Thabiti Boone, age 44. And I'm an entrepreneur/activist, author, public speaker, public figure.

One day, it was a beautiful Sunday. And playing basketball, as a promising young basketball star. Friend of mind ran to the park, and said, your mom is at the top of the roof. You know, six stories, at the top of the projects where we live in Brooklyn.

Well I dropped the basketball and I run across the street, round to the back of the building where we were at. And as I look up, who was coming down in front of me, is my mother. She jumped off the roof and landed in front of me, her 12 year-old son. And when she hit, it was like "boom". You know, you got the grass area, the sidewalk, and the street. So the way she landed, my mother's not that tall, she landed on her legs. And the impact just pushed everything up against her body. And blood was just everywhere.

And the next thing I know, my mother was in a mental institution for quite some time. From that point on, I knew I was on my own. I'm on my own. Not my friends, not in the projects. You know projects are full of people. And people would just stare at me – is he gonna break down? Is he gonna break down? Pay attention to him. So I had a lot of attention but it was the kind of attention that it wasn't like "come on." The neighbors, my mother's friends in the projects, never said, "let's talk".

It's horrific. It shouldn't have happened. There are times where when I drive through the old neighborhood, I can't look at the building, I can't look up. Also, it has affected my mother and I. Whenever I try to say, "mom, can we talk about …" Or she'll recognize why I'm so quiet. She doesn't understand that's depression, that we have to go back to that day, and talk about it.

When she was jumping off the roof, I took in all of her depression that caused her to jump. And that's deep. So 12-year-old son took the beatings, she not being able to finish her education, her emotional sadness, sleeping with different men, drugs, alcohol, not feeling though her life meant much to her, being angry that she got pregnant at such a young age by an older grown man, being forced into marriage to this man at the age of 16.

I was speaking to my father one day. And he, for the first time, apologized for raping my mother that produced me. And I was waiting to hear that all my life. You know, that he was sorry for taking advantage of my mother and taking her innocence away.

And I think I became the man and the father that he wanted to be. And so, but if I don't forgive him, I don't think me being who I am, I can be the person I am. And I also had to forgive my mother. There are times where that to this day, I have to love my mother, more than she hates herself.

Depression doesn't have to be something so negative. Sadness and emotional pain doesn't have to be something so sad. But depression can be a reminder of where we came from, and what we went through. But depression is also an opportunity to keep us real and transparent in our own human emotions, to say, you know what? I've been there and I feel that. But I'm not stuck in that.

That the healing is in me. And the healing and the journey can also be extended to others, that we still move on, but we don't lose our place. Depression doesn't have to keep us cemented to where we can't get up and move on and do the things we're supposed to do.