Serious content alert! With the talk of depression being on lots of people’s minds at the moment, I was watching the movie, “The Legend of Bagger Vance”, yesterday. It’s another of those movies that I know well enough to have it on the TV while I’m working and know when to pause and watch my favorite scenes. I don’t know enough about golf to have a clue as to how well that it portrayed, but it is nicely crafted from a period piece perspective (early 1930s) in Savannah and it has a great cast. The foundation of the movie is a special golf tournament between the legendary Bobby Jones, Walter Hagan (they were real people), and the fictional Rannulph Junuh, a once-phenomenal young golfer and romantic interest of Adele who has put together the tournament. Junuh went to WWI and returned home as a broken man who withdraws into drink and is finally persuaded to enter the tournament. The mysterious Bagger Vance appears just prior to the tournament and offers to caddy for him. Directed by Robert Redford, there are elements similar to “The Natural”, and the demons that haunt Junuh are never far from him.

Bagger, in trying to lead Junuh from his darkness, makes a number of observations, and one of them is, “You thought you could just go back to being the old Junuh and that isn’t going to happen,” or words to that effect. For many people, tragic events or circumstances can occur that affect them so profoundly, they are altered in a way that impacts them for quite possibly the rest of their lives. And that impact can be so gripping that it entangles them in a manner that can seem unbreakable. There are different successful ways to extricate oneself from such a situation, but all require the recognition that you won’t be “your old self”. The person that emerges is also likely to need time to regain his or her strength. These struggles are never easy and very often, it is the help and understanding of someone who cares deeply that can begin the healing process.