In the morning, even before my cup of coffee, I palm the three tiny white pills and toss them back with a gulp of orange juice.

They’re like my chickens’ daily scratch feed – chock full of essential ingredients, but more than anything, for me, they are a dollop of hope. My antidepressants.

In a way, I see them as a power boost, it’s not that I’m sick, I am the furthest thing from it – I am healthy.

Yet my days without these micro-ingredients are unmanageable.

As the years have gone by, I have grown into the basic awareness that having a mental illness is not a weakness, it is a strength.

Of sorts, because it is not something a lot of people can see, or understand.

For me, it is who I am, wild, creative, emotional, sensitive – in touch, more of the real me.

And I know that my body is whole, even the days I feel messed up and broken.

Lately there is a lot of talk in the media about “fighting” COVID19 and being “strong” in the face of this illness.

This is wrong-headed thinking.

The metaphor of disease as an enemy or a weakness that can be conquered by positivity is magical thinking.

I do not believe that we have that kind of power. There is no mind over matter.

Having an illness is actually a part of being whole.

This is what I think.

We’re only here for a little while, and not because of anything we have done, necessarily, but because we are loved.

I feel the need to say this because it is sad that there are so many people fighting all kinds of illness out there, and they are being told to just have a positive attitude, rise up, fight the battle.

As if our bodies were battlegrounds.

As if things weren’t hard enough.

I know about those days where just getting up with the black heaviness pressing down on my body, is my own personal success.

And often even our best efforts will disappoint.

But it’s not because we haven’t tried hard enough, or been more positive, or we haven’t fought the good fight.

Some of us will get COVID19 and for no apparent reason, will die. While others, less healthy, will survive.

So anyway, with these sobering thoughts and coffee mug in hand, I walk out to spend time with the gals.

There is a light rain falling, and I see my three fluffy girls huddled underneath the coop. They manage to stand and stretch their scaly legs and bustle over to the feeder.

It will be a cloistered day for them, no free ranging in the yard.

I can’t say why exactly, but these silly birds distract me in the most meditative kind of way. Watching them, I feel close to these creatures who are not human-like at all, but are rather a link to a shared, ancient past.

And now, as domesticated critters, they depend on me for everything. And, like them, I too am a dependent creature: my warm home, my sustenance, yes, my drugs. These things I need. These things keep me here on this spinning planet, to greet another morning.

Another kaffeklatsch with my girls, time to cluck and play and to remember that we’re only here for a little while, and not because of how hard we have fought, or anything we have done, necessarily, but because, in some way, we are loved.

And we are whole.