Taking a Deep Dive into the #1 International Bestselling Book “Depression DOESN’T Discriminate” with Sophia Manarolis

Dennis: Hello. I’m your host Dennis Postema, and today we have a very special guest, because, first of all, it’s 3/16, and we’ll get to why that’s important in a moment, but today we have Sophia Manarolis. Sophia, welcome to the show.

Sophia Manarolis: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Dennis: Yes. I know that today is a very important day, but first of all, Sophia, tell us a little bit about what you have going on, what’s going on in your life right now.

Sophia: Well, y’know, it all ties in with today being an important day. So, twelve years ago today, I attempted to end my life. Now, most people don’t say that with a smile on their face, but I want us to get to a point one day where we normalize the conversation around depression, anxiety, burnout, suicide, so much that you don’t have to cringe when you hear someone telling you that, or cringe, or even lower your voice when you tell someone that you tried to die or even thought of it, so I’ve been talking about this for years, and I’m not expecting people to normalize it to that level right this minute and go live about it and full-on vulnerable on your livestream the way I do, but it would be great if we really get that conversation rolling.

So twelve years ago today, I attempted to die. March 16th, third month, sixteenth day, and ever since then I’ve been extremely grateful to be alive.

In the last, I think at this point it’s five years, where we started celebrating on 3/16 day, today, celebrating life and it’s a day where I encourage people to share gratitude—you can pause at any point of the day, because I typically ask people to pause at 3:16 p.m., set an alarm on their phones, and it’s a long story as to how that came to be, but more or less I became obsessed with the numbers 3 and 16, and then I would just pause all the time at that time, so then I started encouraging people to pause at 3:16 p.m. and then some people started telling me, “Well, I’m in a meeting, I’m in class at that time, I can’t have my phone going off.” And I’m like, “It’s fine. It’s the 16th minute of any hour that you put on your alarm clock, it’ll be 3:16 somewhere and you could take a moment, pause, recenter yourself, be grateful for your pulse, right? Think of what else you’re grateful for in that moment and just, like, shift things up a little bit.”

So, for a while I’ve been talking about 3/16 and today’s the day where the twofold purpose of this movement, the I’m Alive movement, comes to the floor really, like, today in that I ask for people to pause on any social media of their choosing—I mean, first of all, start by pausing, think of what you’re grateful for, reflect on it, right? And then get online, like I said, any social media, typically this has been, for the most part, on Facebook and Instagram, #its316imalive already has a lot of posts under there. Now I’m pretty present on LinkedIn. Never really been on Twitter or TheTalk, but people could get on either of those and share gratitude so we could spread this like wildfire, right? Gratitude is contagious.

And then the other purpose of the movement—because on the one end I want to prevent people from ever experiencing what I did, so let’s integrate more gratitude into our lives—and on the other, I would really like for us to normalize the conversation so that no one ever suffers in silence ever again.

So today is either share a post about what you’re grateful for and/or if you’ve had any mental health related struggle at any point in your lifetime and you feel comfortable enough to do that, it doesn’t have to be a livestream or a video, it could literally be, like, a one- or two-liner on any of your social media platforms about letting the world know and adding the #its316imalive so that we can normalize this conversation to a point where no one ever suffers like I have.

Dennis: Yeah.

Sophia: Yeah, mouthful. Whew.

Dennis: I love that you say that, because I really think that there has been a lot of positive change, and a lot—if we don’t raise awareness on the topic, which you are doing a great job on, if we don’t raise awareness o nthe topic, people feel, like, alone, and they feel like they can’t talk about it, or, like, ashamed almost, or guilty—all sorts of feelings come up with that. So I love that we start by having a conversation that, for a lot of years, it just wasn’t normal, and it’s increased a lot now, but before that nobody ever talked about it, so I love that you’re normalizing a conversation that’s important to you.

Let me ask you this: So, first of all, we have an enormous—this is also a huge day because today we are launching your book, Motivation Success Publishing is launching your book Depression Doesn’t Discriminate— I’ll get it right— and it’s already a bestseller.

