This memoir is inspirational and deals with a heavy topic in today’s society. Mental illness is a topic that I feel like needs to be talked about more. This memoir made me happy and brought tears to my eyes. This woman is full of strength, love and is extremely powerful. I want to meet her and give her a hug and tell her how proud I am of this book that she wrote! I know she struggled to write it, because it is very personal. However, she overcame her fear of what people might think and wrote it anyways and I am very glad she did!

To Depression, with Love is a nonfiction memoir about a woman named Marsha ,who now has children and grandchildren of her own. As of right now, she has been married to her husband for over forty years and he has always been a big supporter of hers. This book starts out when she was young and what life was like for her, her siblings and parents growing up. As a young teenager, she suffered from depression. She grew up in a big family. Her parents didn’t discuss mental illness in her family and she didn’t find support at school either. She was lost and didn’t know what to do or who to turn to. She was only a young teenager when she had her first depressive episode, along with having anxiety. As she grew older, she learned a new way to look at her mental illness and accepted it! I believe that everyone should read this memoir. The way she overcame all of her hardships and who she is today is a huge accomplishment! I rate this a 5 out of 5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley, author Marsha Jacobson and Girl Friday Productions | GFB for this digital advanced reader’s copy in exchange for my honest review!

This memoir is set to be published on June 17, 2025!

I found Martha Jacobson’s memoir to be an honest account of her lifetime struggle with depression and anxiety. Raised in South Africa, later relocating to Canada, there is much here that is relatable to everyone. This book takes us from her childhood through her early 60s and highlights many shifts in the understanding mental illnesses. Although earning a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology helped her have a life-long love of education, she reveals that personal experiences made her wiser and offered more enduring life lessons.
Her recurring bouts of depression led her through feelings of immobilizing fear. Surviving these challenges helped her to develop greater self compassion and taught her that self care is vital. Her suffering also helps her bring more empathy to her parents, who did not understand the changes in their daughter that turned a joyful, feisty 3rd grader into a preoccupied sad and fearful child. Like many parents of earlier generations, they just wanted her to snap out of the bad habit of sadness and be the happy girl they counted on to cheer them up. In hindsight, she knows that they too had their own struggles with mental illness. Pressures to rise above, with no road map, made things worse for her until she learned to parent herself and her children in a supportive, non-judgmental way. The lovely outcome is that, by being kinder to herself, her children have learned to offer more patience, kindness and loving support to their children, who’ve also battled depression and anxiety.
The chronic shame cycle can be stopped with love, kindness, education and informed action. It’s a book about how having “no more secrets” breaks the grip of generational trauma. It is refreshing to see how much growth occurs with honesty, with yourself and with others, about your own struggles. Being truthful breaks the trance of avoidance and the lightens the burden imposed by expectations of perfection. By acknowledging and being frank with kids about the fact that bad things exist, kids can be empowered to be less confused and fearful when they inevitably face such things, particularly when they talk about these darker aspects of life with a trusted person. Being alone in pain is traumatizing. Self-understanding leads toward healing.
This book also describes trauma techniques that benefited the author like IFS, safe place visualization, EDMR, EFT Tapping, body scans, a “worry waiting room”, playing games or doing activities that keep us grounded in reality. She also advocates using the power of imagination and practicing truly listening to help us know ourselves and distance ourselves from emotional torment. She emphasizes how honesty and transparency about our struggles can help other people in our lives too, diminishing the shame and loneliness of trying to conquer overwhelming symptoms alone. The author relies on her supportive husband, her sisters, her adult children and professional therapy and anti-anxiety and antidepressant medication along the way. She encourages all to ask for help when needed and to keep seeking until you find what helps.
What a beautiful and brave legacy she leaves with her kids and grandkids. The healing balm forgiveness brought her memories of being misunderstood by parents and friends who she now sees also had their own struggles. This is an optimistic book. It shows the way we can learn to do better and create our own legacy of love. Without acknowledgement our untamed destructive emotions like sadness and fear are sometimes covered up by grandiosity and denial. These negative impulses thrive exponentially and keep us from growing. The antidote is to be courageous enough to be honest and vulnerable, qualities that allow us to bond with others who live the same truth. She encourages us to be brave enough to be known, and to ignore our inner and outer critics and find supportive people along the way. I learned the a lot from the hard-won lessons contained in this powerful memoir.

I absolutely loved this memoir!! I also suffer from depression and anxiety, like the author. There was so much I could relate to. It has given me much to think about. I highly recommend it!