Through A Dark Tunnel - My Battle With Depression

26/02/2020

Hi everybody!
While this page has been pretty quiet recently... I haven't.
I've been busy!
And after spending the better part of 3 years battling mental illness: I felt I needed a break from it.
I needed to spend time dealing with my recovery and building a sustainable life.

My recovery is now something I speak about firmly in the past tense.
My life is now something that I actually enjoy!
While I hope to have more mental health content coming soon: I'm happy to share some of what I have been working on!

This is my first official musical release...
Ever!
And ironically... without mental illness, it wouldn't have happened!
Check it out!
I hope you like it!
I hope you share it if you do!

Tom Forth · Song · 2020

29/01/2020

is about actions this year.
It inspired me to book my walk to raise funds for for the 3rd year in a row!
Join me June 13 at Erindale park for an amazing time!
The amazing people at are saving lives every day!
Help me help them!

29/01/2020

Auden and my first video together.
He has his own YouTube channel (which I shamelessly plug!) and has been at me to do a cross promotion video!
Bell Let's Talk was the best reason to finally get down to it!
Auden has some great advice on how to help somebody you know that may be struggling!

If you're struggling.
Or if you have questions about living with mental illness:
Reach out to me here one Facebook
Or on Instagram
I'm here all day!

10/01/2020

It's been a while since I've come at you with a live video.
I've been planning some cool videos I was hoping to start releasing later this month.
But thanks to FordNation and this potentially DEVASTING, harmful and ignorant plan of action (especially in a province with SKYROCKETING rates of mental illness and addiction).
I'll be releasing a new video a little sooner than I'd planned.
I hope this is just an erroneous report... but either way it speaks to a horrendous and harmful misunderstanding about the nature of mental illness and how to treat it.

31/12/2019

My year in one picture.
The most beautiful things can sometimes be found in the most unexpected places.

I hope 2019 was good to you.
I hope 2020 is better.

27/12/2019

My official happy place!
Sitting in the corner strumming away.
The tune I'm playing is another new one. But this post is all about the background noise!
This was the first Christmas that I can truly remember being able to enjoy as a father. (Shout out to severe mental illness for making the last few so challenging!)
You can hear my kids having fun in the background with 3 generations of their family.
I couldn't be happier than to sit back and watch.
Listen.
Maybe chuckle
And hopefully provide some cool background grooves!

24/12/2019

For everybody out there who's struggling this holiday season.
I won't post a su***de hotline number
I won't tell you to 'reach out'.

I know how impossible that can seem.

If you're out there and you're struggling:

I hope that you find joy this holiday season. Even if only in the smallest of things.
You may not believe it, but we all deserve joy. We all deserve happiness. I hope they visit you this season.
Even if you need to fight for that visit.

And if you're out there and you're doing ok... maybe just worried about someone you know.
Telling somebody to reach out
Doesn't work
Practically ever.
It might be the literal 'least' somebody can do to fight mental illness...

But keep doing it!
It's still a good first step!
Every word that breaks the silence and stigma around mental illness is a step in the right direction.

Checking on the wellbeing of our friends and neighbors should never have become an abnormal thing.

We all need to do more of it.
If we did more of it...
We probably wouldn't need to post those su***de hotline numbers at all.

22/12/2019

If you'd have told me 2 years ago that I'd be playing guitar again, I'd have been surprised.
If you'd told me I'd be playing in bands again... I'd have been shocked.
If you'd told me I'd be writing material... I would have laughed and laughed!

And yet here we are!🙃🙃🙃🙃

A little snippet of yet another tune I'm working on. I lent my Strat out to to do some recording with.
In return, I got to hang on to this little beauty for a while.
Hope you guys enjoy this little groove.

19/12/2019

Maybe my favorite pic that I've ever taken.
I love these guys.
Like a spark loves its flame.

18/12/2019

I haven't been posting as much recently.
But I'm still trying my best to find and record cool things!
One of my favorite ways to practice mindfulness is simply to walk around and look for cool things. The trick is finding cool things and then trying to find a perspective that makes it truly special.
This is just my front yard in the morning.
No Christmas lights needed!🙃

❄️

05/12/2019

ICYMI
It's not every day you get the chance to co-host your favorite radio show!
I can't overstate how much fun this was.

“Miss Wellness Wednesday? We chat: Holiday season relationships with dating coach Barbara Katz. Myths on plant based meat substitutes with pro fitness trainer Igor Klibanov. Va**ng dangers with Hal Johnson of Tailbone injuries with https://t.co/dl0MUMRq4A”

04/12/2019

Ten minutes till show time! Tune in at Sauga960am.com

says depending on how the next couple hours go... his thumb is either going to go up
Or down!!

