When I met my husband, it was his big brown eyes that lured me in. He always seemed to have a smile on his face, and he was full of life. And he seemed like he loved the same things that I did, the outdoors and nature. And that was kind of our lifelong thing. We'd go on hikes together, and we would go camping together. And it was what we loved--we loved doing together. The changes of depression happened gradually. And when we started out, I would never have guessed that my husband suffered from depression, but it was always there. It was a lifelong battle for him that he hid, and he hid it well. And he learned to fight to be out with people and to be alive. Over the years things started to wear him down. Work was difficult. He never enjoyed his job. Having more kids, while they were a bonus, is a big stressful thing, and he felt the weight of that responsibility of caring for them spiritually, financially, and in all ways all the time. He lost a job, oh, probably six years ago, and that really impacted him. He felt like that was where his self-esteem was, and so he internalized that and seemed not to be able to let it go. We had a child pass away, and that was difficult for all of us, and difficult because I hurt so much and I was unable to really control that grief. And so while I worked through it, he had to carry that burden for our family. And for years he used "I have a migraine" as his way of saying "I'm depressed," and I accepted that because that's what he told me. And it was only in the last year of our marriage that I realized that those migraine days were depression days, and I confronted him on it. And we would talk about it, and I would try to get him to come upstairs. But most of the time, he would find a way to hide, and he would hide in a room. He would turn off the lights. He would hide in video games. He would stop taking phone calls. He--we would go days without him talking to us. And eventually he stopped coming to church with us, not because he didn't love the gospel and our Savior, but because he was afraid, like, somebody might criticize him or say, "Why didn't you do your home teaching?" or "Can you do this?" And he felt like he was already doing everything that he possibly could. And we just went to a wedding with my husband, and he was struggling so much to even get in the car to go. And we got to the party, and it was like he turned a switch. And all of a sudden he could smile, and he hugged everybody in the room, and he was telling jokes. And I thought, "Who is this man?" Because the man I lived with could not possibly have done that. And yet here he was, putting on a good face for his mom and his family, trying to show that he loved them and that he was happy to be there. And I really think he was happy to be there, but it was also extremely painful in that moment. So from a very young age, the person with depression hides how they feel. They are afraid that somebody won't like them and that they won't be accepted, that they won't be included. And so they learn how to pretend, and they pretend well. My husband and I were married for 15 and a half years when he took his life, and it was probably 10 years into our marriage before I realized he had depression. And the only reason I recognized it was because I had suffered from depression. And it was 14 years into our marriage that I realized how depressed he was, that he had been suicidal for all the years we had been married, and that I had never known.

And the night the policemen showed up on my doorstep is a night that will forever have changed my world. Grief is a physical thing, and I should have known that he wasn't here anymore, than my husband had taken his life. I'd hoped--there's always that hope that everything's going to be OK--but my legs stopped working. They, like, literally went out from underneath me, and I collapsed on my porch. And I'm not sure what sounds came out of my mouth, but I know the pain that was in my heart. But I wasn't alone either in that my Savior walked with me, and He carried me through those moments, because you can't walk through moments like that. You can't even crawl through moments like that. The pain is so real and overwhelming and physical. I was cold all the time. I couldn't get warm no matter how many blankets or layers I had on me, because the grief was devastating and painful. But I would sit down and I would tell Heavenly Father, "I hurt, and I don't know how to fix this," and He would find a way--through a person or through a feeling--that would tell me, "It's going to be OK, Melinda. I love you, and we're going to make this OK. You're my daughter, and I will bring that joy back into your life." I wondered why God would put my family and my children in a position where they didn't have a dad. I chose my husband, and we chose to live and get married in the temple and be sealed. And I thought this grand dream of "It will be forever, and it will be OK, and we'll raise these kids together." And I don't know why God is letting us experience the loss of my husband, why he couldn't get better, and why we have to walk without him. But sometimes life's just hard, and we do hard things. And the Savior was asked to do a hard thing. He was asked to take on Himself not just our sins, but those deep, heart-wrenching aches of the soul. And somehow along the way, my husband lost sight of--he lost sight of the love that his Savior had for him. He lost sight of the knowledge that our Savior knew him on a personal level and knew the depth of pain that was in his heart. He lost that light.

