Latest / Crosswalk Talk: Celebrity Christian Interviews / Christine D’Clario on Postpartum Depression, Trauma, and Finding Healing in the Desert
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Life Audio.
- 0:04Speaker 2: Christine, thanks for joining me.
- 0:06Speaker 1: Thank you, Michael, It's so good to be here.
- 0:08Speaker 2: Christine de Clario Dove Award winning and Latin Grammy nominated
- 0:13Speaker 2: artist who has a new book, Healing in the Desert,
- 0:16Speaker 2: which offers a roadmap for those walking through depression, anxiety,
- 0:20Speaker 2: and trauma, based of course, on your own personal experience, Christine. Indeed, Christine,
- 0:26Speaker 2: millions of people know you buy your music. What led
- 0:31Speaker 2: you to't want to open up about such a personal story.
- 0:36Speaker 1: Well, about seven and a half years ago, I got
- 0:39Speaker 1: diagnosed with a severe postpartum depression and one of my
- 0:44Speaker 1: biggest and hardest symptoms with suicide and so be a
- 0:48Speaker 1: public figure, more so a public figure of faith and
- 0:53Speaker 1: struggling with thoughts of death and an unsound mind was
- 0:59Speaker 1: something that I just can't reconcile I did it. I
- 1:02Speaker 1: was completely unaware that there were resources for people like me,
- 1:06Speaker 1: that there were other people going through the same thing.
- 1:09Speaker 1: And what does a leader in faith do, like, how
- 1:13Speaker 1: do we confess? How do we reach out for help
- 1:15Speaker 1: without the fear of maybe being shunned or being seen
- 1:18Speaker 1: as a failure. So there was a very big struggle.
- 1:22Speaker 1: I'm really grateful that there were key people in my
- 1:24Speaker 1: life that I know the Lord put there that were
- 1:27Speaker 1: able to identify what I was going through because they
- 1:30Speaker 1: can notice it. They'd been there before. It's a very
- 1:33Speaker 1: important thing to note. And they pretty much did an
- 1:36Speaker 1: intervention and put me headfirst into trauma therapy and just recovery.
- 1:42Speaker 1: It turns out that my postpartum depression was a blessing
- 1:46Speaker 1: in disguise. It was the spears head of a deeper
- 1:51Speaker 1: healing that needed to happen from trauma from my childhood
- 1:53Speaker 1: that was never resolved. I survived sexual abuse at five.
- 1:58Speaker 1: I watched my dad's detriment to a until he passed away.
- 2:01Speaker 1: When I was six. I was uprooted from New York
- 2:04Speaker 1: where I was born to a new country in Puerto Rico,
- 2:07Speaker 1: and it was a snowball effect of complex trauma that
- 2:11Speaker 1: I simply had just never dealt with. I grew up
- 2:14Speaker 1: in the Church, and what was instilled upon me was, Hey,
- 2:17Speaker 1: the joy of the Lord is our strength. Okay, it's
- 2:19Speaker 1: time to smile now that the passes in the past
- 2:21Speaker 1: move forward. And so we didn't have the resources for
- 2:25Speaker 1: mental health or inner healing or trauma resolution. So when
- 2:29Speaker 1: I fell into that postpartum depression. Though it was probably
- 2:33Speaker 1: the hardest and darkest season of my life, it was
- 2:36Speaker 1: a blessing to me because it held the keys for
- 2:39Speaker 1: me to start opening up and allowing the light of
- 2:43Speaker 1: the Lord to come into those dark places and heal.
- 2:46Speaker 1: And so I realized that I'm not alone, which is great.
- 2:51Speaker 1: There are many, many, many more of us that struggle
- 2:54Speaker 1: with our mental health, especially in our generation, in our
- 2:57Speaker 1: day and age. One of the biggest pandemics in the world.
- 3:00Speaker 1: It wasn't COVID nineteen, it's the lack of mental health.
- 3:03Speaker 1: And people started reaching out to me as I became
- 3:06Speaker 1: vocal about my story and using my platform to talk
- 3:08Speaker 1: about my struggles. A lot of people have influence, especially
- 3:12Speaker 1: and I felt very convicted by the Lord that this
- 3:17Speaker 1: wasn't a story for me. This was a story that
- 3:21Speaker 1: was going to serve as a guide for many, many people.
