Rich Women and Depression
Because of the internet, rich women have sympathizers when they get depressed, sometimes to the point of committing suicide.
The depression comes from the belief that they are entitled to happiness. That belief is compounded by money. They have all the things money can buy, so they don’t understand how they can be unhappy. No depressed, because unhappy applies to ordinary people, not celebrities.
Rich women’s depression is compounded by social media, the stage for playing out perfect lives. Depression comes into play when the mind is exhausted from going back and forth between what is, and what is not. What is not, is a perfect life, a fact women and men from all corners of the globe understand.
Depression is a rich women’s lot because they feel that despite fame and fortune, something is ‘pressing’ them down. Women who don’t have a harvest, because rain took a rain check and the sun torched the cornfields, are not depressed. They are unhappy because they know they cannot control nature.
Women in refugee camps who ran away from their homes after seeing their husbands, sons and brothers beheaded for refusing to join religious fanatics are not depressed. They cry, put their kids on their backs, wrap essential possessions in a sheet, put it on their heads and walk to safety, if there’s anything like that for women.
Women who are called to identify the remains of daughters who were online sex workers are not depressed. They blame themselves for not seeing it coming, because ‘she needed a phone for school.’
Rich women go through depression after birth because pregnancy drastically changes women’s bodies. So-called primitive cultures understand that, what is known as ‘men’s needs’ is constant as the sun, which a new mother cannot provide.
Such cultures have a way of handling it, giving the new mother a sabbatical from tendering someone’s needs. What is important is healing the new mother and raising the child. That is why in traditional Africa, women pregnant for the first time, left their husbands and went back to their mothers and aunts to give birth.
Rich women in the public eye are depression candidates because they don’t have that female support system. The only system they know is the triad: I love you. When action speaks louder than words, and see that they are not loved, they land in depression mode.
Ironically, rich women who are depressed have mothers who raised them against all odds, who accepted that life has its ups and down. They did not have therapists, just strategies to make it, one day at a time.
Happiness is not guaranteed.
This is another ‘written podcast’ by Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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