What I Want My Kids to Know About Depression
Words by Jacey Rogel
My daughter screams, “I’m done. I’m done” repeatedly. Her feet barely miss my face as she kicks at me. Ever since school started, this is a weekly, sometimes daily, occurrence.
I slump onto the couch, away from her, bring my knees to my chest and hands to cover my tear-stained face. “I can’t do this anymore,” I cry. My sobs shock her into silence.
My words shock me. What is it I can’t do anymore? Deal with tantrums? Be a mother? Live? I am weighed down, drowning.
“Are you crying because of me?” she asks. I don’t answer her. I can’t answer her. How do I explain to a three-year-old all of the ways I blame myself for her behavior? How do I explain my depression, how it makes me feel like I’m failing her and her siblings?
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I am not the mother I dreamed of being. My anger scares me more than it scares my children. I lack patience for their tantrums and for the screeching noises that escape from them constantly. On top of being a depressed mom, I am also an introvert and a highly-sensitive person. I thrive on quiet and alone time, but these are not conducive to the demands of motherhood. There are times I resent this calling, this life I dreamed of. This was the part of my story I couldn’t wait to get to. Now that it is a reality, it is harder to stay engaged in the story.
My children didn’t ask for this. They didn’t ask for life or for a mother who is unhappy. I don’t want my depression to be the part of the story they remember or long to change. Since the moment I felt myself slip away, I have committed to do the hard work of healing. It’s why I write, and why I write so openly about my experience with depression.
This is what I want them to know.
It was never about you. This was never your fault. Instead, I blame hormones, brain chemistry, and bad genes. My story began long before I ever knew I would become a mother, which means you cannot be blamed. As much as I try to keep you sheltered from this, I know you will see me fall apart from time to time. I know you will experience my anger. Regardless of what you might see or hear, it’s not about you. It never will be. You aren’t to blame.
You are the reasons I fight. Fighting looks different for everyone. For me, fighting is writing. I have been writing my way through this story for three years, and I will continue writing through it. I share my story with strangers on the internet and it is validation that this is real and I am not alone when they connect with my words. Everything I write is for you. When I am ready to hand them over, my journals and my essays will allow you a different view of who I am, what I have gone through, and show how you are the light at the end of this tunnel.
I hope this isn’t your story. I fear I have set you up for disaster. If it is written in my genes, then it is likely written in yours. If this story does become your own, you need to surround yourself with people who love you, people who understand. Depression is a personal thing, but it is not something you should go through on your own.
For years I pretended I was okay, that I was strong and happy. Those were the moments I fell apart the most, the times my anger was a dagger aimed at my children, sometimes at myself. Don’t pretend; it is okay to not be okay. Find your tribe, let them into your struggles. Let them help carry this burden so you can move, so you can breathe.
I still have a hard time talking out loud about my story. When the words refuse to leave my lips, they flow easily from the tip of my pen. Find a way to release these feelings into the world. It is another way to lessen your burden.
My love for you is constant. One of my worst fears as a mother is that you will question my love for you. I hope you are too young to remember some of these darker years. I don’t want to beg you to understand my deep, unyielding love for you. I want it to be evident; as bright as the sun shining down on us, as easy to breathe as air. I don’t want you to ever doubt, to ever wonder. I don’t want you to believe that the way I acted was a reflection of my love for you.
If you come to me, which I hope you do, I will not try to fix you. But I will gladly sit with you and cry with you.
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Depression has always been the center of my story. When I was younger, I didn’t have the words for it. I didn’t understand what it was or what it meant for me. It wasn’t until my late 20s I finally put a name to the way I’d been feeling for over half of my life.
Depression is set deep within me, coursing through my body, engraved in my genes and deep in my bones. I feel it settle into the depths of my belly, rising and falling, exploding and dissipating. It is the backdrop to my story; even when I’m healthy, it is there pulsing along to my heartbeat.
I don’t want my depression to be the center of my life, the theme of my story. It has defined so much of my motherhood- prenatal and postnatal depression, post-weaning depression- and I don’t want it to define me anymore. I want to reclaim my motherhood story, bring my children back to the center where they belong. I’ve let depression steal so much from my life already; I won’t let it take my children from me too. There is so much more I want them to know.
This feels like a good place to start: to let them know throughout all of it, my love for them never waned.
About the Author:
Jacey is a wife and a stay-at-home mama to three. She finds solace from her long days at home in the kitchen, between the pages of a good book, and in the words that plant themselves in her mind throughout the day. Jacey's writing has been featured on Gather the Village blog and Coffee + Crumbs. She writes about books and motherhood at jaceywrites.com .