- 3:23Speaker 1: And then I sat down and put it in a
- 3:26Speaker 1: book with all those little guide posts and lamp posts
- 3:30Speaker 1: and like little flags upon the road that we all
- 3:35Speaker 1: can benefit from at some point in our lives and
- 3:37Speaker 1: in our struggles. It's good to be able to see
- 3:40Speaker 1: ourselves in the story of someone else, because what is
- 3:43Speaker 1: it that the Bible says the spirit of prophecy is
- 3:46Speaker 1: a testimony of Jesus. So when we testify, it becomes
- 3:50Speaker 1: the prophecy for someone else and it brings hope. And
- 3:52Speaker 1: so that's why healing in the desert exists. It's my story, yes,
- 3:57Speaker 1: but it's also everybody else's story wherever they find themselves
- 4:01Speaker 1: in their desert. Absolutely.
- 4:02Speaker 2: You know, mental health, Christine can be a difficult subject
- 4:05Speaker 2: to address in some church environments. What has your what
- 4:10Speaker 2: has been your experience in raising a subject within maybe
- 4:13Speaker 2: your own Christian community, and what do you holte this
- 4:15Speaker 2: book maybe teaches the body of Christ about this subject.
- 4:20Speaker 1: Well, when I first confessed, I saw a very, very
- 4:23Speaker 1: stark division, especially in the people of faith. There was
- 4:26Speaker 1: half of them that were against it. No, this is spiritual,
- 4:33Speaker 1: you're demonized, or no, you probably open the door to
- 4:37Speaker 1: the enemy. Or no, you don't pray enough, or no,
- 4:40Speaker 1: you don't go to church enough, which I understand because
- 4:45Speaker 1: we really haven't erected a good altar to renew the mind,
- 4:52Speaker 1: not in our generation and not in any generation. We
- 4:54Speaker 1: see altars to the Lord, and you know, emotional altars,
- 4:58Speaker 1: physical altars, spiritual altars, but nobody has laid down the
- 5:02Speaker 1: mind on the altar of the Lord so that he
- 5:05Speaker 1: can help us renew it. We don't talk about it enough,
- 5:08Speaker 1: we don't educate ourselves enough. Hopefully that changes with our
- 5:12Speaker 1: work and those of us that are sounding the alarm
- 5:14Speaker 1: and waking people up. So there was that half of
- 5:17Speaker 1: the people that were you know, you kind of reject
- 5:19Speaker 1: what you don't understand because you're afraid of it type thing.
- 5:22Speaker 1: But the other half was very encouraging to me because
- 5:26Speaker 1: it was either people that were saying, I didn't know
- 5:29Speaker 1: someone like you could go through something like that. And
- 5:33Speaker 1: if you face that, then I'm not so wrong for
- 5:37Speaker 1: suffering in the same way. And if you came out
- 5:42Speaker 1: of it and you found your way through the desert,
- 5:44Speaker 1: then that gives me hope. How do I go through this?
- 5:48Speaker 1: And I'm absolutely happy to give all the wisdom that
- 5:51Speaker 1: the Lord has given me in my journey and the
- 5:53Speaker 1: resources things like work that we now do. With mental health.
- 5:57Speaker 1: We started a ministry called soul Share Health that soul
- 6:00Speaker 1: share health dot com, and it's a community of believers
- 6:03Speaker 1: who are either going through crisis or have been through crisis,
- 6:07Speaker 1: or their mental health care professionals that are licensed to
- 6:11Speaker 1: be able to help us navigate through our stuff. We
- 6:15Speaker 1: get together and we gather monthly and weekly for prayer,
- 6:18Speaker 1: just to build each other up and come out of
- 6:20Speaker 1: the desert. So for that part of the population is
- 6:25Speaker 1: who I work for that I've seen myself until I'm
- 6:28Speaker 1: very very very old and ot and headed and in
- 6:31Speaker 1: my deathbed surrounded by my kids and grandkids and great grandkids,
- 6:35Speaker 1: going home to Jesus thinking about all those people who
- 6:40Speaker 1: are still earthside and are fulfilling their process and their
- 6:44Speaker 1: progress and the Lord because a few brave of us
- 6:48Speaker 1: decided to not see vulnerability as a weakness, but as
- 6:53Speaker 1: a superpower and a sword that we can wield in
- 6:56Speaker 1: defense of those that haven't understood it yet.