04/12/2019

So my son Auden has started his own youtube channel. His videos are amazing, but he's a pretty shy dude in a lot of ways... he's been working on this for months and already had a host of videos under his belt before he told me a thing about it!
(I'm now a huge fan and have offered to be his camera man going forward when he'd like me to be! )
Btw...
I don't know where he came up with this idea🙄

I had been trying to record a video for a student when he popped down and started working on the piano. (His bass work is taking a bit of a hiatus, while dad works on getting him a short scale bass)
I forgot the camera was even rolling when I came up with this little riff!
There's 10 more minutes of us chatting and jamming... but I think this riff ended up pretty accurately reflecting my happiness!
I couldnt have come up with it a year ago.
I hope it makes you smile!!

03/12/2019

"The sound of loneliness makes me happier"
One of my favorite song lyrics of all time! This is me putting it into action.
I played in a blues band for years, but on the bass... never the guitar.
Now I love just jamming away on a 12 bar... or in this case... maybe a few more.

I hope this groove makes you smile!
Happy blues on a shiny pink guitar!

Also:
SUPER EXCITED to announce that from 4-6pm tomorrow I have the honour of cohosting with the great on on

A few months ago Barry and the rest of the team at Sauga helped me with a cause near and dear to my heart. I've been a fan ever since. Great radio! Funny as hell!!! But just as important, they have a genuine passion for our community and the issues that are important to us!
Tune in and listen for what's going to be an awesome show!

29/11/2019

My attack on meal time conventions continues unabated!
Dinner tonight was breakfast sammies!
(Egg, cheese, bacon or ham and a light drizzle of maple syrup) with thin cut hash browns!😁😁 Sorry I haven't been as active with my posts. Lots of good things happening that I haven't been good at sharing lately. To be honest... over the last few months since they changed
It's gotten to the point where even my close followers and friends aren't seeing any of this stuff on their feeds.
While this could be disheartening it really isn't. I simply remind myself what this account is for. In the last year I've gone from a crippled seriously ill and LOST individual, to a happy and healthy person who's excited, just to get up in the morning. For all the slack we give to social media, instagram was a huge part of that transformation.
Instagram is where I keep track of my good stuff. But by keeping track of good things it helped me remember a lot of good things I had forgotten.
It helped me find new talents and passions as well.
It has helped me express myself.
It helped me find really cool artists and musicians and photographers.
It helped me take some of the first steps in my recovery.
Instagram gets alot of slack.
But I think it's just because most people aren't using it right.

in the end: I'm happy for every single one of you that follow along with my posts.
I hope they make you smile.
I figure if each of these posts does it once I'm more than happy!
Happy Turkey Day to everybody down south. You do it better than we do in Canada 100%!

22/11/2019

Hopefully you'll find this a pretty cool groove to start your weekend!

One of the many 'riffs' I've been goofing around with that seem to be slowly developing a song-like structure.
It is still surreal to me that I'm playing music at all to be honest.

I hope you like it!
But if you think it's terrible... let me know in the comments!!🙃🙃🙃🙃

19/11/2019

Thank you for lending me this book.
Thank you for your profound insight and compassion.
This book hits on some amazing and surprising things about living with mental illness.
Most importantly it offers hope.
Which can be our last and most precious commodity.

14/11/2019

So... is away on business. I asked the boys for a pic to send to her. Auden gave me a pretty good smile... Liam... Liam is way too much like his father sometimes.
A year ago, even making dinner for the family seemed impossible.
Now I love making dinner!
(And if you'll check shot 2... I'm pretty damn good at it.)
What changed for me has been a number of things.
But it really boils down to 1 big one.
I'm no longer sick.
If somebody you know is struggling.
If you're frustrated cause of their inability to do even the simplest things.
Allow me to offer a perspective:

Imagine you were suffering from a terrible illness that caused you to feel horrible all the time. Imagine you were so sick that you couldn't even make dinner for your family. (For those of you that follow me on my mental health vlog: I actually posted a pretty raw video about my dinner making struggles around a year ago)
Imagine if somebody was that sick with cancer... or heart disease.
But when its mental illness... not only do you feel too sick to complete even the simplest tasks... but about half the people you meet think your full of s**t. Or lazy. Or suffering from what would be a much more troubling mental problem that would cause you to 'fake' your symptoms.

If somebody tells you that they're too ill to do something... perhaps the way to help them isn't by judgement, or frustration... or even enthusiastic cheerleading.
Perhaps the best way to help somebody is by showing them compassion.
Understanding.
And if you really feel like helping them. Maybe ask them if you can help them doing something that they do feel capable of doing... even if it's just getting out of bed.



