My Story, Part 11

To start at the beginning, click here.
For Part 10, click here.

Perhaps it is due to hindsight and all but I do look back at this next period in my life (December 1989 to December 1992) as one of the best in my life.

For one, we lived with Matt's parents for 8 months, which turned out to be a wonderful experience. And even when we moved, we were only about 10 minutes away. It was so nice to be able to establish a strong relationship with them.

Susannah was born in February 1990 in the Hospital From Hell the same week that Matt got a job at a graphic design studio in Center City Philadelphia. We lived with Matt's parents for another 6 months and bought our first home in the Olney, a section in the north part of Philadelphia north of North Philadelphia (a part of the city known for the worst of urban decay, horrific crime, and abject poverty).

Olney was a working class neighborhood, originally settled in the 1920s by Germans and Irish but by 1990 home to 26 languages. It was a wonderful place for me to be. After my upper middle class upbringing, rubbing shoulders with the upper crust of southern aristocracy, I could not have been more thrilled to be living in a place and among people who did not give one iota of a thought to what I looked like or how I was dressed or who my father was or how thin or tan I was or where I went to school or anything like that. For many of these people, survival was the the goal and I found that I thrived when out from under the social pressure of my childhood.

Our church was the center of our life and such a wonderful picture to me of what the Body of Christ should look like. It was located in Olney as well and the vast majority of those who attended lived in the neighborhood. There was a lack of pretense here that I had never experienced anywhere else. And it seemed like half the congregation was in counseling. I went from being considered a freak of nature by most church standards to being considered actually quite normal. The support was incredible. For the first time, I experience community.

Not that all my struggles vanished. They didn't. I had a decent amount of postpartum depression after Susannah was born. Then, a few months later, my anxiety began to rear its ugly head and a phobia was born that would plague me for the next several years, "What if I die and leave my baby crying for me?" At the time, no MD would prescribe Prozac or any other antidepressant for breastfeeding mothers, so I was on my own, with a prescription for Ativan to take in the event of a major panic episode.

But motherhood, oh how I loved motherhood. It was like God created me to mother babies. I could love and snuggle and nurse my baby til the cows came home. And God was gracious and gave me another one to love, and snuggle and nurse. Elizabeth was born in October 1991, an entirely different, and incredibly wonderful birth experience.

Still, life had its challenges. It was during this time that the Culture War began to rear its ugly head in earnest. We were on the Focus on the Family mailing list and so we could get regular letters telling us just how awful things would be should Bill Clinton be elected president. Some of these mailings were downright propaganda and would conjure up images of social workers showing up at your door, whisking away the babies of Christians. Not exactly the thing a high-anxiety mother of little babies needed to be reading.

Also, things were not going well with Matt's work. By the fall of 1992 it became obvious that he needed to be looking elsewhere for employment. The very day he made his decision that he had to find another job he just happened (in that wonderful way that God orchestrates such happenings) to get a call from an old friend in Asheville who was looking for somebody like Matt, or Matt himself, to come work with him.

With much weeping and gnashing of teeth, we loaded up all our earthly possessions and made the trek south again.

My Story, Part 10

To start at the beginning, click here.
For Part 9, click here.

Writing this story is getting more and more difficult, not just because this is the literary equivalent of the showing up at school without your clothes (we've all had that dream, haven't we?) but because there is just so much that I could include. There is no compartmentalization in my life. Each area affects the next. And I do love context. And I want to give you context. But that would take a book. And I digress.

So I will remain where I started, giving you a story about my life with times being up close and personal with mental health issues.

Part 9 left off with Matt and I getting married and living happily ever after. Right? Well, about 3 months after we got married I was diagnosed with clinical depression. I had gotten more and more and more depressed and had trouble getting out of bed. The psychiatrist that I saw for diagnosis and meds suspected that my brief stint on oral contraceptives was to blame. As he said to me, "Oral contraceptives will trigger a clinical depression in 30% of women who are biochemically prone to depression." It was obvious to him that I was one of the biochemically prone of which he spoke and suggested that I never touch them again.

This was 1988 and Prozac was fresh out of the gate. It did wonders for my depression, without all of the side effects of the old tricyclics I had been on in the past. It wasn't perfect, however, and did nothing for my anxiety. In fact, my anxiety was actually worse on Prozac. But at least I got out of bed.