- 6:59Speaker 2: Amen to that that you mentioned therapy, How did therapy
- 7:02Speaker 2: interact with your faith on this journey, because that's a
- 7:04Speaker 2: big part of your book.
- 7:06Speaker 1: I recommend therapy wholeheartedly. But there is the butt not
- 7:12Speaker 1: any therapy, because there are sometimes are therapists that need
- 7:15Speaker 1: therapy more than giving it. No no, no.
- 7:20Speaker 3: Therapy by a spirit filled anchored in the Bible, therapist
- 7:27Speaker 3: who knows the Holy Spirit, who sits with Jesus daily,
- 7:31Speaker 3: who walks with God and lithens who.
- 7:34Speaker 1: Leans on the Lord and not on their own understanding
- 7:37Speaker 1: and their books savvy to be able to help people through.
- 7:40Speaker 1: That is the key. Had I not had the combination
- 7:44Speaker 1: of a very spirit filled, highly discerning therapist and Jesus,
- 7:49Speaker 1: I would probably still be in the therapeutic process now
- 7:52Speaker 1: because there was way too much to unpack. So the
- 7:55Speaker 1: key is a Christian spirit filled therapist that will bring
- 7:59Speaker 1: the Word of God into session. You know, there's a
- 8:02Speaker 1: statistic that says that you can exponentially accelerate the progress
- 8:07Speaker 1: and the outcome of your therapy if you pull faith
- 8:11Speaker 1: into session. That's statistically proven you advance more than sixty
- 8:16Speaker 1: or seventy percent speed if you bring God into the equation.
- 8:20Speaker 1: So that is the key, sitting with someone, not doing
- 8:23Speaker 1: it alone, because if you're in the mess and you
- 8:27Speaker 1: haven't been able to come out on your own, chances
- 8:30Speaker 1: are the Lord is calling you to pair up with
- 8:32Speaker 1: someone who's already been there and who can help you
- 8:34Speaker 1: through it. And he sent his disciples two by two,
- 8:37Speaker 1: and that was for a reason because when one is weak,
- 8:40Speaker 1: the other one lifts him up and vice versa.
- 8:43Speaker 2: Am in a that that's so good. I'm curious. So,
- 8:46Speaker 2: when you were struggling years ago, did you at Sim's
- 8:49Speaker 2: question God, did you question your faith? It seems like
- 8:52Speaker 2: it ended up building your faith. But what was it
- 8:54Speaker 2: like at the time.
- 8:56Speaker 1: Well, I wouldn't call it fully deconstruction. It was more
- 9:02Speaker 1: like ripping off band aids. There were there were lots
- 9:06Speaker 1: of concepts I had about God that were like putting
- 9:09Speaker 1: a band aid on an open bowel. You know, it
- 9:13Speaker 1: doesn't really work, That's not what it's for. A bunch
- 9:16Speaker 1: of scripture that was kind of half out of context
- 9:20Speaker 1: that just wasn't serving me fully because I wasn't profound
- 9:24Speaker 1: enough into suffering to seat or the full answer, you
- 9:28Speaker 1: know what I mean. Sometimes you have to go through it,
- 9:31Speaker 1: and you have to go through a depth of pain
- 9:35Speaker 1: so that you can understand the fullness of the joys
- 9:40Speaker 1: that come after the pain. And so my perspective needed
- 9:44Speaker 1: to be broadened, and part of that was me having
- 9:48Speaker 1: it out with the Lord. One thing that I learned
- 9:52Speaker 1: about him that makes me so in love with him
- 9:55Speaker 1: now is that he can take it. When when I
- 10:00Speaker 1: was angry and I lashed out at the Lord, he stayed.
