Story of Ellen DeGeneres Beating Depression

When Ellen was 13 years old, her parents divorced and she moved with her mother to Atlanta, Texas. She was using comedy to help her mother through the painful period after the divorce. “My mother was going through some really hard times and I could see that she was getting down and I would start to make fun of her dancing. Then she started to laugh and I’ll make fun of her laughing and she’d laugh so hard. She’d start to cry, and then I made fun of that”. So, I would bring her from where I’d seen her start going into depression, All the way out of it.

1. Ellen’s Girlfriend Died when She was 19

Before she even got to comedy, Ellen was 19 when her girlfriend died in a car crash. The disturbing thing that we think only happens in movies is that Ellen drove past the accident, not knowing that in that car crash was her girlfriend. She was inconsolable when she found out. At that moment, she decided to write a dialogue with God asking him why all of that happened to her and what she had done wrong so much. Before, and during this time she worked odd jobs. She spent her time as a house painter, vacuum salesperson, waitress, and even an oyster shucker. In the 80s she started doing stand-up at comedy clubs.

2. She Came out as a Lesbian

By 1984, she was touring the country and she even won Showtime funniest person in America contest. In 1994 she landed a starring role as Alan Morgan on the ABC sitcom Ellen and later that year, DeGeneres co-hosted Emmy Awards, but then in 1997 everything changed, Ellen decided to come out as gay on the cover of Time magazine, but shortly after she revealed she was a lesbian, Ellen DeGeneres’s popular sitcom was canceled. “Everything that I ever feared happened to me. I lost my show. I've been attacked like hell, I went from making a lot of money in the sitcom to making no money when I walked out of the studio after five years of working so hard. Knowing I had been treated so disrespectfully, for no other reason than I was gay. I just went into this deep, deep depression”.

3. Ellen Fell in Depression

“I moved out of LA went into severe depression, started, seeing a therapist, and had to go on antidepressants. For the first time in my life, it was scary and lonely. All I know for thirty years was work and all of a sudden I had nothing plus I was mad, it didn’t feel fair”. “I was the same person. Everyone had always known”. No one wanted to employ her after the announcement for the next three years, so there she was disappointed, depressed, sad, and angry at the world for how her life changed.

4. She Recovered and her TV Career Started

Teenagers who abstained from committing suicide wrote her letters after seeing her come out, and at that moment she knew that she had a higher purpose in this world apart from Fame and money. Eventually, she started meditating, working out, and writing again and then slowly started to climb out of it. “I can’t believe I came back from that point. I can’t believe where my life is now”.

Then Ellen’s TV career started picking up again in 2001 she got a CBS, sitcom called The Ellen Show, and then, she hosted the Emmy Awards solo. Two years later, she was the famously forgetful Dory in Finding Nemo and a few months later, her famous talk shows The Ellen DeGeneres Show premiered. Most TV stations would not take the talk show when they tried to sell it to them, but, as we all know, someone thought the idea would work. The talk show aired. The successful year was topped off with a record 12 Emmy Award nominations in 2004. The most ever received by a talk show in its debut season.

5. Ellen’s Show Became More Popular

Ellen’s program won the 2004 Emmy for Outstanding talk show. In 2004 Ellen started dating her future wife Portia de Rossi. They got married in 2004 and 10 years of marriage later they still make an adorable couple on the red carpet. The next few years brought more milestones hosting the Emmy again in 2005, hosting the Oscars in 2007, and becoming a cover girl spokesmodel in 2008.

She was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and broke into tears during the ceremony. Even President Obama got a little choked up, as he told the gathered crowd about the generous accomplishments. It's easy to forget just how much courage was required for Ellen to come out, and the most public of stages almost twenty years ago was an incredible burden that was to bear to risk your career like that, and yet today, every day in every way Ellen encounters what too Often divides us with the countless things that bind us together, inspire us to be better one joke and one dance at a time.

6. Success After Failure

There is not a single person famous or not to have failed at least once in their life, but the one thing that divides the successful people from the unsuccessful is the “What now”, am I going to let the failure or a setback decides who I am and make me see myself as a loser and the person who is not worth anything for the rest of my life or to make me appreciate every setback, every rock on the Way, every mountain climbed and make me a better person along the way, don’t quit when you’re feeling like you just want to give up, don’t quit when you think you’re, not good enough, don’t quit when the luck is not on your side right now, don’t quit when Something not fair is happening to you. Don’t quit until you see yourself moving in the right direction, you just can’t beat the person who won’t give up when you take risks.

You learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail and both are equally important. Winners never quit and quitters never win.