Episode 139
Chicks and Depression - What?
You might ask yourself what baby chicks and depression have in common. Well, nothing and everything really.(html comment removed: more)
But let me start at the beginning. In this episode, I am sharing an update on the urban homestead. One of the most recent things, as of yesterday, is that we are having new baby chicks.
In the podcast, I am sharing why I didn't want any this year. But how this very insistent hen finally wore me down and I let her sit on some eggs.
Now, as of this morning, we are having three black baby chicks, one very white mommy, and a Minpin dog very interested in those babies.
What about the depression part?
Good question. If you have been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that I have been going through a deep burnout and probably through a bout with depression as well.
Not the kind that makes you unable to move, but the kind that slows one down a lot. The kind that makes everything just seem a bit too much to handle.
Recent events - the suicide of two famous people - have brought depression as a topic to the forefront in many conversations.
It is funny how the universe sometimes works. A couple of days before these stories hit the news, a friend of mine told me that a person had mentioned that she is dealing with depression in a blog post.
She consequently got a private message saying that she shouldn't talk about that - that nobody will read her posts if they know that she is depressed.
I was outraged!!
Immediately, I used depression as a prompt in my Daily Writing Prompt exercise I run on Steemit. Here is a link to that post. The many stories of people being touched by depression and the consequences made my head spin.
Thoughts about Depression
In the podcast, I share some of the thoughts and questions I have on the prevalence of depression in our times. Don't get me wrong, we know that teenage suicide has been with us for a long time as documented in literary works such as Romeo and Juliette and The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We don't know if bouts of depression have always been part of our existence, but it seems that most everyone today has had that experience at one point in their life.
Part of me wonders if it has to do with us being further and further removed from nature. So many of us are spending our days staring at screens and living indoors.
I know that spending time in my garden or in nature, hiking in the woods or taking a walk along the ocean, makes me feel better.
And watching baby chicks is a sure way to lift the spirits!
What do you think? Is depression a sign of our times or a human condition?
When you feel down, what makes you happy?
Let us know in the comments or on Facebook, Instagram or Steemit.
We started to do live stories for our patrons on Patreon. Most stories are exclusive to our supporters, a few are there for everyone to see.
These are very early podcasts and you can tell that we just got started, but you might enjoy them anyway.
http://sustainablelivingpodcast.com/getting-started-with-raising-backyard-chickens/
http://sustainablelivingpodcast.com/raising-backyard-chickens-the-basics/
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://sustainablelivingpodcast.com/baby-chicks-depression/
Thanks for writing this post. To answer your final question, I understand that depression is affected by both environmental factors such as diet and socialisation as well as some having a predisposition toward depression in their genes.
Animals can provide so much happiness in our lives. It is so rare that I hear or read a story relating to animals that I don't think of my own loved and lost animals. I was upset when my dog of fifteen years had to be euthanised because of a brain aneurysm that was causing him painful seizures and I was devastated when my budgerigar pal, Bodhi died through lack of care while my mother was taking care of him. This shocked me to my core. She didn't keep his food and water up and I found him laying on the bottom of his house. When he was living with me, I always had his house open and he would fly around the house, go where he pleased and lived in freedom. He would often spend time on me. He would nibble my ears, climb on my head and talk to me. It was devaststing.
Thankfully, his loss didn't spiral me into a state of depression. Maybe because I gave everything in to my grieving process. I cried so hard I gave myself headaches, I talked to myself and verbalized my apologies for everything that had happened and thanked him so much for everything he gave me. He was and never will be forgotten. I buried him in my backyard for me. The whole process was for me. I know he is gone now, but at the time, I felt like I had to treat him so carefully and gently. And I did.
I am not a religious person and there has been no substantial evidence to convince me otherwise but I certainly do hope that in some way, he is able to remember or think of me from some other place.
Fast forward about six months in my life (which was about six years ago), I found out about many of the ways that the rest of the world treats animals. We are shown and told of love and care, yet nothing of the kind is given to them. Baby cows are taken away from their monthers and killed, pigs are painfully gassed to death and horrifyingly, male chicks in the egg and chicken industry are minced up alive in a machine called a mascerator or thrown into hige plastic bags to suffocate and are disposed of.
My love for my animals, yet my diet at the time were in complete conflict with respect to my morals. I didn't think I stood for animal killing and exploitation. But whilever I ate and egg, ate a slice of cake made with milk or ate a slice of bacon, my actions were saying otherwise.
I thought of my love for Bodhi then stopped eating all of those other sentient, innocent animals.
Knowing I am minimising the harm I'm causing to animals now is very empowering. The richness of fruits, veggies, herbs and grains I eat now is staving off depression.
I feel empowered and feel like I am now making a difference.
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Thank you so much for your long response. Losing a pet is very hard and we do need to allow ourselves to grief. And I am so sad for your bird. I can't even comprehend not to take care of a living being in our care.
I hear you on the animal cruelty and will only eat eggs from my own chicken who have a pretty good life.
I am horrified by the way mass produced animals are treated and while I am not against eating meat, I feel that as a society, we are way overdoing it. And not even eating the healthy parts. The broth made from bones and feet for example.
We are so wasteful as a society.
I am so happy to hear that you are feeling better after switching to eating mostly fresh produce. Logically, that is what we need to eat most off.
I am currently growing mealworms - right now for my chickens but also with the idea to use them as a protein and vitamin source. Much research is done that insects used to be a huge part of our diet and are very healthy for us.
Now, it is just a matter of getting over the yuck factor...
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