The Stories We Don’t Tell: Depression in Disguise

Her Story: The Ache of Being Unseen

She was tired from trying to forget the skipped chapters, the chapters that wounded her, the chapters that stole her laughter and innocence in one swift, cruel swoop. She’d learned to live around the pain, to build altars out of her survival. People called her strong, and she was, but strength had become her armor, not her freedom. Every Sunday, she showed up early, arranging lilies in the sanctuary, making sure everything looked like peace even when she didn’t feel any. People saw her hands but not her heart. They saw her service but not her sorrow. They saw her strength but not her scars. Some nights she stood in front of the mirror, whispering, 'Does anyone see me, really see me?'

In the Zulu language, there’s a sacred greeting: Sawubona. It means 'I see you.' Not just 'I notice you’re here,' but 'I see your essence, your struggle, your sacred story.'

What she longed for, more than rest or recognition, was Sawubona. To be seen not as the strong one, not as the helper, but as a woman still healing from the parts of her story she’d been told to forget. In a world that praises resilience and confuses endurance for healing, she learned how to disappear in plain sight. She laughed at the right moments, nodded in empathy, and said she was 'fine.' But the skipped chapters, the ones no one ever asked about, still echoed beneath her smile. What she didn’t know was that God had been whispering Sawubona all along: 'I see you, my daughter. I see the tears behind your laughter, the courage beneath your fear, and the holiness in your healing. I see the chapters you tried to forget, and I call them sacred, too.'

His Story: The Weight of Holding It Together

He was the steady one, the provider, the protector, the quiet anchor. At work, his calm voice steadied chaos. At home, his children knew his footsteps as safety. But inside, he was running on fumes. He had skipped his own chapters too, the ones filled with disappointment, loss, and loneliness he never named. Somewhere along the way, he learned that manhood meant silence. That showing emotion made him weak. That tears had no place in survival. So he prayed without words, hoping God could translate his sighs. He smiled when people said, 'You’re so strong,' because they didn’t know how much that phrase hurt. His skipped chapters weren’t erased, just buried beneath duty. The wounds stayed hidden under paychecks, schedules, and polite nods. But the ache still rose, like a drumbeat under the skin. One night, he dreamed of his grandfather standing in a vast field saying, 'You are not what you carry.' When he woke up, he realized that the healing he needed was older than language. It was ancestral. He began to whisper his own Sawubona to himself in the mirror: 'I see you. I see the boy who wasn’t allowed to cry. I see the man who’s learning that softness isn’t surrender.' It wasn’t instant relief, but it was a beginning, a remembering that being seen, even by your own eyes, is the first step toward coming home.

Their Story: Between Light and Expectation

They were the light, the creative one, the bridge builder, the voice of reason in chaotic spaces. Everyone said they had a gift for healing others, but few knew how much it cost. Their skipped chapters were full of identity questions, quiet rejections, and the exhaustion of explaining themselves to people who never really listened. They had learned to pour into others because it felt safer than being poured into. When the lights dimmed and the applause faded, the silence was deafening. They sat in stillness, wondering who they were when no one was watching. The skipped chapters returned like ghosts, the times they were unseen, unloved, or told they didn’t belong. So they started tracing their healing back to their roots. They remembered Ubuntu, the African philosophy that says, 'I am because we are.' Healing, they realized, was not just personal; it was communal. Ubuntu became their anchor, the reminder that they didn’t have to heal alone, that their wholeness was connected to the collective’s. They wrote these words in their journal: 'I see myself through the eyes of my ancestors. I am seen because I belong. I am not the skipped chapter; I am the continuation.' And in that remembering, their story began to breathe again.

When Faith Becomes a Mask

Faith was never meant to be a disguise, but somewhere along the way, many of us learned to wear it like one.

We were taught to smile through sorrow, to shout our way through storms, to declare healing while quietly unraveling inside. In too many sanctuaries, pain is only welcome when it ends in praise. We rush to the resurrection without honoring the crucifixion. We skip the middle - the Friday night of grief, the Saturday of silence - the place where real healing begins.

In the African spiritual imagination, lament is not weakness; it’s medicine. Our ancestors cried out in fields and forests, not to prove their strength, but to release the weight of surviving. They understood that sound itself could set the spirit free. But in our modern faith, we’ve often replaced that raw cry with polished platitudes. We’ve learned to trade honesty for applause. We’ve learned to praise our way past the pain instead of through it. Faith without feeling becomes performance. Prayer without truth becomes pretense. And when our faith becomes a mask, it suffocates the very soul it was meant to heal. True faith doesn’t silence your sorrow; it sits beside it. It whispers like the ancestors: 'We see you. We’ve been there. You’re not alone in this wilderness.' It looks like a friend who says, 'You don’t have to be strong today.' It looks like a therapist who reminds you that faith and medicine can coexist. It looks like pausing long enough to say, 'I’m not okay, but I still believe.' This is the sacred tension, to hold both faith and fragility without shame. In African-centered theology, healing begins with truth-telling, with standing bare before community and saying, Sawubona. I see you. See me, too. That’s what depression asks of us: not denial, but honesty. Not perfection, but presence. When we stop hiding behind hallelujahs, we can finally encounter God not as a distant judge but as the Divine Witness who whispers: 'I see you still. Even here. Even when you can’t lift your head. You are not faithless; you are fighting for breath.' That’s not weakness. That’s worship.

