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“I’m a truth-seeker and a truth-bearer, so I just be writing my truth and it just ends up being a lot of our truths.”
According to Black Doctor, over 5 million people in the U.S. experience depression every year. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among Blacks people ages 15-24. Since the Black community in the United States is disproportionately young, the number of deaths among youth may have a particularly strong impact on the Black community.
Suicide affects us too.
Singer/songwriter, Stacy Barthe stopped by #TeamBeautiful’s booth backstage at Essence Fest and the conversation turned heavy when she revealed her new single from her upcoming album (which will be out on July 10), “The Becoming” tackles depression and a suicide attempt she made.
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Barthe boldly admitted, “It’s about a suicide attempt. I’m a suicide survivor. I tried it and God was like, ‘I’m not ready for you yet.”
While there are many palpable signs that lead to the discovery of your own depression, many Black people are guilty of internalizing their pain, self-medicating and/or using religion as a coping mechanism, which causes it to eat away at us more than it helps to cease the sadness.
Stacy’s depression was taking over her life and she said, “I had to find a new way to live and that’s when I started my weight loss journey because that was part of my grief–just never being happy with myself physically.”
If you can’t relate to self-loathing, you’re not a human being. Every person in the world has had moments of not loving, appreciating or even liking themselves, but it’s a deadly mix when coupled with depression.
It’s the negative self-talk that’s the most deadly. “As humans we have our conscious mind and our sub-conscious mind. Our sub-concious mind is made up of all the things we believe about ourselves that are not true. That’s how we operate, we don’t even know we’re doing it,” Stacy said, thinking through her own depression.
Depression is more than sadness. It’s a condition that mentally affects you and that means there’s got to be something that changes in your mental to change your circumstances around depression. Stacy said, “The thing for me was becoming present and finding things to be thankful about.”
And she’s definitely got something to be thankful about. Stacy’s a celebrated artist, who’s written songs for Katy Perry, Rihanna, Brandy and Britney Spears to name a few. But this is proof that we never know what suffering someone is going through, even when everything is glittery gold from the outside.
Stacy’s biggest piece to overcome was loving herself physically. She’s still working on it, but it’s a little easier these days.
“All of that shit is in your mind. Weight was my battle–it wasn’t the weight that was a hard thing to lose, it was the mental weight. That’s what we’re carrying around,” Stacy admitted.
“We need to look closer and find things in ourselves to love.”
Self-love is one of the most important things we will ever learn in life and it’s a journey that’s never over. But if every
day, you look at yourself and dedicate that day to loving at least one thing about you, you’re already making strides to accepting and even loving you. Let Stacy’s testimony be a lesson to you and let love in, for your own good.
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Stacy Barthe Reveals Devastating Suicide Attempt & What It Took To Pull Her Out Of Depression was originally published on hellobeautiful.com
