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Depression
How Running Changed One Woman’s Relationship With Depression
One story of how personal experience can drive company culture.
Posted December 10, 2018
It’s the season of resolutions and fresh starts, and the season of high stress and low joy. This time of year — the weeks between Thanksgiving and the New Year — offer many opportunities to invite gratitude, and just as many to notice where things, or we, have not changed from years’ past. When we are looking at the way we feel — the way we manage our emotions, behaviors, and experiences — we may find that solutions that have worked for us in the past are no longer working.
I had the chance to talk with Claire Mazur, co-founder of Of a Kind, a carefully curated webstore of very special items (perhaps a place to go if holiday shopping is one of the things compromising your joy!). Mazur is open about her personal mental health experiences because she believes that, “despite the fact that depression is a widespread issue and a lot of people feel it, the more that people talk about it, we can break down that wall.”
Mazur’s personal experience began in her early 20’s. She had been on anti-depressant medication for several years and decided that she wanted to try something different to manage her depression.
She says: “I decided that I was going to start an exercise routine to get myself off of meds. Health wasn’t a big part of my life up until that moment, but I had a sense that taking care of my body could help. I started very slowly but deliberately and in a very committed way, running. Ten minutes a day, every day.
It completely changed my relationship with depression and anxiety. This was 10 years ago when wellness and fitness weren’t at the center of so many conversations as they are today.
I felt almost robbed of this knowledge that exercise could be a very important part of mental health. If I had known in high school, when I was a teenager, that going for a run could help me with my anxiety, how different my life could have been! I found that I wanted to tell everyone.”
Mazur is quick to say that she is not anti-medication and that she personally does not rule out the possibility of going back on it at some point in her life.
But, as someone who has “made a career out of sharing my greatest discoveries with people — and this to me, is the same thing — I want people to know that exercise is not a cure, but it can really help, and if you haven’t tried it, you should.”
Mazur’s personal experience with depression and anxiety began as a teenager and continued into early adulthood. She sought help, engaged in therapy, and with a therapist decided to start medication. Now, many years later and off medication, she “still feels those ups and downs, but now I feel some amount of empowerment and agency over it. I have something in my toolbox I can try. I have the comfort of knowing that I can go for a run, and I will at least know that I’ve tried that. Before I felt completely powerless against it.”
One of the reasons I wanted to talk to Mazur is that she is an entrepreneur, and I was curious how she bridges her business life with her personal experience. She is building a business as well as a family — at the time we spoke, Mazur was eight months pregnant.
She has committed to running, no matter how busy things get. “I really made that commitment to myself. I think that has made all of the difference -- there are ups and downs of entrepreneurship.”
Committing to an exercise and self-care routine “also set a tone for our employees as our business has grown. It shows them that we value mental health, we value you as individuals, and we know that you will not be able to do good work without balance.
We’ve had people deal with serious challenges. I have been able to sit down and say to those people, ‘We care about how you are doing holistically, we want you to take the time that you need to do what you need to do.’”
Of a Kind has stood by this value by creating a cultural norm that supports wellness, balance, and taking time for personal needs: “Our office officially opens at 10 a.m. It gives people time to work out in the morning. It becomes a nice part of company culture. Dealing with dry cleaning, going to the grocery store or a doctor’s appointment, people can use the time for that. There are always reasons to work later. We say take care of yourself in the morning and make time for yourself.”
I’m appreciative of Mazur’s commitment to sharing her own experience as a way of helping decrease stigma as well as encouraging people to take different paths to find mental well-being. I also agree with her philosophy about talking about depression: “If we treated this the same way we treated every other illness, it would be so different.”
Has exercise worked for you as part of your mental health toolbox?
Does your workplace make room for mental health to be a part of your overall life?
Copyright 2018 Elana Premack Sandler, All Rights Reserved