@ Mississauga, Ontario

11/11/2019

The school was open.
The buses were running.
But me and the guys took a snow day today anyways.
All 3 of us feel this was the right call.

02/11/2019

Breakfast is the most misunderstood meal of the day.
It's where we limit ourselves by sticking to what we 'feel' we should eat... rather than just eating what we want!!!🙃🙃🙃

I think oven baked left over pizza, slathered in hot sauce is just an absolutely kick ass breakfast.

Am I wrong?

01/11/2019

For a very long time, if I were to go downstairs to the basement, would follow me almost immediately, to see if I was ok.
If you've ever suffered from severe mental illness, or know somebody who has you probably understand why.
The basement was my safe space. It was where I endured the most awful facemelting panic attacks. It was where I isolated myself.
It became my place of shame.
For a long time, when my family saw me go down here: they held their breath.
The best decision of my recovery, might have been, when I encouraged my family to come down and check in on me from time to time, when i was having a rough night down here.
Encouraging my family to visit me during those hard times took away the silence from the situation.
It told my kids, that 'dad was ok'. That I may not feel too good... but that seeing them helped me.
So my kids felt they could help me.
And I know that helped them.
Since my recovery, I've slowly transformed the room into a pretty neat little music room.
Lots more work to do, including a paint job. But the most important work was done last spring.

When i got rid of all the shame that had been in it!

@ Mississauga, Ontario

29/10/2019

Really enjoyed this quiet morning stroll. It's so hard to take time for ourselves. But it's so important that we do.

🍁🍂

29/10/2019

The dark times can be so beautiful. If you look at them the right way.

#

28/10/2019

There is nothing cooler than whe your kids hear you banging around on the bass and come down to grab a guitar and join you!

28/10/2019

For the record, he's playing Daytripper.
On a sweet 50+ year old guitar, made by a piano manufacturer, who tried to diversify for 3 years.
Liam has recently decided that electric guitars are an awful lot of fun. Hes not so keen about distortion yet. Which baffles me completely... but I completely understand and encourage spending time playing different types of guitars as often as possible!

28/10/2019

One of my favourite places. Just a tiny little sliver of relatively untouched forest. During the worst of my panic attacks, when nothing else would calm me; walking in this pretty little forest was my magic bullet.
I think its astonishing; the truly magical effect that standing in the middle of a bunch of trees can have on our wellbeing.

For 51 weeks of the year, this is a pretty trail to walk.

But the 52nd week. This week!
my favourite little valley shows off! It's like walking in a shimmering golden fairy tale!

22/10/2019

The first album I ever recorded on!

A few months later coming back from a concert however; and I got to play this scene out for real on highway 6 south of Guelph. (With this very VW)
For the record... pushing a car down a dark road at 3 in the morning is not 'rock n roll'.
It actually just kinda sucks.
This band was called Whaling and we played together for over a decade.
We pushed dead cars, played dive bars and did a whole bunch of other cool stuff inbetween.
At the end of the day, this band was responsible for some of the best experiences of my life. We got to play in front of thousands of people all over Ontario. We got to play with some legendary Canadian rockers. For years we KNEW we could get thru pretty much anything as long as we did it together.
I know I didn't appreciate it enough at the time.
But I think I'm learning to.

Appreciate every bump and curve in your road.

21/10/2019

One of the most important lessons of my recovery was taught to me by this guy.

Auden loves almost nothing more than just hanging at the GO station watching the trains go by.
He doesn't care that his brother thinks it's boring.
He frankly doesn't give a crap what any body thinks about it.

Love the things you love
Immerse yourself in them and they will bring you joy.

Hanging at the train station is one of Auden's favorite things.
Hanging with Auden at the train station is one of mine.

18/10/2019

Funky morning coffee groove that never would've happened if I wasn't working on my scales. (I'm currently annoyed with my accuracy on the fretless)🙃
This has actually been a pretty big part of my playing through the years... I've simply caught on to a groove and try to use it to explore the neck.
Here you can see, I'm just trying to get comfortable moving accurately around the neck... but I use this same process to work on any number of techniques. (Like fret-tapping or slap, for example...)
There's tons of great excercises no matter what the technique, but I find i learn best, by spending lots of time goofing around like this.
Everybody learns differently.
The important thing is to find the process that works best for you.
And it should always start with what you find FUN!

17/10/2019

Haven't posted a good dog pic in a while!
He may only have one eye, but he's got personality till Tuesday!
For those of you who haven't met him: Kelly is quite possibly the happiest Jack-ass EVER!
Constantly excited by whatever happens to be directly in front of him... he's mindfulness personified!
Nothing makes him happier than meeting new people and this past weekend he got to meet a bunch.
And I love it when my dog's happy!