She isn't asking for advice.

I don't think very many of us here in DiaryLand are asking for advice or assistance or sympathy or a blessing. From what I have read so far, for many of us the writing itself is the therapy, the release, the impetus that forces us to think and organize ourselves.

But I found a new diary this morning, someone who shares a favorite musician with my profile. And she is depressed. Really depressed. And she knows it. I read every entry she had up. There are glimmers of hope, some part of her spirit trying to rise above the gloom. But always the gloom wins.

She isn't asking for advice.

But I've got some. And I have to tell someone.

This is not from my own experience. I don't think I've ever been close to a true depression, much less something as dark as hers. But my wife has. Eleven years. It's been pretty much gone for six years now. And I love having the woman I married back, even though I didn't help her do it.

Like the diarist's significant other, I escaped. Not to drinks and evenings out on the town, but out into the country. Into the sage, into the newness around every turn of the road.

But the advice, the unsolicited advice.

"Get out and help someone else who is worse off than you."

It sounds simplistic in words, and maybe a little patronizing. But it's good advice, and it works.

From what I can see, it's too easy to let yourself down when you're depressed. You know you should exercise, and you start a program, but then you let yourself slack off. You know you should quit smoking/drinking/whatever, but the only person you let down is yourself, and so you do.

But when someone else is depending on you, and not just for the products of a job, but for something that is important to them, the motivation changes. When their eyes are looking at you in hope and gratitude, even for something that was easy and insignificant for you to do, it is hard to set them aside. It worked for my wife.

In their infinite wisdom, the school board decided to close our school and bus all the kids, K and older, to the next town. Parents rose in protest, and organized resistance. They needed someone good at numbers to prove the cost effectiveness of keeping our school open. My wife, a former bookkeeper, volunteered.

That meeting was the beginning of the end of her depression. They won, and by the time our school was saved my wife was one of the ringleaders, helping present the case to the board. Yes, she had a purpose. But that wasn't it. It was the dependency and support of others that brought her out. She was needed.

Then it was Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. The League of Catholic Women. The local food bank. Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors, the county Tourism Board.

A few years back I went into the coffee shop for a latte. First time I had been in there, and I asked to put it on the family tab. The girl said "Oh, you're So&so's husband?" I had to run to her office to let her know.

You should have seen my wife's face. Because of my job, I'm known in the community, and for a decade and a half she'd just been "my wife." Now she was the one known, and I was the anonymous appendage. It was great.

All because she set the depression aside and went out to help others, folks who were worse off and needed her skills. Or just her time. Even if her talents weren't marketable at that time.

So there it is, my unsolicited advice to a depressed young (compared to me, anyway) woman who will in all likelihood never see this.

Get out of the house or apartment. Find someone who needs your skills. Someone who would be grateful for an hour or two of your time a week. At the library, the senior center, a school or preschool. A church (it doesn't have to be yours), a soup kitchen. But volunteer yourself. You will find you have worth, that you are much more valuable than you suspect.