"Gray Day...Everything is Gray," —Dr. Suess

Mara here:

There was a book I used to read to Malia when she was a baby. It's a poem by Dr. Seuss that was turned into a book called "My Many Colored Days."

When she was a baby, even before she understood words, we were always looking for books that would help Malia learn practical things like numbers and colors. The illustrations are fun. And the book was short, which is always a plus when you have a child who requests that books be read over and over in one sitting.

But the real reason the book was one of my favorites was because, like many of Dr. Seuss' books, beneath the whimsical prose were insights into human nature. There was the surface level, which was fun and beautifully colored. But underneath, if you looked for it, there was truth about feelings that weren't always as fun as they initially seemed.

The poems use the different colors of the rainbow to describe different feelings. Pink is fun, and yellow is busy. And there are days with many colors; he calls them mixed up days. I think we have all experienced mixed up days.

But the one that always stuck with me was gray. Gray was a picture of owls eyes that just stared, open and unflinching, with the words, "Gray Day....Everything is gray. I watch. But nothing moves today."

It always struck me with such sadness because, as a sufferer of depression, I often have gray days. I often find myself watching the world, but it seems as if nothing is moving. Or it seems as if everything is moving but me.

And you might wonder why I share this? I share it because I want other people who might have gray days to know they're not alone. I share this because there have been so many times when I've read self-help books and come to the end feeling discouraged because so often there seems to be a "happy ending." People who write books often seem to have unlocked something that has transformed their lives.

And I'm worried that my writing sounds like that as well.

So I just wanted to share with everyone, especially those who also experience many gray days, that I'm still struggling with things. I have learned so much about myself over my lifetime, as much as I've lived so far, and I feel like I've figured a lot of things out.

But knowing things doesn't change that there's something about myself that puts me in a funk a lot of the time. I'm depressed. And even though I'm medicated, that doesn't "cure" me.

So I've been going through some gray days lately.

And having a gray day doesn't mean that I don't know how lucky I am to have all the blessings in my life. It doesn't mean I don't appreciate things. There's not even an easy way to describe how I feel, but everything feels more difficult. Everything about life seems heavy.

And what do I do? I do what I can. I try to follow routines that I know will make me, if not feel better, at least not make me feel worse. I get up and jog. I write in my journal. I read books. I take naps.

I'm fortunate to have an understanding husband who allows me to withdraw a little when I need to.

And so far, I have yet to encounter a gray period when I didn't find myself suddenly faced with a pink (happy) day or a yellow (busy) day that knocks me out of the gray zone. Life is a force outside of my control—which is good. It keeps going.

So I just keep moving forward. I keep doing the things I do. I get up. I allow myself to feel gray when I can and when I can't be gray (like at work or a party), I do my best to pretend. I do what I have to do.

And having gone through many cycles of gray days, pink days, yellow days, mixed up days, I know that none of them lasts forever. So I just face each day as best as I can.

For today, it's a gray day. And that's ok. Tomorrow could be different.

Here are some questions I asked my mom about gray days.

Are there Buddhist teachings about the different moods and how transitory they are?

One of the Buddha's principal teachings is on impermanence and all it implies, such as unpredictability (a good word to remember when thinking about moods). People often think of impermanence in a negative way, but it can also be our friend. And so, on days when I'm in a down mood, I take solace in impermanence, knowing that it means I won't feel this way forever. As the poet Rumi said, "No feeling is final." 

The metaphor I use in my books for impermanence is the weather. I came up with what I call Weather Practice. Moods are unpredictable, like the weather. They blow in, they blow out and, at times, they blow all over the place. But, like the weather, moods are impermanent so we can learn to wait them out, being kind to ourselves as we do. A full description of Weather Practice is in chapter 4 of my book, How to Be Sick.

This constant change in the weather and in our moods is also helpful to me because it reminds me that no one can feel happy and "up" all the time, and to expect that of myself is unrealistic and unfair to myself. The other day, in fact, I realized that when I think I should be happy all the time, it makes me feel worse because it adds a burden to my life—the burden to be happy. As soon as I realized that, my mood improved because I'd dropped that burden. Every burden dropped is a good thing!

I know that you're not a person who is generally depressed, but when you have a day where you feel in a funk, are you able to recognize it?

I have plenty of days when I'm in a funk, so many that I've written a lot of pieces for Psychology Today with suggestions for what to do. I'll put the links for three of them here in case anyone wants to read them: "Six Strategies for Coping with the Blues"; "A Secret for Surviving a Rough Day"; and my latest one, "The First Step to Take When You're Having a Rough Day."

And, yes, I recognize those funky days right away. Odd though it may seem, I try to treat them as old friends, having dropped in for an uninvited visit. I find this helps me because if I treat those funky blue days with aversion, they just seem to get worse. But treating them as old friends disarms them and takes away a lot of their sting.