So, as of, like, early this morning it’s already a bestseller. We look like it’s going to hit #1 hopefully. It’s already #4 prior to this conversation, so that’s exciting. So, congratulations, first of all.

Sophia: Aah, another reason to be grateful to be alive today. I mean, I have multiple reasons, but this is definitely another good one.

Dennis: Hey, I’m grateful to be a part of it, so we’re glad that you included us.

So, what made you—first of all, why did you write the book?

Sophia: Well, for the purpose of—

Dennis: Or what finally gave you the courage to write the book, I should say?

Sophia: Honestly, I mean, from a year after I had attempted to end my life on the day, talking about it with a friend of mine who was like, “Whoa, one day, you definitely need to write a book about this.”

I was like, “Really?”

Like, I didn’t—I was like, “Okay,” y’know?

Dennis: Yes, yes, especially because it’s picking up a lot of traction it looks like, so that’s exciting right out the gate.

Sophia: Wow. Thank you. I’m so grateful for this. Wow.

And then as I saw that, along the way, more and more people were interested in what I was doing on 3/16—like, I deactivated my social media accounts at some point just to, like, rest, and people were text messaging me on 3/16 and wondering what I was doing.

I was like, “Wait a second, you noticed and so you’re actively going out of your way to message me to ask me what I’m doing on 3/16.”

I was like, “No no no no, this needs to be not just about me, and I want people to pause at that time and whatnot,” so the more I kept getting people on board with that and sharing my story, the more it became obvious that I wanted to reach more people, and that more people would benefit, and so what happened, actually, funny enough—or, well, again, one might not actually laugh at this—but about six years ago, so 2017, after having done a really nice video on Instagram, coming out and telling the world, “Hey, this is what’s happened on 3/16 day,” and, y’know, people finding out and calling me left and right and whatnot, I actually came back from my honeymoon, and even though I had been burning out and hadn’t really realized it ‘cause we tend to do that in North America, push through burnout—

Dennis: Yeah.

Sophia: Yeah. So, sleepless nights normalized, cool, but that what I was doing.

So I just, even though I had too much going on, even though I needed to recover from my burnout, I just started writing the outline for the book. Like, I had so many things to get back to because I had just finished planning this monster wedding—and I hate using the word monster, but in terms of the magnitude, Big Fat Greek Wedding, definitely an understatement there—so whatever the case, I sat there and started writing the outline, and even though I was so tired, I was excited, and I started writing, and yet, within a couple weeks, I actually developed another major depressive episode.

So, here I was eager to get this message out, and then episode number four happened. Why it happened and whatnot, I mean, people will get to read that in the book— definitely, we get to that— but essentially, I ended up having a thirteen month long major depressive episode with more attempts to end my life than I can count on my fingers, so yeah, notice my fingers, 3/16 alive.

Dennis: I love it. I love it.

Sophia: So, definitely, yeah. So imagine I wanted to get this out from then and then I lived another episode and more nasty than all the previous ones, ‘cause those were about six months long, this was thirteen months, and like I said, multiple more attempts to end my life.

And then when I recovered, I thought I was done with all of this. I said, “You know what? Every time I’m about to do something, or every time I’m counseling or coaching people,” well, not every time, that’s an exaggeration, but often it’s happened where I’m in the middle of helping people with their own recovery or their own mental health, and then, oops, this happens to me and I have to put a pause on helping them, and I just didn’t feel right about it, so I said, “You know what? Let me find other ways to create awareness, but let me just give this some time.”

Like, my dad wasn’t doing well with his health, so we all stepped in the family business and I put this all aside, and then a couple months after that—so, a couple months after having recovered from this nasty episode and having kind of decided that I’m not doing this anymore— my friend’s sister died by suicide, and that just, yeah. That hit me really, really hard, and I really wanted to help her, I had spoken with her, I had connected with her, she felt like she was understood ‘cause, y’know, I had already had the history that I did, and then unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to connect further, and that was it. At that point, I was like, “Okay, yeah, I’ve got to do this,” so that realigned me on this path. I’m like, “You know what? I’m gonna get the book out.” this. Like, whewf.

