people are the ones doing the most seva, or selfless service.” Volunteering and helping where we can bring meaning to others truly enriches our lives. Maybe you can bring some soup to a sick friend, or a new mom. Maybe you can find a local garden to help. Volunteering has also been such a wonderful place to find community and feeds us in more ways than one 

I hope you find these thoughts helpful. Find the new dates for my latest women's initiation program below…

Understanding Cultural Appropriation

Cultural appropriation has become so widely engrained in modern spiritual culture, it’s often blind to white people. To a white person, teaching yoga, singing mantras, calling upon goddesses and deities of other cultures is often seen as the norm.

Layla Saad defines cultural appropriation as a modern type of colonization that involves taking cultural practices, spiritual traditions and other cultural elements for one’s own use, sometimes for commercial purposes. It happens when there is an imbalance of power and privilege - a dominant or privileged culture appropriates from a non dominant or marginalized culture.

In my last post, Understanding White Privilege I shared about white people’s unconscious tendency to “Take” without asking. This has played out widely in cultural appropriation.

Last year a friend of mine (a person of color) brought up the topic of cultural appropriation, specifically about ways I had been participating in it.

I began to look at my life and see how much of my work involved cultural appropriation:

• Teaching yoga 

• Profiting from teaching yoga 

• Singing Sanskrit mantras 

• Calling upon goddesses and deities from an ancestral lineage other than my own

• Teaching about goddesses and deities from outside my ancestral lineage 

• Leading cacao ceremonies

• Profiting from leading cacao ceremonies 

• Profiting at all from sharing rituals and traditions from cultures other than my own 

When a POC (Person of Color) sees a white person doing these things, it can cause harm.

It can be hard to understand at first from a white person’s perspective because these acts are so deeply pervasive in our spiritual communities.

Why have these practices from other cultures become so prevalent in white communities? I understand that many people from European descent have lost touch with their own ancestral rituals and spiritual practices. So much of the magic and traditions of Northern European cultures were lost when ancient libraries were burned and the patriarchy repressed women from practicing rituals that were passed down through their lineage.

Over the last few decades, as more white people have been “waking up” spiritually and looking for deeper meaning in life, they have found deep solace in practices like yoga, cacao, and reclaiming a personal connection to the Goddess.

Which, for some traditions, have been encouraged by spiritual teachers from the Indian lineage. (I think of teachers like Paramhansa Yogananda or Amma selflessly bringing the teachings of yoga, meditation, and Indian philosophy to the West).

But, it is interesting to look at how yoga has become so commodified in the West, with many white teachers earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from sharing these teachings.

When I began to look at my relationship and participation in cultural appropriation, I thought about how:

Not one of the white teachers I had learned from had ever brought up the topic of cultural appropriation, or how to have a conversation about cultural appropriation when a POC approached me about these practices.

I had to do some deep digging in books to even find any mention of cultural appropriation when it came to Priestess traditions and working with Goddesses of other cultures.  I finally did in this book by Ruth Barrett.

Ruth speaks of white people’s expectation to call upon multicultural Goddesses in ritual:

Many women of European descent don’t think twice about invoking goddesses outside their own culture. They don’t stop to consider issues around cultural appropriation. This lack of perspective comes from a position of privilege, however unconscious it may be. Some women seem to have the attitude that they have an inherent right to invoke any goddess from any tradition, lift Her entirely out of Her cultural, ethnic or religious context and ask Her to serve their purposes.

So how can we do better?

Barrett goes on to share:

…Women can learn to be respectful guests around goddesses of cultures other than their own. Just as it is critical for all people to cultivate an awareness of multiculturalism, it is equally important to understand the diversity of female deities of other cultures. There is, however, a line between being a respectful guest who acknowledges other goddess forms and attempting to take over your hostess’s home and asking her to serve you.

Barrett invites us to respectfully form relationships with these Goddesses, to first work with and explore goddesses within our own culture and ethnic heritage, and when we are drawn to Goddesses from other cultures, to be willing to travel to study with teachers of that lineage if it is a living tradition, and if not, to study and learn as much as we can to relate to that Goddess appropriately.

This is an invitation for deep inquiry for people within white spiritual communities.

I can’t say I have all the answers, and I am finding my way within all of this, knowing how deeply the practices of yoga have touched my life, and also feeling called to speak up about the oppression of POC for hundreds of years in our country.

When I brought this topic to one of my mentors a few months ago, I appreciated her response: Cultural appropriation is real and it's happening. Cultural appreciation with deep, true study and genuine growth must lead the way. 

What We Can Do:

• Approach spiritual practices from cultures other than our own with awareness and deep appreciation 

• Educate ourselves about racial inequality and cultural appropriation to have meaningful conversations without getting defensive or thrown off guard

• Pay Black, Indigenous People of Color to learn directly from them

• Actively donate to causes of cultures you are most drawn to or teach about

• Make a point to travel to the origin of these practices and where you can, study with BIPOC and directly with lineage holders 

• Teach your students about cultural appropriation if you train people in spiritual traditions or yoga

• Connect more deeply with your own ancestry and see if you can discover rituals from your lineage

• Engage your teachers in conversation about this topic

• Be in your own inquiry about how to best move forward with sharing or profiting from teachings of cultures other than your own

I know this is a sensitive topic and I honor you for being here, reading this, and being willing to learn and better serve our communities.

We are being called to deepen in study, reverence, and humility to dismantle the systems that have caused oppression for far too long.

