*****Frozen 2 Spoilers Ahead *****
“The Next Right Thing” and how it speaks to Depression:
Okay but real talk, everyone is talking about Elsa’s transformation and her songs and how amazing it all is (which it is) but the one thing in the movie that cut me to the core and actually made me shed tears was Anna’s song “The Next Right Thing”.
Anna has thus far been a quintessentially hopeful character. She never gave up despite the odds and obstacles that were thrown at her. She represents a piece of Disney that we all tend to look to in our dark times - that hope within the darkness. The theme of taking heart to step towards the light.
So when she hits her lowest low in the movie - when everything’s she’s loved or ever cared about has essentially been taken away from her, we expected Disney to take the high road and pull their token “well everything’s dark right now but I’m not gonna give up” speech/song.
But that’s not what they did.
They let her feel her brokenness. They let her have a song that was full of pain and dark and grief and despair. They didn’t shy away from the fact that she was NOT okay, and that in that moment she would probably never be okay again. “This is cold / this is empty / this is numb / hello darkness I’m ready to succumb”
Disney didn’t dance around the bushes with this one. They acknowledged a dark deep depression here. They acknowledged the feeling of that when everything goes dark you really can’t hold onto hope. That you have to live in that moment and accept that darkness- that you have to make peace with it before you can take the next step forward.
You don’t try to snuff it out or shove it away with feelings of hope and light. You don’t destroy those dark feelings in favor of good ones. You accept them. You make them a part of yourself and then you somehow find some way to keep moving forward- not because you have hope that things will get better- but because sometimes all you can do is eat you pain and find a way to adapt from it.
“You are lost / hope is gone / but you must go on / and do the next right thing / take a step / step again / it is all that I can do “
For someone who struggles with depression every day, this was a lesson that I desperately needed to hear. In our culture ( though it is slowly changing from this) there is still that stigma that darkness and depression is a thing that we have to cure ourselves from. That we have to fight and find hope in order to overcome it .
But depression is a disease. It never truly “goes away”. You have to find a way to live with it. You find ways to keep your head above water and how to tread carefully. And sometimes you even find a way to send your depression into a deep slumber or hibernation. But it’s always there hidden under the surface. And so many struggle with feelings of shame that we just can’t seem to get rid of it.
But it’s okay, and you’re okay. You don’t have to defeat it. As Anna says “Just break it down to the next breath / the next step / the next choice is the one that you can make.”
I love Disney for doing this. For being true to those feelings of darkness that we all struggle with. It was real and in that moment I cried watching it because it was needed.
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