But I had a few curveballs over the years. Then we also got that drastic global shift that knocked us a little off our path sometime. I moved to another country. I came to Greece, and actually before the shift, I was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna write it the minute I get to Greece. I’m gonna sit by the beach, kind of get started,” but then that shift happened—I like to call it a shift instead of anything else—that drastic global shift happened, delayed my move here, and then obviously a lot was going on, but I was determined: like, one way or the other, I’m gonna get this out.

And then, yeah, there you have it. So that’s—the decision kind of started a while ago, and the persistence was definitely there, and there was a lot of unhealed trauma I didn’t recognize I still had, and that all came out as I was writing, so it was really challenging to write this book. I pushed through it. There were nightmares. There was vomiting. There was a lot of anxiety. There was a lot going on while I wrote it, but that’s it: it just had to be written. It was honestly something driving me to finish it, to finally get it out, so, I mean, I don’t know, I think that answers your question from so many different directions, but this book really needed to get out.

Dennis: Well, it does answer my question, but it also brings up a couple really good points. One is that the first time I was gonna write a book, it was a very similar reason, completely different topic, of you really just need to share the knowledge and try to help other people, and when it finally hits you I think that’s what gives you that extra boost of something to finally do it, you know?

Because you can’t—you really can’t—do it on your own, even though you feel as if you can, it needs to be that extra boost of doing it for other people.

And the other thing is, I think, is important to mention for anybody— even trying to do anything great or trying to help something or make or to do a bigger cause or have a much bigger goal—is that you are going to be met with the highest adversity before you accomplish that goal, so you trying to write the book, it’s gonna constantly—every battle that you’ve ever thought you went through, it’s gonna constantly come at you before you accomplish that to try to stop you from doing that, so I think that’s a very good point to bring up, because a lot of people are going to be going through that.

Sophia: You know what? I am grateful for everything that you just shared so we can motivate people and inspire them to do this; at the same time, it’s 3:16 p.m. for me here in Greece on 3/16 day, so yeah, I’m really grateful this is happening right now.

Dennis: What a moment to celebrate.

Sophia: What a moment. You were talking and I’m like, “Wow, yeah, 3:16, this is—everything he’s saying, absolutely feeling it in every bone in my body,” and it’s still 3:16 as we’re talking, so I’m really grateful to be alive, this is the hashtag of the movement, whether people— y’know, even after 3/16, any time people pause—I keep telling people, “Set your alarm for the 16th minute of any hour that works for you, and if you end up feeling grateful at 5:14, like, please do share it with us. Go ahead and add this hashtag #its316andimalive,” so yeah, all I wanted to do as you were talking was this, because I love everything you were saying and it was 3:16 for me. I took a picture, I’m not gonna lie.

Dennis: Hey, we’ll share that as soon as we’re done.

Dennis: Yeah, I’m very grateful to be on the podcast with ya, so this is great.

So let’s talk about the 3:16, how that gave you—the first chapter starts and the specific date. Talk to me about that. Let’s go into that a bit.

Sophia: I’m so grateful to be living this moment with you at that time.

Sophia: Honestly, from day one when I made that outline six years ago, right off the bat I was like, “You know what? I need people to understand.”

Now, ironically, even those who have experienced this don’t really understand

So oftentimes, I mean, I’ve been told by a few different spiritual healers and whatnot that, y’know, depression is from another dimension and this is why we struggle to describe it in this one because it doesn’t belong in this one. I know at first that sounds a little, like, woo-woo or whatnot, and not everyone gets all this, and that’s fine, but even if we just sit with that for a second, it makes total sense to me because even I, who has experienced what I’ve experienced, I even sat there and wrote out chapter one, giving people my inner thoughts on that day, and I still don’t think—I mean, sure, people will understand the severity, right? And I know already from those who have read chapter one and just were baffled by it and whatnot, I know people are going to feel the intensity of what was going on that day, but I still don’t feel like people are going to fully understand it, you know? So I’m like, “You know what? It is what it is.”

