mental wellbeing Archives - Lawyers With Depression

True Stories: One Woman Goes from Lawyering to Leaping to Boost Her Mental Health and Well-Being.

This interview is part of the ongoing podcast series “True Stories,” where I have conversations with lawyers about their journeys through mental health challenges and well-being triumphs.

In this podcast interview, I speak with Rosari Sarasvaty who grew up in Indonesia and earned law a law degree there from the Universitas Pelita Harapan and later graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law with an LLM degree, cum laude, in 2019. After that, she practiced immigration law before attending NYU Steinhardt with an M.A for Teaching Dance in the Professions: American Ballet Theatre (ABT) Pedagogy. Rosari is the recipient of the NYU 2022 Outstanding Service in Dance Education Award. She was trained in classical ballet and jazz and has performed numerous times with New York University, the Martha Graham Dance School, and Dance FX. She currently serves as the Children’s Division Coordinator at Northern Plains Dance! You can read more about her incredible journey by reading “This is Why I Quit Practicing Law to Teach Dance.”

Law Firm Well-Being: A Discussion with a Law Firm Leader

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Mackenzie C. Monaco is a partner in the law firm of Monaco Cooper Lamme & Carr, PLLC in Albany, New York, where she represents a wide range of clients, from individuals and local businesses to national corporations, in state and federal courts throughout New York. She is a summa cum laude graduate of the Albany Law School of Union University. Over the past few years, a good deal of national and international studies and media attention have focused on the interconnection between the mental health culture of where we work and its affect on our own individual mental well-being. Mental health isn’t just our responsibility to address and take care of – it also falls squarely on the shoulders of workplace leaders to create a workplace culture that supports good mental health. Mackenzie and I chatted about the law firm she founded with others and its commitment to a healthy workplace environment for everyone.

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True Stories: An Attorney Shares His Journey Through Depression Before COVID and Now

“True Stories” is a new series of guest blogs I am running. Here’s an anonymous account by one small firm attorney who shares his story about his depression both before and after COVID-19.

The practice of law is difficult even at the best of times.

Lawyers require a certain psychological stability. Attorneys in medium-sized and larger firms face the added pressures to bill significant hours and compete with colleagues. Advocates in smaller firms can experience social isolation and are often weighed down by administrative burdens.

As a small firm practitioner, I have found the time since Friday, March 13, 2020, when lockdowns began, particularly difficult. It was on that date that the world changed forever. I am, of course, speaking about the pandemic. There have now been approximately 3 million people who have died, and over 100 million reported cases of COVID-19 worldwide since that fateful day. I write mindful that the pandemic is improving in some jurisdictions and that it remains a dire and daily threat in others.

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5 Steps to Increase Motivation

Procrastination trains the brain to dump adrenaline right before the event, and when we get energy to take action things generally get done; however, it comes with a huge physical cost, and low-level living can lead to depression. Read the Blog

With Depression, The Wolf You Feed Is the Wolf That Wins

Blogger, Therese Borchard writes about a old Cherokee story and how the thoughts we feed encourage them to grow. Read the Blog

Dark Days Here For Folks With Seasonal Depression

U.S. News & World Report reports, “October’s shorter, darker days can trigger a type of depression, known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) which starts in October and lasts until the middle of April,” experts say. Read the News

5 Strategies to Reach Success While Battling Depression

It’s not a choice to suffer from depression, but there is a choice in how you react. Read the blog.

Watching Geese

It’s almost the end of October. I look out my back window and can see the wild geese that gather again in the pond in my back yard this time of the year. It’s a way station before they fly off to warmers climes.

People with depression feel less than – less than good, less than successful, less than a loving spouse or parent. Too often, they feel poverty in their souls. In their heads, they chew on thoughts that if they were only “better” people or more “successful,” they wouldn’t be suffering so much or could overcome depression.

It’s as if they’re to blame for their depression and any self-compassion is as absent as rain in the desert.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way.

You don’t have to prove – over and over and over again – – to yourself or others – – that you’re worthy to walk this sweet earth and enjoy a sense of wholeness. You don’t need to beg others for their approval because God, however you define him or her, is always announcing in the natural world on fire with colors and portents of change at this time of the year, your intimate belonging in this world.

Poet Mary Oliver captures this so beautifully in her poem Wild Geese:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.