- 10:05Speaker 1: When I was depressed and felt so pathetic and a loser.
- 10:10Speaker 1: He stayed when I was revisiting disgusting pain. He stayed,
- 10:17Speaker 1: and he could take it. He could take all my anger,
- 10:20Speaker 1: all my frustration, all my pain, all my wailing. Even
- 10:24Speaker 1: when I couldn't take myself. I was like, look God,
- 10:27Speaker 1: because then stop already. And I couldn't because my body
- 10:30Speaker 1: was just resolving the trauma. He stayed, and he remained,
- 10:34Speaker 1: and he was stubbornly insistent in being a faithful companion,
- 10:39Speaker 1: even when I couldn't handle a single word from anyone,
- 10:42Speaker 1: including him, because my brain was just too fragile. His
- 10:46Speaker 1: presence in silence was sufficient to help me stay hopeful
- 10:52Speaker 1: that if he didn't leave me, there was still some
- 10:55Speaker 1: worthiness inside of me that he saw enough to restore me,
- 10:59Speaker 1: and the work that he started he will fulfill in
- 11:01Speaker 1: my life and everyone else's. So I was only able
- 11:05Speaker 1: to see that perspective of God's love in the depths
- 11:09Speaker 1: and the darkness of the desert. I wouldn't have been
- 11:13Speaker 1: able to fall in love with him that way. Any
- 11:15Speaker 1: other way.
- 11:26Speaker 2: I think many characters in in scripture would would it,
- 11:28Speaker 2: would would agree with you they they walked in your
- 11:30Speaker 2: shoes and would say exactly what you just said. I
- 11:33Speaker 2: think that there's a lot there's many examples of that
- 11:37Speaker 2: in scripture.
- 11:38Speaker 1: I can't wait to have a big round table in
- 11:40Speaker 1: heaven and be like Elijah, come here, let's have a
- 11:43Speaker 1: little chat. I want to see your perspective on that
- 11:45Speaker 1: depression that you want to kill her, you want to
- 11:47Speaker 1: kill yourself under the rubush. Tell me about that.
- 11:51Speaker 2: Asked, Yeah, the book is healing in the desert. Let's
- 11:54Speaker 2: switch briefly to your music career. For those who don't
- 11:57Speaker 2: know who Christine does, who Christina is? You have two
- 12:01Speaker 2: million monthly Spotify streams. That's more than many artists that
- 12:05Speaker 2: I listened to. So you are somebody in the music world.
- 12:10Speaker 2: Did you grow up wanting to be a singer? Yeah, okay,
- 12:14Speaker 2: tell us about that. From what age and how did
- 12:17Speaker 2: you get started?
- 12:18Speaker 1: My mom tells me, and she very vividly remembers that
- 12:22Speaker 1: I thinging since before I could speak. There were tunes,
- 12:27Speaker 1: and everybody was very impressed in my family because I
- 12:29Speaker 1: can carry a tune perfectly. I had a great musical ear,
- 12:33Speaker 1: so even before I was babbling, I was already you know,
- 12:36Speaker 1: humming songs and going back. I would drive them absolutely insane,
- 12:39Speaker 1: repeating the same cassettes over and over and over and
- 12:42Speaker 1: over with the same song. Since I was just so
- 12:44Speaker 1: fascinated by music, and music became a place of refuge
- 12:48Speaker 1: for me when I was going through all those childhood
- 12:50Speaker 1: pains and wounds. It became a very good escape. It
- 12:54Speaker 1: was a good companion for a season. It was an idol.
- 12:59Speaker 1: And when I had my encounter of salvation with the Lord,
- 13:03Speaker 1: then it became my most pleasant gift to him. Oh
- 13:07Speaker 1: there to ask me, Yeah, I do have it every day,
- 13:11Speaker 1: just that of gratitude. I have decided that I will
- 13:15Speaker 1: sing to Him and only him.
- 13:17Speaker 2: And then that tell us about your conversion. You mentioned
- 13:20Speaker 2: it briefly there did you come fIF as a youngster,
- 13:23Speaker 2: as a teenager, as a young adult, at the age.