I get that unless someone experiences it at that level—and I really don’t want anybody to experience it at that level, that’s the whole point of this movement and mission is to prevent people from getting to that—people don’t recognize that between burnout and depression there’s a really fine line.

So, entrepreneurs especially, y’know, achievers, goal-driven career professionals, you name it. Okay, cool, yeah, they tend to just “doodoodoo,” disregard burnout and all that, and yet there’s a fine line, and I don’t have some kind of gene or whatnot that’s contributing to my experiencing depression. I had it once when I was eighteen for putting too much pressure on myself in university, right? I had a nervous breakdown, ended up having my first depressive episode, and from there, once you have it once you just become more vulnerable and prone to having it again in the future if ever you’re under a period of high stress, right?

So, then, also, if you’ve had one suicide attempt, it makes you vulnerable and prone to having another in the future when you’re depressed again.

So people are like, “Oh no, there’s no depression in my family or background,” it doesn’t have to be depression in your family for this to happen, hence why the book is called Depression Doesn’t Discriminate, okay? Now, it could happen to anyone, no matter how well life is going, it doesn’t matter how wealthy you are, your age, your race, your gender—whatever— anyone. It just doesn’t discriminate.

So, y’know, I’m just emphasizing this part right now because really, really this is how it ended up happening to me again, and the fact that it happened to me the first time when I was much younger, so, y’know, I know that people are not gonna fully understand it still. I don’t want them to actually have to fully—like, it’s cool, don’t go there, don’t go there, catch yourself when you’re already sleepless, not feeling good, stressing out, like, can we please tackle this then and there, right? So you don’t ever fully understand my first chapter?

Dennis: That’s the goal, right? Yeah.

Sophia: Yeah, don’t fully ever understand it. Like, it’s cool. Do understand the severity of it. Like, it’s not—I don’t want to scare people, but at the same time I want to scare people.

Dennis: Yeah. Just enough to make sure that they’re aware of what’s going on.

Sophia: Like I said, it could happen to you as well. It could happen to anyone listening to this right now. So, it’s like chapter one, this is what could actually happen to someone that, you know what? At that point I had finished my Master’s, I had just started my first job as a counselor and whatnot. Like, great things were ahead. Like, I mean, yeah, right, that happened.

And then later on I had my private practice, I was officially a younger, like, small business owner, entrepreneur, whatever, all that, building the social media following, actually had a waiting list in an affluent neighborhood in Montreal to see me for my services, and then I had to shut it all down, right?

So, without emotional wealth, financial wealth is pointless, and this is what I’m trying to drive home.

Dennis: Without emotional wealth, financial wealth is worthless.

Sophia: Pointless; worthless is even stronger, yeah. I would say pointless, but you know what? Now you’ve got me to change it to worthless.

Dennis: Worthless is good.

Sophia: Worthless. Like, you can’t do anything with that at that point. When that monster comes knocking at your door and you can’t even operate with the funds that you have, pointless.

Dennis: Doesn’t matter.

Sophia: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Dennis: What can somebody look—oh, sorry. What can somebody look for, like, to figure out when they’re trotting that fine line? Is there warning signs when they’re trotting that fine line of overwhelm and depression that you could share? That anything— or is it different for each person?

Sophia: Look, depression could be different for each person, but the thing is, fatigue, feeling tired, looks very similar for the majority of the planet.

So the other day somebody actually asked me this very same question. Like, when can you tell or when does an alarm bell kind of go off?

First of all, let’s not even wait until it’s an alarm bell.

But, honestly, when you start feeling tired and there’s no logical explanation behind it, meaning it’s not because you haven’t slept well— you actually got your eight hours, where some people just need seven, or five, or whatever—but you got your usual amount of sleep, right? There hasn’t been some, whatever, heavy change in your life in those few days, or— but you’re just tired. Like, you’re just feeling tired. Okay, one day, maybe.