And for all you who might be yelling that I can't just expect a drug to fix me, I wasn't. Don't worry. I was working with someone who helped me understand and address some of the other factors in my life. It actually took me a while to find somebody who I worked well with. The first woman I saw told me that because my father's particular sin was adultery, then that would be mine as well. Nothing like being a newlywed and feeling like you are carrying the curse of your ancestors around in your body and a sign around your neck that shouts, "I'm married. Screw me!" . Our friend who pushed Matt off the fence to propose helped me immensely as well and eventually I found a woman who I felt safe with to work through all my past crap.

After 8 months on Prozac I tapered off and within a month I was pregnant. I was thrilled.  And then I puked. And puked and on and on for three solid months while Matt was in design school. And my baby grew and he worked and pulled all nighters and I wrote a letter to my mom and tried to become my own person and it was all kinda crazy and then in December 1989 Matt graduated from design school and we loaded up a Budget Rental Truck and Matt and I and my 7 month pregnant belly drove to Philadelphia and moved in with his parents.

It Does Take a Village

I am taking a break from writing My Story because, quite frankly, it is exhausting and trying to figure out what to say and how to say it requires more brain power than December is affording. But my gears still turn.

A couple of years ago I first learned about the ACE (Adverse Childhood Events) study. This was a huge study that correlated childhood abuse, neglect and trauma with health and well being later in life. The results were staggering. Not just for mental health but for a host of physical health issues as well.

It would be easy to get really discouraged by all of this.

But connected to the ACE score is a resiliency score. It turns out that certain factors can increase a child's resiliency in the face of these Adverse Childhood Events. And this is what I find so hopeful and inspiring and convicting.

Here is the link to both sets of questions that determine both the ACE score and the Resiliency score.

A horrifying reality of parenthood is that we cannot always control the Adverse Childhood Events experienced by our own children. Some of those just end up being out of our control. And we cannot control the Adverse Childhood Events going on all around us.

But resiliency? There we can have a role. Parents can certainly play a huge part in giving their children what they need to be resilient. But it isn't only parents. Look at the list.

1. I believe that my mother loved me when I was little.
2. I believe that my father loved me when I was little.
3. When I was little, other people helped my mother and father take care of me and they seemed to love me. 4. I’ve heard that when I was an infant someone in my family enjoyed playing with me, and I enjoyed it, too. 5. When I was a child, there were relatives in my family who made me feel better if I was sad or worried.
6. When I was a child, neighbors or my friends’ parents seemed to like me.
7. When I was a child, teachers, coaches, youth leaders or ministers were there to help me.
8. Someone in my family cared about how I was doing in school.
9. My family, neighbors and friends talked often about making our lives better.
10. We had rules in our house and were expected to keep them.
11. When I felt really bad, I could almost always find someone I trusted to talk to.
12. As a youth, people noticed that I was capable and could get things done.
13. I was independent and a go-getter.
14. I believed that life is what you make it.

I see at least five places where people other than family members can play a huge role.

The fact is. Sometimes families struggle. Sometimes events spin out of control. Sometimes there is horrible abuse. Sometimes there is gross neglect. Sometimes there is bizarre dysfunction. Sometimes there are broken relationships and difficult situations. Sometimes family members are so emotionally, mentally, physically and even spiritually exhausted that they have nothing left to give. Sometimes families just come up close and personal with their own limitations.

But God didn't put us on this planet alone. The nuclear family is not the be-all-and-end-all of existence. There is a role for extended family, friends, neighbors, teachers, youth leaders, coaches, mentors, pastors. These people are the safety net. The support system. The village.

It is easy to think that I am so powerless in the pain and suffering I see around me. Yet there are things I can do.

-I can help take care of a child with love.
-I can play with a child and enjoy it.
-I can make a child feel better if they are sad or worried.
-I can like a child.
-I can be there to help a child.
-I can care about how a child is doing in school.
-I can talk to a child about making life better.
-I can be a trusted person to talk to when a child feels bad.
-I can notice a child's skills and encourage him or her in them.

These things aren't rocket science but they can make the difference in how well a child responds to the torrent of life's difficult circumstances.

I know this may be easier said than done. There are many events that are not public knowledge. Family secrets compound the trauma by keeping all the pain in house, so to speak, and depriving the hurting of necessary support. Children, assuming that the trauma is their fault, may be hesitant to share with another person. Some may not even see their circumstances as being necessarily traumatic because that is all they have ever known. Offending parents won't want others invading the family circle. Controlling parents and insecure ones might view another's relationship with their child as a threat.

But sometimes there may be someone out there crying for help and dying to be heard. Sometimes we just need a nudge to get out of our comfort zones and move toward others, especially the little others. But the results are priceless.