I’ve been offered a job.

When I meet with the Wizard (my new boss), I know what he can do for my friends and support groups. He will give out courage and even a testimonial to those in my group.

But is there anything in his basket for me?

Dorothy had to learn that she had the keys to what she wanted the entire time. She just hadn’t realized it. So, it is with me. I’m not sure I would look as good in the ruby slippers as Dorothy, but I do know that I have within me everything I need to get what I desire.

“There’s no place like home.”

I spent 27 ½ years at this home. The faces of those I know there are etched in my memory. The positive feeling and the empowerment I feel when I am there is still alive in me. And what stood in my way of being in an environment where I thrive?

Depression in the form of the “wicked witch of the north.”

Depression got me to believe I wasn’t wanted. That the best thing I could do was leave. Turn my back on a life full of promise and strike out on my own. Working my own business was better than working for someone else.

Depression assured me that it would be there to help.

What it didn’t tell me was it was going to act out Wizard of Oz and rip my house off the foundation and send it careening into the land of OZ in a tornado.

The signs of the tornado’s approach were everywhere, but I didn’t see them or pay attention to them.

I was too busy working on the secret plan depression was setting up for me. I didn’t hear Auntie ‘Em calling me, to warn me about the twister and that there was safety in the cellar with her and my support groups.

“We are not in Kansas anymore.”

The first morning in the hospital, facing my new life with depression, I knew things had changed. I was either going to beat this, to understand it and control it, or it was going to be the end of me. Finding out that the power to change my future was within my grasp, as with Dorothy’s experience, did not happen at first.

My adventure towards home didn’t include poppies or the Lolli Pop Guild. But it did involve encounters with flying monkeys and many incarnations of the wicked witch of the north. Depression has cast stars to play roles in my journey into the abyss. At the end of the yellow brick road, OZ wasn’t a castle, but a dungeon, dark and isolated.

In my drama, Prozac and therapy are the “good witch.”

Meeting both saved my life. Together, they have helped me see that I have had the ruby slippers on all along. Acknowledging that “I didn’t have to look any further than my own back yard” has been the cornerstone of my recovery.

So, I will depart on my newest journey, armed with the knowledge I have learned. Realizing and facing the fact that “I have depression, but it doesn’t have me.”

I can take from the Wizard what I need to be successful.

I can build a way forward that addresses my self-care while fulfilling my need to be valuable to others. I do not have to accept the wishes of the wicked witch but can frame my future with the help of my “good witches.”

Now it’s time to “follow the yellow brick road.”

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