But if you’re consistently feeling tired, let’s go with recognizing and appreciating feeling tired before we do anything else, because you’re emotionally tired. There’s a lack of alignment there. You’re not living aligned with your needs and your body starts to react.

So that’s what I tell people that, most often, if we all lived aligned with our needs, life would be great, but the moment we’re not living aligned with our needs at this equilibrium, that’s what starts to create extra stress, frustration, right? Anxiety, anger, depression, or the burnout before, so it’s all about pausing and listening to what’s really happening here. “I’m consistently tired right now when I haven’t necessarily taken on more projects at work, or it’s not like I’ve been hosting somebody these last few days. What’s happening, right?”

Like, check in with yourself when you’re just—let’s start with feeling tired, right?

But then if you start feeling irritable and other things, then definitely, y’know, let’s do something quick. It doesn’t necessarily have to be—y’know, very often people are like, “Okay, I need to go see a psychologist.”

Not necessarily.

If anything, most of the help I’ve gotten past my depressive episodes, anyways—oops, correction, someone corrected me a couple months ago, and I like that correction, no longer “my depressive episodes,” so, no longer mine— so during those depressive episodes, I may have seen psychologists, and then, to be quite honest, it was just not from a psychologist that I healed well from from all of this. Then afterwards, leading up—I mean, after writing this book, because I’m already writing part two—but in-between I saw different healing modalities that have really helped me recover from the trauma that even comes with all this, right? So, it doesn’t necessarily— sure, there’s great psychologists out there, but there’s a lot of different people that can help you in this process, right? Whether they’re coaches, and not necessarily mental health related coach but most often a life coach will help you understand some of the faulty thinking that is exacerbating your stress and your frustration. Y’know, it could be someone who does a lot of energetic work, whether a Reiki healer or someone doing acupuncture. There’s multiple people that you could seek out to help you even improve your sleep, right? Let’s go with the sleep, and then in due time you could also look into things more and figure out—obviously, I could help a lot of people in different areas. But take that time. You matter. Like, that’s all I could tell people. Very often, all it takes is one percent of your day to immensely improve your mental health. 1% of your day is fifteen minutes. Can we carve out fifteen minutes and practice more gratitude, do a little breathing, check in with ourselves?

So, again, you ask a question and I could go on and on, but I hope that people can just start with recognizing when they’re tired and realizing that maybe their soul is tired.

Dennis: Wow, that’s good.

Sophia: Yeah, and now that I’ve said soul, actually, since we’re on that damn stigma that’s out there in most people not wanting to get help for their mental health because they—mental, right?

They hear psychologist, psychotherapy, they think “psycho,” right? They think, “Oh, I’m crazy.”

Well, the word psycho comes from psyche— [suh-hee] in Greek—I’m of Greek origin, fully fluent in Greek, so I can confirm that it comes from the word [suh-hee], which is your soul, and in Greece they say “suh-khee uh-heeuh,” and “suh-khee uhhee-uh,” for some reason, in English, translated to mental health, but it’s really soul health. And I think if it was called soul health, maybe more people would be investing in it.

Dennis: Yeah. I’m gonna start calling it soul health for sure.

Sophia: It’s called mental health and then—yeah, because suh-khee psyche, your soul or spirit or— mental is not a thing in the Greek language, yet most words, y’know, in medicine and whatnot are translated from Greek or they’re derived from a Greek term, so why do we have to mess up that term? It’s soul health.

Dennis: Feels like an important one to get right, ‘cause it’s a lot cooler when it sounds like soul, yeah. I mean, yeah, I agree.

So, let me touch on something that you— because I’ve been fortunate enough to interview many, many successful people—and you talk about gratitude, and I think a gratitude journal, I love a gratitude journal. I have a gratitude journal, I think it’s so important. Tell me how important gratitude is, really quick, on your soul when it comes to what we’re talking about.

