River of Time: My Descent into Depression and How I Emerged with Hope

Wanted to like this book because I always liked the Judds but found it totally repetitive and not at all well written. I don't believe it would be helpful to anyone suffering from depression because Naomi had the best and most expensive health care that isn't available to most and it seemed like nothing helped. If you are depressed don't read this!

Be warned: This was not a feel good story. But it isn't supposed to be. It's about long buried trauma that bursts forth whenever your self-medication with work or kids or drugs or alcohol inevitably goes away. It's told with stark truth, raw emotion, and heartbreaking reality. Naomi's story happened on a grand scale- child of poverty, neglect and abuse somehow powers through, but accumulates searing trauma after trauma that have to be suppressed instead of processed. With enormous talent and grit and luck, she makes something really big of herself. Naomi's career brought financial success, but what may be less obvious is that her sense of purpose and accomplishment and the connection with her audiences effectively put her traumas in a dorment state. And then the music literally stopped. She retired. Without the self-medication of her career, all her suppressed trauma came screaming out. Most people who'll read this are not famous performers, but at some point in life, we will all lose critical elements of ourselves. Small children will grow into independent adults, rewriting the significance and purpose as our role as parents. Careers will stall or cease, or at their best, come to an inevitable end as we age, taking with them the purpose and power we found from work. Marriages will dissolve, ripping away our identities as wives or husbands, taking away the hope and possibility and future that we once thought those roles held. So if/when it happens to you, what pain or trauma is still stored in your heart, waiting for a chance to burst forth and ride the tide of pain that comes with bittersweet or unwanted conclusions? It took this lovely, strong woman more than three years to manage all the s*** that she'd been avoiding for decades. And I must say, reading her story makes my own trials look small by comparison. I also grew up amid instability and abuse, and promised myself that when I grew up, I'd always protect my children. Then I gave birth to stillborn twins, and there was nothing I could do to protect them. That's when all of my buried trauma seeped out like sewage. Writing about it helps you heal, and helps others since our pain is our own but our situations are shared by too many just like us. If your unprocessed trauma is about miscarriage, this might help