Depression tells you that who you are is not good enough. It tells you that no matter what you do, no matter how great your accomplishment, that it simply isn't enough, that you are not worth being around, that people won't like you if you come in. Depression lies, and those lies build on themselves until the person living in those lies starts to believe them and to internalize them and make them who they are. If I could tell people about mental illness, I would want to tell them that mental illness is as real as any other sickness out there. It's as real as diabetes, it's as real as cancer, and it is destructive as cancer is to the body, as depression is to the mind. But a person with mental illness is ashamed to say, "I have depression. I am so sad that I can't control it and I can't get out of bed and I can't interact with my family." There's so much shame around depression, and there shouldn't be, because it's out of their control. I am a firm believer in doing things like exercising and eating healthy and working to be around others and to love others. But at the same time, a person with depression will feel like their body is so heavy, like they're carrying weights or that their legs and arms are made of cement. And yet we just tell them they should just suck it up and power through, and "If you just tried harder, it would be OK." But you would never say the same thing to a person with diabetes. You would never ask them to go without medication. You would never say, "Just try harder without that insulin, and it'll happen." And so for me, I think people need to recognize that depression is as real as a heart attack, as any other medical condition. I have been depressed at different times in my life. I was depressed after I had my babies, which seems a really ironic time to be depressed when you have this beautiful little angel that's come into your world. But it's overwhelming with the emotions and the hormones and the difficulties of trying to raise a child. And I have been depressed with grief when my son died to where I wasn't sure I could get out of bed. But I knew I had to because I had other people relying on me, and so I would get out of bed. And when my husband killed himself, that hurt.

And you wonder, "Was I--was I not good enough?" And I had to realize that I was good enough and that I was wanted and that I was needed and that I was wonderful. And every day I would tell myself after he died--because you don't want to get out of bed. You don't want to--you don't want to talk to people or face anyone, and it's hard to even put a smile on because it feels so wrong. But I would tell myself, "Just do one thing. Like, you can get up, and you can make breakfast for the kids, and then you can crawl back in bed if you want to." And then maybe the next day it would be, "I can do two things. Maybe I can do three things." And eventually you start to see the light. And you start to think, "There's so much good out there." And maybe you take a walk, and you look up and you see something beautiful--a sunrise or a sunset--and you think, "God loves me. He brought this beauty into the world just for me." Or maybe you get out in the ocean, which is where I go to heal, and you feel those waves coming in and out and in and out. And they crash against your body, and you think, "I can do this." And for me, depression and grief are like waves. They come and they go, and they come and they go. And sometimes those waves are high and they're overpowering, and they knock you down, and you think, "I don't even know which way is up." And you wonder if I can stand up and get out of this wave that just threw me to the ground. But you do. You stand back up. And then you get up, and they might be calmer waves, and they might recede. And sometimes you're just walking along the shore, and so it's not as painful, but you get up and you just do it. You just--you just find a way to find something that is good. Learning how to smile and keep laughing after a trial is the biggest thing. My kids think I'm the craziest mom ever. So I will be driving us--wherever we go, I turn the music on loud. You should see my three-year-old. She knows every word to every song that we play. And we dance. We dance the whole time. We're always moving and grooving. People come up and they stare at us from the side, and they think, "What are you crazy people doing?" And our goal, always when we're driving in the van, is to see if we can make somebody else smile. I just think that's the way it should be. We aren't meant to be sad here. Didn't God say, "Men are, that they might have joy"? So yeah, life's going to be just hard sometimes. It's going to blast you with a million things, sometimes all at the once, but we're not supposed to be sad. We're supposed to be happy. There's joy in everything.

My kids do miss their dad. They miss him desperately, and we would give anything to have him back. They miss--he used to sing. He used to sing to them at night. And they miss his voice, and they miss his calm presence, and they miss just being able to sit by him. The grief was devastating and painful. I am here today because I want to be a voice that fights for those that are hurting inside. I want people to know that they are wanted, that they are loved, as imperfect as they are, because aren't we all just a little bit imperfect? Aren't we all trying and doing the best that we can?

I want people to know that depression is real. It is so real, and it hurts so many people when somebody hurts. And we should tell each other. We should let each other carry those burdens. We made those covenants that we would "mourn with those that mourn." So we should tell people that we hurt so that they can help us, that they can be our light until we can find that light for ourselves. [MUSIC PLAYING]