Sophia: Well it’s in the name. I mean, gratitude is free—let’s start with that—

Dennis: Yeah, the price is right.

Sophia: Free. Okay. There’s enough—because a lot of people need the science for things— there’s enough scientific evidence determining all the benefits of gratitude in regards to both your soul mental health and physical health—but in my case, what I see for myself and what I have seen in others, ever since really teaching them to really integrate it more in their daily lives, not just practicing but really embodying it, you become more mentally resilient, right? Gratitude has been proven to foster greater mental resilience. If you’re able to convert adversity into prosperity ahead of time, and practice doing that, then the minute adversity comes knocking—well, it’s not gonna knock you down too long, ‘cause you’ll be able to sit there and pull out, like, what is there to be grateful from this? Rather than just let it knock you down, wallow in your misery, and who knows how long you stay in that state after that?

If you practice, already, pulling out, and it goes beyond even just— gratitude journaling is very effective, right? But it depends, also, on what kind of exercise you’re doing when you’re journaling, so we can change it up. But if someone actively, like, every day—or not necessarily every day for this exercise—but thought more and more of bad moments you’ve had in your life, right?

I know, it sucks to reflect on it for a second, because you’re like, “Eugh, whatever,” okay, so sit with it, think of a bad moment, then meditate, like, calm down, and then look at it and then look at what good came out of it. Look at what changed in certain relationships in your life as a result of that bad moment, or how it may have affected you in your career, or whatever. Just really think about it for a second. And the more you do that specific gratitude practice of converting adversity to prosperity, the more resilient you become, and you don’t allow shit to hit you and just mess up your life or your business at that moment, right? So this is gratitude. Yeah. It’s all gratitude.

People think it’s a buzz word and people think about it regarding abundance, and that’s great, but there’s a lot more to it than that, and yeah.

Dennis: I love it when I get up, like, ten minutes early and I’m just, like, right before I would ever get up with an alarm or anything like that, and I just sit there and I’m grateful for a moment, and just thinking of all the things that I’m grateful for, and to me that changes my day and it changes the whole effectiveness of the day, so I love that you share that. So what can people expect from the book and who is it for?

Sophia: Okay, so you know what? I have to, like, drive this home right now: the before part, because from the get-go when I started talking about it and just throwing out the cover of the book and b building suspense over the months on Facebook, a lot of people were sharing my posts and talking in their captions, saying, “If you have anyone suffering from depression right now, know that Sophia Manarolis is putting this book together, and dada-da-da,” so everyone just thinking, “Okay, this book is for someone with depression.”

And I’m like, “Oh, no. Uhuh-uh-uh. Let’s make that clear.”

So, yeah, will it benefit someone from depression? Yes, it can, right?

Again, it’s not meant to diagnose or cure, right? Okay, cool, disclaimer, not meant to do that.

Can it give you encouragement and hope? Very likely. Because when you see the shit I describe in there, what I’ve been there and whatnot, and you know that I came out on the other side and even created a movement out of it, that can be very encouraging, right?

So, in that respect, yes, someone who may be living with depression can benefit from reading this book in that respect. But this book is ultimately for people who haven’t had depression, who don’t have it right now, have never had it, okay? And yet, you want to understand and care to listen? Do they want to listen? This is—

Dennis: Almost like a preventative.

Sophia: Absolutely. I’m all about prevention. And money is not in prevention for anything. I don’t care. Prevention. I don’t want anybody to live the shit that I described in that book. And that’s going to make it hard, too. Like, I don’t want anyone to live like that.

So, yes, this book is for people who have never had depression but seek to understand and who already like to step up the soul health game a little bit, right?

I mean, at the same time, yes, it’s for people who may be caregiving for someone right now, right, who has depression, or someone who’s just, like, even a friend of someone with depression. Like, I do talk about, like, “You know what? You may not want to say this, think about saying this a little differently, because you thought you were trying to help, mm, okay, no. I get it, you’ve never been educated on this topic; unfortunately, none of us ever were, so here we go.”