Depression in Disguise

Depression rarely walks through the front door announcing its name. It slips quietly into the room wearing familiar faces: productivity, helpfulness, humor, ministry, busyness. It looks like the woman who never misses Sunday service but hasn’t laughed from her belly in months. It looks like the man who works double shifts so he doesn’t have to sit with his thoughts. It looks like the person who shows up for everyone else but vanishes when the crowd disperses. We call it strength. We celebrate it. We hand out applause for endurance. But endurance without expression is erosion. The body remembers what the mouth refuses to say. The spirit holds what the world refuses to hear. And slowly, we begin to confuse survival for wellness, believing that because we’re functioning, we must be fine. Our ancestors knew something about disguise. They learned to hide hope in the rhythm of the drum, to carry grief in the call and response of song. They understood that sometimes survival required masking, but that healing required release. When we keep our sorrow silent, it festers. When we name it, it breathes. That’s why African-centered recovery calls us back to communal truth-telling, to spaces where people can lay their pain at the altar without judgment. Where someone will look them in the eye and say, 'Sawubona, I see you.' Where someone else will respond, 'Sikhona, I am here.' In that exchange, the mask loosens. The disguise begins to fall away. And something ancient inside of us remembers that healing has always been a we thing, not a me thing. Depression in disguise isn’t the absence of faith; it’s the presence of fatigue. It’s the quiet plea beneath the hymn, the whisper behind the sermon, the sigh that never makes it into the prayer. But in the language of the ancestors, in the rhythm of Ubuntu and the grace of Sawubona, we are reminded that healing begins when one voice says, 'I see you,' and another answers, 'Then I exist.'

A Sacred Pause

There comes a moment when even faith needs to breathe. When the noise of performance quiets, and the soul whispers, 'Enough.' The ancestors would call that moment a return. Not a collapse, but a coming home, to the self, to the spirit, to the truth that has been waiting patiently beneath the doing. In African-centered healing, rest is resistance. To pause is not to give up; it is to reclaim your breath from the systems, expectations, and false stories that tried to take it. It is the Sabbath written into our DNA, the ancestral reminder that bodies made in God’s image deserve to be whole, not just productive. So pause. Let your shoulders drop. Unclench your jaw. Unclasp your heart. Lay the skipped chapters gently before God, the pain, the guilt, the unanswered prayers, and hear the whisper of Sawubona: 'I see you, child. I see the one who works, the one who worries, the one who wonders if she can keep going. I see the man behind the mask, the creative behind the light, the weary soul who longs for stillness. You don’t have to prove your worth to be loved.' This is what the elders meant when they said, 'Be still and know.' Stillness isn’t silence; it’s recognition. It’s the sacred pause that allows what’s been buried to rise. In the rhythm of Ubuntu, I am because we are, rest becomes a collective act. When one person stops pretending and chooses peace, they make space for others to do the same. Healing ripples outward. The community exhales. The sacred pause is not the end of the story; it’s the bridge. The place where the brokenness begins to remember itself as beloved. The place where the story stops rushing toward resolution and starts learning how to rest in grace.

A Prayer for the One Still Healing

God of the Hidden and the Seen, We come before You carrying the chapters we tried to skip, the ones too painful to read aloud, the ones we thought disqualified us from joy. Thank You for being the Keeper of every untold story. Thank You for whispering Sawubona when we could no longer find ourselves. See us, O God, not for what we do, but for who we are beneath the armor, beneath the titles, beneath the smiles. See the woman who still flinches at memories that haven’t faded, the man who feels unseen beneath the weight of being strong, the one who lives between categories, seeking belonging and breath. Remind us that our healing is not a race; it is a return. That Ubuntu means we do not heal alone; our becoming is bound up in each other’s liberation. Teach us to rest without guilt. Teach us to cry without shame. Teach us to ask for help without fear. And when we forget the sound of our own souls, send reminders through community, through breath, through light, voices that say: 'I see you. You are still here. You are still holy.' May we learn to see as You see, fully, gently, with reverence for the stories still unfolding. Amen.

Closing Reflection

Sawubona. I see you, not just the polished parts, but the pieces still trembling toward the light. In every skipped chapter, there is sacred text. In every pause, a pulse of grace. And in every quiet act of truth-telling, a whisper from the ancestors saying: 'You have not been forgotten. You are the story still becoming.'