Grief and depression are incredibly complicated emotions, to be sure. Zelda Williams, daughter of late comedy legend Robin Williams, has been grieving the loss of her father since his suicide last August at 63. In a touching Instagram message, she notes how incredibly difficult grieving can be. In the same post, however, Zelda Williams also shared that there was always hope that there was light at the end of the tunnel.
“For those suffering from depression, I know how dark and endless that tunnel can feel, but if happiness seems impossible to find, please hold on to the possibility of hope, faint though it may be. Because I promise you, there’re enough nights under the same yellow moon for all of us to share, no matter how or when you find your way there,” she said under the stunning photo of a yellow moonrise that the Sydney Morning Herald posted from her Instagram account.
Zelda Williams has been the most outspoken of Williams’ three children — she has two brothers, Zak and Cody — about depression and the grieving process since her father’s death last year. She also recently took to Twitter to mourn “one of the brain’s greatest champions,” Dr. Oliver Sacks, whom Robin Williams portrayed in Awakenings . Sacks became a friend of the family during the film and died August 30 of cancer.
Zelda Williams also saluted Sacks and his willingness to talk about mental health and the challenges that people face with mental health.
In speaking to Today earlier this year about losing her father to suicide, Zelda Williams said, “There’s no point questioning it and no point blaming anyone for it and there’s no point blaming yourself or the world or whatever the case may be. Because it happened and you have to continue to move and you have to continue to live and manage.”
In Zelda Williams’ Instagram message, she mentioned that she was grateful for every “silly second” that she spent with her friends watching the moonrise and for the laughter they had shared during those moments. She noted that the journey she had been through over the year since her father’s death had taught her a great deal about emotions and what it truly meant to be happy.
“Avoiding fear, sadness or anger is not the same thing as being happy,” Zelda Williams said in her Instagram post. “I live my sadness every day, but I don’t resent it anymore. Instead, I do it now so that the wonderful moments of joy I do find are not in order to forget, but to inhabit and enjoy for their own sake.”
[Photo by Mark Davis/Getty Images]