I’m giving you tips throughout as to how to approach someone better when they’re living with this monster, right? So there’s that, that’s very helpful to people who are currently caregiving or who are just friends with someone or a colleague or whatnot.

And, at the same time, someone who read the book, like, who read the manuscript at first, said, “You know what? I’ve suffered a few losses from suicide, unfortunately, and your book gave me a lot of clarity and closure.”

So I was floored with that, and I don’t expect it to necessarily have the same effect on anyone—on everyone, sorry—that have lost someone to suicide, but even if does that for one more person than the person who read the manuscript, I’ll be really happy.

Because a lot of people just don’t understand and blame themselves, and, y’know, this guy said this or how did I not see this?

And you will see throughout this book how deceiving one can become when they are experiencing depression at that level. Whoo. I deserve an Oscar for what I was pulling off during that. So, y’know, I think in that respect. So if people have been blaming themselves and still have questions and whatnot, maybe through my story, right, they might get some answers. So, that, hearing that from that person, it was remarkable to me. I was like, “You know what? It’s even on the back of the book.”

I can’t guarantee that someone will gain that, but if I get at least one more person to feel that, then mission accomplished.

Dennis: That’s amazing to me. That’s amazing.

Sophia: That’s who, really, the book is for. To start, the people who have never lived this—I couldn’t make that more clear.

Dennis: And if you haven’t faced adversity, you’re gonna face adversity, so I think that’s the point— that’s one of the big things about the book is that you have to realize: if bad stuff hasn’t happened in your life, eventually it’s gonna, and if you have a tool like this that can solve it prior to it happening, it’s a lot easier than solving it— being retroactive about solving than it is being proactive about solving it. Am I right on that thought?

Sophia: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what? Not everyone who will face adversity will necessarily experience a major depressive episode, or even a minor depressive episode, right? It does depend on what tools everyone has in their toolbox when adversity hits.

Dennis: And overwhelm is even more and more popular now, so that’s why I love how you talk about that thin line, that’s really good. Before we wrap up, I want—can you briefly talk about the movements and the steps we can do to help grow the movement right now?

Sophia: Honestly—well, for starters, getting the book.

Dennis: Yes, yes, definitely get the book.

Sophia: Get the book. I want it on people’s coffee tables. I want someone to walk in your home, see the book on the coffee table, wonder why it’s there at first—maybe even question if you have depression—scratch their heads, and then realize by reading the back of it, it’s cool. Like, it’s fine. Anyone can have—you know what I mean?

Dennis: A conversation starter, yeah.

Sophia: It’s okay to have a depression book on your coffee table, okay? Otherwise, I mean, I tell people—people could join the movement by going to join316.com, join the movement—now, whenever you’re feeling grateful, go ahead, you don’t have to share it every single time of course, right? But do make it a point, every now and then, make a post on any social media platform of your choosing, share gratitude, even to someone else, tag them in it and whatnot, and add that hashtag. It’s a very important hashtag. It’s #its316andimalive and this is how we can totally spread the I’m Alive movement. I want 3/16 day one day. Not only do I want to, I know it will be

Like, even after I’m gone I want people to celebrate this day, celebrate being alive, sharing gratitude, normalizing the conversation, maybe by the time I’m gone we don’t need to normalize anything anymore, so we’ll just tweak it up at that point, but until then that’s what I want: for people to pause, share gratitude, share their mental health related struggles if they’ve ever had any and whatnot, and this will be a really great way to help normalize the conversation and stop people from ever suffering in silence ever again.

Dennis: I love that. I love that. What is the best way, Sophia, to get a hold of you? Or for people to find you?

Sophia: alive316.com. It’s also on the book. I have multiple domains, now that I think about it. I think about opening people’s eyes, bringing hope, and helping open people’s eyes. It’s a movement of gratitude and hope. So, I was like, let’s hope for health, but the best one, honestly, which will get you to everything, alive316.com. Yeah.