With love,
Meredith

Note: I want to emphasize how important it is at this time to learn directly from People of Color (and pay them) as they are the ones who have been living at the effects of systemic racism and oppression their whole lives. This article shares my perspective as a white person, and I encourage my readers to study, pay and learn directly from BIPOC on these topics. I’ve included resources and links below.

Resources For Further Study:

Holistic Resistance - Anti-racism workshops, trainings, coaching, and singing circles

Layla F. Saad - Me and White Supremacy book and workshops

Michelle Johnson - Intersection of Yoga and Social Justice Trainings

Rachel Ricketts - Spiritual Activism Webinars

Lyla June Johnston - Indigenous Rights, Climate Change & Activism

Jedaya Barboza - Divine Feminine Spiritual Guidance & Awakening

What I Said At My Grandmother's Memorial

Ever since I was a child I've been traveling to Northern Minnesota to visit my grandmother and spend time at my family's cabin on the lake.

But a few months ago, my grandmother passed away after a stroke. I went back to Minnesota this summer, for a very different reason. To honor her passing, and to speak at her funeral / memorial service.

I signed up to speak thinking I would be sharing stories and kind words to a few close family and friends. Then the night before getting on the airplane, I dreamt I would be speaking in front of many, many more people.

I guess I wasn't surprised when I arrived in Minnesota to find out 150 people had RSVP'ed to her memorial service. (gulp).

I hadn't written a speech, I didn't know what I was going to say, but I knew this was a divine opportunity, and I wasn't going to pass it up.

I realized my grandmother was leaving me with one final gift, to share my voice.

Somehow throughout my life, I have been put in situations again and again where I am invited on a stage to speak in front of many people. And almost every time it has scared the pants off of me.

But as many of you know, over the last few years I have been coming more and more into the power of my voice. Again and again I have learned to trust in myself.

So, the day before her service, the words came, and I knew what I was going to say.

All the familiar nervous feelings came up in my body right before I went up to speak - the intensity of having all those eyes on me, the amount of energy and adrenaline running through my veins...

But this time, I welcomed it all. I breathed through it. I saw this intensity of energy as a reminder of my power. I told myself, I trust in my voice.

And I spoke.

While I was up there, it felt so natural. It felt like it was exactly where I was supposed to be. It felt like spirit was with me and I was honoring the divine gift of my voice.

But what I didn't expect was what would happen afterwards. Person after person came up to me to say how my words had touched them.

One woman even came up to tell me, "Your words make me want to be a better grandmother. Really."

When a friend of my grandmother asked me if I would type up what I said and email it to her, I decided to also share these words with you too, because somehow, even though you probably didn't know my grandmother, these words feel important, and I think they speak to a larger message and maybe, it's a message you need to hear at this time.

Find the words below.

With love, 
Meredith

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When my grandmother passed she began coming to me in my dreams. In every one of these dreams she was dressed from head to toe in one of her finest matching outfits, wearing bright red lipstick, as we all remember her.

And in these dreams, she was holding a gift. It was carefully wrapped with my name on it. But in the dream I never actually got to the moment of opening the gift.

In my waking life, this made me start thinking about all the gifts my grandmother had given to me in my life...

As a child they were gifts of joy and sweetness. Of birthday cards, warm christmas cookies, blueberry and my personal favorite, chocolate silk pie.

As I grew older she shared with me the gifts of dedication and attention to detail as she taught me how to sew and to knit. She showed me through her own love and commitment the beauty she could create with her hands.

As a young woman she shared gifts of courage and strength. She showed me I could face my fears.

I'll always remember the time my sister and I arrived at her house to her saying, "Girls, I think there's a mouse in my room, come help me get it out!"

Grammy was already losing her eyesight at this point, and that mouse turned out to be a bat, hanging right on the edge of her bed.

Grammy went to get a ski glove and told us to pick up the bat and throw it out the window.

My sister and I looked at each other. "You throw it out! No you!" While we pushed the glove back and forth to each other, Grammy put on the other glove, picked up the bat and threw it out the window.

"There's nothing to be afraid of girls!" she smirked.

But in her passing, my grandmother gave me much deeper gifts, gifts of self-reflection and self-inquiry.

In the final days of holding her hand, I remembered the preciousness of life.

I remembered that one day I too shall pass.

And I asked myself, "How do I wish to live?"

"Do I want to be held back by fear or resentment?"

"Or do I want to live each day with love, forgiveness, and generosity?"

I asked myself: 

Am I doing everything I want to?

Have I spoken up and told the ones I love how I feel?

Is there anything I should let go of that no longer serves me?

Is there anywhere I am postponing or holding back?

I believe every one of us is here with a divine gift to give in this life.

Are you fully honoring yours?

Or are there dreams left unfulfilled? Or words left unspoken?

My grandmother gave me many gifts in my life - gifts that went far beyond the physical and material.

Take a moment to look around. Every one of us here have been touched by this woman's life in some way. And she remains to be an anchor in this community, bringing us together.

Today, I invite you to reflect upon the gifts this amazing woman may have brought to your life and I ask you, to go out and share your gifts with others.

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need help writing a speech?

Sign up for a 75-min private coaching session with me, specific on your public speaking and speech writing goals. I offer intuitive and loving support to overcome fears of public speaking (EFT/Tapping) as well as years of experience writing speeches to help you create something powerful to say at the memorial service of your loved ones.

This session offers you someone you can strategize with, address and clear limiting beliefs or blocks that have been holding you back so you can truly shine in the radiance of who you are and all you have to share.

For any questions, reach out here.