Twelve years ago I went through a massive depression. I’d never gone through anything like that before. It was life-changing for me. At the time it felt like it was the most challenging thing I’d ever experienced. I didn’t like it so much. But now, looking back, I’m so grateful for that time in the “wilderness” – I learned so much from it!
Here are some of the lessons I learned during the Year of Insanity (excerpted from The Middle Book):
“I still have moments of loneliness, and I still have moments when I’m scared. But now I know enough to know these moments will eventually pass. I don’t give much thought to them. I’ve discovered it’s possible to be happy even during these times.”
“…I have found that there’s no way I can predict what form help and ‘salvation’ will take for me. I have found that, if I just keep my thought open to all the good…every moment, I’ll find everything I need to get me off my mental ‘island.”
“Right here, where I might see fear and anger and hate – in this exact same place and space, there’s another universe filled with incredible good – and I have a choice of which one I want to live in, and which one I want to see as ‘real.'”
“I think if all of mankind were able to recognize the good in themselves and in each other – I think this, alone, would transform our world.”
“Think back on the last four years of your life, my friend – become aware of all the things you would have missed if you’d given up on life four years ago: the new friends you would never have known; the sunsets and sunrises you wouldn’t have seen; the lessons you wouldn’t have learned; the changes you wouldn’t have been able to make; the pictures never painted; the photos never taken; the songs never sung; all the love and laughter that you would have denied yourself.”
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 
It is believed in Chinese and Tibetan traditions that every twelve years is a similar year, and every sixty is really similar (due to the twelve animals that cycle, and then the elements like wood and water which also cycle). I have found that some folks twelve years older or younger than I have been similar to me in type, and that some years are similar to twelve or twenty-four etc. years prior. Are you finding this year to have similarities to the time twelve years ago?
How interesting! Need to think about that…