Will Russack

The winter my sister was first hospitalized for self-harm, I had a seasonal job restoring native forests. Of the many grueling tasks I performed during that gray winter, I had a peculiar affinity for rescuing trees from ivy. Ivy is a tough, relentless plant. The woody vine grips effortlessly to stone walls, lamp posts, and tree bark as it climbs upwards seeking the sun. To liberate trees from its grasp I spent hours swinging hatchets with determined patience and precision, hacking vines and prying them from the trunks of trees. In the dim evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest, ivy is a despised villain, blanketing whole landscapes in dark vinyl green. It chokes native vegetation, climbing trees and weighing their branches down so much they snap during windstorms. Its species name, Hedera helix, refers to the way in which it twists and spirals upwards, not unlike the structure of our genetic code. It climbs by virtue of tiny hairs and roots that find small cracks and nicks in surfaces and secretes an adhesive, sealing the plant to its host. Proud maples and noble firs become skeletons as ivy intercepts sunlight, asphyxiating its host and dragging it down at the same time, taking on a life of its own.

Depression, like ivy, takes advantage of tiny fractures in your convictions, smothers your psyche, and wraps tighter and tighter around you. That winter, as I hacked at ivy and extricated desperate trees from strangling vines, I thought about my family’s history. I thought about my dead-before-I-was-born grandfather who drank so much he was kicked out of the house, and his eldest son who followed in his footsteps with drugs. I thought about my sister who for years had silently grappled with a depression that was suffocating her, and how she learned to suffer quietly from my mother. The roots of my sister's struggle are intertwined in a double helix with the substance abuse that killed my grandfather, the blossoming of depression in all his children, and the cycle of shame and sorrow that prevented any discussion within my family regarding its sinister presence lurking amongst us. Depression hangs on its victims, weighs them down, changes their shape. It manipulates its hosts - moods no longer belong to the individual but become self-fulfilling, the result of disrupted and hijacked neurotransmitter functions. Reflecting on these inherited and learned behaviors I wonder: how do we escape the cycles of fear and silence that prevented conversations between my mom and her siblings, stifled warnings between one generation to the next?

Using family photographs and letters from my uncle’s possessions, in addition to images of my family and the natural world, I give shape to some of the family trauma that has been passed down through generations. Much like ivy, depression and substance abuse over time will suffocate and consume not just solitary trees but entire forests. Speaking openly about these experiences, their vice-like grip on us, and the complicated questions of nature vs. nature are necessary to pull off the vines and free ourselves from cycles of suppression and suffering. It is part of an ongoing personal process to heal damaged behavioral patterns and work towards honest and caring communication within my family.