We just had a chat about talking about hard topics with kids earlier this month. This article is about that. It's beautifully written and honest. I admire memoir writers who break silence about parenting with mental illness and/or emotional pain. Lots of people struggle but few write, speak or share about doing so. As a result a whole lot of people feel alone and might suffer more shame and pain even when help is available.
Articles like these can help. Stories can challenge or refine our own views or styles. They can make us think and feel. We don't have to relate or agree to everything to find benefit. Here's an excerpt from Joni Edelman's essay.
Being a mother is hard.
Being a mother navigating mental illness is hard.
I don’t know if navigating mental illness has made parenting harder for me than it would have been otherwise. I do know that having a mental illness that is wound into my DNA, means that I might someday be navigating my children's’ mental illness.
I did not think about this before I had them. I don’t know if I’d have done it differently if I had.
This is a thing you’d think someone would consider really carefully before procreating, but I did not. I was 19 when I got pregnant the first time. I wasn’t treating my own mental illness. I was still calling my mom’s mental illness alcoholism because being an alcoholic is somehow better than being crazy.
So I didn’t think about it much.
Until Kelsey was born. After she was born, I fell headlong into postpartum depression, where I stayed, trapped in the quicksand of sadness, my feet barely moving back toward joy, for a good long while. It was in the quicksand that I started to think I might be like my mother; it was there, that I began to think that maybe her darkness was also mine.
And then the worry came, bringing with it 20 years of memories. Memories of drunken boyfriends in and out my mom's bed, beer cans littering the kitchen, manic organizing, memories of moving and moving and moving again, of stepfather after stepfather, step-sibling after step-sibling.
And with that worry, came the watchful eye.
Link to the rest of this article.
Note: This writer goes on to say that her children have a 40% chance of being bipolar and inheriting the diagnosis and why she chooses to warn them of their risk. I admit to yelling at my computer screen saying "Tell them about ACEs" because risks can go up and down, at least some, depending on experiences in and of childhood. I think so many of us were raised feeling genetics are destiny and not looking at all or enough at the impact of our own experiences in childhood. Or the experiences we didn't have.
Or the healing and support present or absent when we parent.
We are all impacted by positive and negative childhood experiences. That's true for humans. It's true some of us start parenting with higher ACE scores than others. But one of the profoundly positive parts of the research is how much we can improve the lives of our kids by how we parent. Of course, we can't control or change everything but parenting matters and it matters a whole lot.
All parents need support and all kinds help. Financial. Emotional. Practical. Medical. Not all parents have any or all of those types of help or support. That's hard. Those who come to parenting with higher risks are going to feel that lack of support more. Say post-partum depression strikes and there's no partner or parent or in-law to support the family through that crisis. That makes a hard time worse for the entire family.
I hope we can do more to make more safety nets for parents. And I hope that by knowing our own past experiences we can get and maybe even insist on more support for ourselves and other parents in crisis. The pain we face isn't automatically going to be passed down.
It's not just trying harder though. If parents who need the most support have the least and that's not a good formula for families and it's hard to make social change when you can't get out of bed or to the shower. We have to look out for all parents and for parenting even if we don't have kids. Support and prevention work is stuff we can all do.
Having support can help us be less depressed (a big bonus in how we experience parenting). But also, when we know how much it matters how we feel and function, to the development of our kids, we might be more willing to insist on quality health care. We might get bolder and braver about fighting the shame and stigma the world throws our way when it comes to adversity, trauma and struggling. We won't, don't and can't always do that for ourselves. Sometimes though we can rally, when we trust the help or helpers and that our kids will truly benefit as a result.
Please share stories and statistics, comments or commentary. It's all welcome. Send me links to your blogs, articles or resources if you feel shy or too busy to post them here. Also, if you have suggestions or ideas for parents or professionals, share them. We can learn from what others do and say. That includes any healing, tools and supports found or needed. Let's help each other to find or create more hope, health and options for parents.
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