- 13:26Speaker 1: Of nineteen, I had my encounter with the Lord. However,
- 13:29Speaker 1: I grew up in the Church, so my culture, my
- 13:32Speaker 1: upbringing was all I was through and through the church. Kid,
- 13:36Speaker 1: I talked the talk, didn't really walk the walk because
- 13:39Speaker 1: I my relationship with God as a father was kind
- 13:43Speaker 1: of null because I didn't have my father. So I
- 13:47Speaker 1: grew up missing him, longing to one debut with him,
- 13:52Speaker 1: but not having him. So That's the same filter with
- 13:55Speaker 1: which I looked time every time somebody said no and God,
- 13:58Speaker 1: our Father, who aren't heaven A like, oh yeah, he's
- 14:00Speaker 1: all the way up there and I'm down here and
- 14:03Speaker 1: he's too busy with the affairs of the world. But
- 14:06Speaker 1: you know, if I do everything right, I'll meet him
- 14:09Speaker 1: one day. But having a relationship with him was it
- 14:12Speaker 1: something that I can say I had up until the
- 14:15Speaker 1: age of nineteen, after I had become the worship leader
- 14:19Speaker 1: of a very large, influential church in my town. But
- 14:22Speaker 1: I was living a double life. I became very rebellious
- 14:25Speaker 1: because of all the pain that I was carrying, and
- 14:28Speaker 1: weekends I was at church as the church girl music minister,
- 14:33Speaker 1: and during the week I was doing the exact opposite.
- 14:37Speaker 1: I was flying off the rims. So I made a
- 14:42Speaker 1: lot of mistakes in that time of double living and
- 14:45Speaker 1: just hypocritical Christianity, and I hit a rock bottom. That
- 14:50Speaker 1: was the first time that I faced mental health issues.
- 14:53Speaker 1: I also was suicidal back then, had a deep depression,
- 14:57Speaker 1: and the Lord rescued me from that. It made it
- 14:59Speaker 1: all the more when I found myself many many decades
- 15:03Speaker 1: later in the same spot after being.
- 15:06Speaker 4: Redeemed and having a relationship with the Lord, which goes
- 15:10Speaker 4: to show that Jesus was so right in saying in
- 15:14Speaker 4: the world you will have troubles, but take heart, I
- 15:18Speaker 4: have overcome the world.
- 15:19Speaker 1: So if you're with me, I've got the way out.
- 15:23Speaker 1: And so when I had the moment of rock bottom
- 15:27Speaker 1: back when I was nineteen, I kind of reached out
- 15:30Speaker 1: to the Lord. And not the best way, truly. It
- 15:34Speaker 1: was a snarky prayer, was it very nice with my verbiage.
- 15:40Speaker 1: I was kind of street. And so I kind of
- 15:44Speaker 1: called out the Lord in an ultimatum and said, well,
- 15:47Speaker 1: if you love me, if you exist, if you're real,
- 15:49Speaker 1: if you have any plans with me or whatever, you
- 15:53Speaker 1: have until midnight to show me, or I'm just going
- 15:54Speaker 1: to go out into the world fully up, become a
- 15:57Speaker 1: secular artist or something. And that's it. And so eleven
- 16:02Speaker 1: forty something, this lady comes up to me out of
- 16:05Speaker 1: nowhere and she starts speaking to me on behalf of
- 16:08Speaker 1: the Lord. Starts by saying, I am the Lord, your God,
- 16:11Speaker 1: I do exist, I am real, I do love you,
- 16:14Speaker 1: and yes, I do have a plan with you, and
- 16:15Speaker 1: I'm gonna show you right now. And it was so
- 16:19Speaker 1: beautiful that the Lord spoke to me in the language
- 16:21Speaker 1: that I understood, because I was very haughty and proud
- 16:25Speaker 1: back then. So I was like, I'll tell you peace
- 16:28Speaker 1: of mylind And so he turned around and told me
- 16:31Speaker 1: a piece of his It totally humbled me, but at
- 16:35Speaker 1: the same time embraced me with such a precious, deep, abundant,
- 16:43Speaker 1: rich love. I finally saw that I was worth it,
- 16:50Speaker 1: that he would make somebody go out of their way
- 16:52Speaker 1: to bring a message of his on me and reveal
- 16:56Speaker 1: his fatherly love to me. Fatherly love is not necessarily
- 17:00Speaker 1: easy love, because it was very confrontational. I was like,
- 17:04Speaker 1: you made mistakes, your life is a miss but come,
- 17:10Speaker 1: let me hold you, let me heal your wounds, let
- 17:13Speaker 1: me wash your face, and let me teach you the
- 17:16Speaker 1: way you need to go. And I mean, it was
- 17:19Speaker 1: like a Jeremiah moment. He seduced me with his love,
- 17:21Speaker 1: and I just I had no escape. I fell madly
- 17:26Speaker 1: in love with my Savior that day. That was August
- 17:28Speaker 1: of two thousand and three, and I'm never going back,
- 17:32Speaker 1: never ever. Amen to that.
