Hey, hi! Do you have a maternal mental illness like postpartum depression, anxiety, or OCD? Or do you suffer from depression or anxiety in general? This post features some frank discussion of a really difficult time in my life. If you are feeling fragile today, you may want to consider skipping this post. Instead, watch this video of Warrior Moms and know that 1. You're not alone; and 2. you can get through this!
This isn't extremely timely anymore, because I've been sitting on it. Frankly, I'm a little scared to put it out into the world. But I want to help other moms, so here goes nothing.
Recovery from maternal mental illness can be thought of as a journey, or perhaps a long, winding road, but for me, a few weeks in August were the equivalent of unpaved back country roads. For the most part, I consider myself in recovery, but a few things happened recently to make me realize there are parts of my journey with postpartum depression that I still have to process and let go.
Part of my method for moving forward from those dark days is writing in a journal. Yes, a ye olde journal, with pen and paper. I like to write, I like the feeling of the pen in my hand. I don't love the inevitable smudges on my hand from being a lefty, but there you go.
The following is a series of entries from my journal. It was hard to write, and it may be hard to read. This deals with intrusive thoughts and depressive thoughts, and anyone who is feeling particularly sensitive or fragile right now may want to skip the rest. Despite my fear, I want to release these thoughts into the ether. I don't want them to have any power over me anymore.
8/28/15
A woman in the postpartum mental disorders support community, Naomi Knoles, committed suicide this week. It has affected me deeply. Though I didn't personally know Naomi, each person lost due to maternal mental illness breaks another piece of my heart.
Naomi's story is hard for me to read. She had postpartum psychosis in 2003, which led to a failed suicide attempt followed by the decision to smother her daughter. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, during which she decided to dedicate her life to helping other mothers with postpartum mental disorders.
Though I never had thoughts of harming (my daughter), my darkest thoughts bore a striking resemblance to her suicidal thoughts. It makes me wonder if I should have been hospitalized. I was always afraid that if I went to the hospital, they would take (my daughter) from me. On my worst nights, the only thing that kept me from hurting myself or worse, trying to kill myself, was the fact that she was breastfeeding, and no one would be there if she woke up and I was "gone." It is so hard to admit that, given that I have lots and lots of reasons to stick around, but I was sick.
Naomi's story is heartbreaking for a few reasons. She didn't get the help she needed. It's hard for me not to wonder "what if?" What if I were just a little bit sicker? What if I had intrusive thoughts of harming my daughter and began to believe them? What if I had tried to commit suicide? It's a fruitless train of thought, because, of course, none of it happened to me. But it's hard to resist "what if," and one thought leads to another.
My heart breaks over and over for Naomi and anyone who has suffered so much.
9/1/15
I am a liar. At my sickest, I had intrusive thoughts about harming my child. They inspire so much fear and revulsion in me that I can't even admit it to myself.
I have been looking into therapy, but I'm not sure we can afford it. Thus, I'm going to write out the most horrible things that crawled through my mind in the hope that they will stop having power over me.
I thought,
"What if I go crazy and put the baby in the microwave?"
I can't remember if it was a first responder or a grizzled old reporter, but apparently their tale of a deeply disturbed mother who put her newborn in the microwave stuck with me, because I constantly worried that I would lose it and do something horrible like that to my child.
I thought,
"What if I trip and fall down the stairs with the baby?"
"What if we get in a car accident?"
"What if there's a drive-by and the baby gets hit by a stray bullet?"
"What if I slap the baby?"
"What if I just get in the car and drive until I run out of gas?"
"What if I jump off an overpass?"
I thought,
"I'm a bad mom."
"She is better off without me."
"Everyone is better off without me."
"I should just slit my wrists."
"I'm worthless. I'm nothing. I'm a waste of oxygen."
(These aren't all intrusive thoughts, but they are the kind of lies depression tells you. They are lies.)
I think reading Naomi's account of the night she killed her daughter kind of threw me into a mental tailspin, because the thoughts she had before attempting suicide were very similar to the thoughts I had about myself. Where our stories differ is that she actually tried to kill herself, and when that attempt failed, she smothered her daughter.
I know I was never that close to actually attempting suicide. But seeing my illness mirrored back from someone with such a tragic story frightened me.
In addition, Naomi did end up committing suicide 12 years later. That had me thinking, "If this person ended up taking her life, how can I feel like I won't end up backsliding as well?"
Katherine Stone, the founder of Postpartum Progress, says her mantra in these situations is "Her story is not my story." But I have found it somewhat impossible to resist thinking, "Oh my god, what if that were me? What if I had postpartum psychosis? What if I hadn't gotten help?"
I know I didn't, and I am endlessly thankful that I made it through. I'm so glad I'm in a place where I can recognize that intrusive thoughts are not in control of my actions, and that depression lies. I feel like my calling is to find a way to help other moms going through postpartum mental disorders get help and realize there is light and hope.
As you can see, it took me days to be able to admit even to myself that I had intrusive thoughts. Reading the blog posts here (click with caution, those in recovery) about other moms who had frightening intrusive thoughts but are okay now made me want to be honest with myself. I wanted to acknowledge that even though I thought some dark and scary things, I didn't act on them. And I want other moms to know that having intrusive thoughts doesn't make you a bad mom or a bad person.
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