- 17:34Speaker 2: Amen, let's close this. Let's close this with a little
- 17:37Speaker 2: bit of advice from maybe we were walking and the
- 17:40Speaker 2: shoes that you were walking in. Maybe people were battling
- 17:44Speaker 2: with anxiety, depression and some of the issues that you faced.
- 17:48Speaker 2: What advice would you give them right now?
- 17:51Speaker 1: Well, I would start with scripture. There's a scripture that
- 17:54Speaker 1: says that many are the afflictions of the righteous, meaning
- 17:59Speaker 1: there's different ways in which this world is going to
- 18:01Speaker 1: hit us, and it's gonna hurt but immediately it says,
- 18:06Speaker 1: but of all of those, the Lord will rescue you.
- 18:10Speaker 1: If you're in a situation where you feel you can't
- 18:12Speaker 1: escape and you feel like you've tried everything and that
- 18:16Speaker 1: you're still in the hole. I know no better hero
- 18:21Speaker 1: than the Holy Spirit. His rescue is exactly what we
- 18:25Speaker 1: need when we need it now. There is a little
- 18:28Speaker 1: tag to that, and it's to not embrace the lies
- 18:33Speaker 1: of the enemy that he isn't there, because he is.
- 18:36Speaker 1: He's always there, and sometimes we're wanting to find him
- 18:41Speaker 1: in like these big supernatural gestures when he's been speaking
- 18:46Speaker 1: to you in the still small whisper. So get still
- 18:53Speaker 1: and know that he is God, and don't believe that
- 18:57Speaker 1: you are alone, because you're not. The Lord is with him,
- 19:00Speaker 1: and people like me are with you too. There is
- 19:03Speaker 1: an entire army of us that is forming to be
- 19:07Speaker 1: able to help you out. You do not have to
- 19:10Speaker 1: walk this journey alone. There. Yes, there are a lot
- 19:14Speaker 1: of people out there that are not professing the proper Christianity.
- 19:17Speaker 1: I know social media is full of them, but there
- 19:21Speaker 1: are many of us who still understand that those of
- 19:25Speaker 1: us that are spiritual, as the Apostle Paul said, we
- 19:29Speaker 1: bring up our brothers and sisters with meekness and with
- 19:34Speaker 1: compassion and with a tender heart. So find someone you trust,
- 19:39Speaker 1: don't hold it in, tell them what you're going through
- 19:43Speaker 1: so that you have someone to walk with you. And
- 19:46Speaker 1: if you don't have that person, you are welcome to
- 19:49Speaker 1: log into soulsharehealth dot com. We have a community of
- 19:54Speaker 1: very strong faith believers that can help you through because
- 19:58Speaker 1: we've all been through stuff and we have the authority
- 20:01Speaker 1: from the Lord to help you and pull you out
- 20:02Speaker 1: of it too.
- 20:05Speaker 2: If you enjoy today's interview, please make sure to subscribe
- 20:08Speaker 2: and share the episode with a friend. A big thanks
- 20:11Speaker 2: to the team at life Audio for their partnership with
- 20:13Speaker 2: us on the podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com,
- 20:16Speaker 2: you will find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in
- 20:20Speaker 2: their network, See you next time.