Depression, Living, Mental Health, Survival

Netflix is Depressing

Netflix is making me depressed.

Ok, I can’t in good conscience blame all of my troubles on on-demand television services, but I can make a good case for their use attributing to my condition.

I’ll be the first to admit that I find cable television seasons highly annoying. You wait an inordinate amount of time for a show to start up again, only to watch it whisk by in five to six weeks. Each episode ends on a ridiculously frustrating cliffhanger, leaving you lunging at the TV for more, an urge you must tamp down for the following week. This manipulative cycle of desire and gratification has got us viewers trapped hook, line, and sinker.

Enter the world of on-demand services.

They don’t solve the week’s wait between new episodes, but glom onto a show just past its prime, and all the episodes are there for the taking. Want to see what happens next? No problem, my addictive friend. Binge away.

Such binges lead to a glorious few days or a week, depending on how long you stretch it out, but leave you – at the end of it – in the ubiquitous showhole. My kids don’t get that commercial. I find it eerily accurate. The fact that I recently learned to knit adds to the effect.

But choose a show so popular, there are scads of episodes, and the showhole never becomes an issue. I’ve recently fallen under the spell of Criminal Minds. I never watched it when it initially aired on network television. I missed that highly popular boat. I discovered it on one of the four over-the-air stations we were left with once we cancelled cable – the only one not airing paid programming or home shopping. However, the marathons I loved so much on Mondays and Tuesdays gave way to other crime shows I enjoyed much less the rest of the week. I searched Hulu to no avail. When we added Netflix a few months later, I was so excited to see all seasons represented. I could watch whenever I wanted and start from square one.

I would settle onto the couch with my pregnant morning snack or lunch or under the afghan when I needed a rest, my BAU friends entertaining me while I vegged. I could rationalize sitting there vegetating as long as the episode continued. Just until this episode finishes, just until they find the unsub, just until they solve the mystery.

However, when motivation is not high to begin with, and I haven’t been sleeping through the night, and I’m growing a child, and whatever low-level mental health issue is ailing me come together and Netflix plays their shows on a constant loop, it’s easy to stay on the couch for the next episode and the next and the next . . .

About half way through the third episode, the show isn’t even that scintillating anymore. It’s the construct and the comfort that leave me there, rooted to the couch, all semblance of productivity drowning in the abyss of my mind and pool of my guilt.

There is definitely a pleasure seeking/reward system at work with any media viewing. We seek solace, relaxation, a treat in our favorite show. But just as that huge bowl of ice cream eventually empties out, so our show ends, leaving us wanting and needing more to fill that reward center. With the overzealous access of on-demand services, it can become very easy to remove oneself from time, place, social connection in search of an elusive endgame – whether it’s escape, entertainment, distraction, avoidance, or happiness.

Holding Netflix responsible for my lack of mojo and self-control is about as ridiculous as suing McDonald’s for getting fat. I need to set up fail-safes and proactive measures to keep me from swirling ever closer to the rim of the showhole. But it’s so easy to drift along on the gentle current of complacency, detachedness . . .

At least I only have ten more seasons to go.

anxiety, Children, motherhood, Uncategorized

Bonus Day

Yesterday, the first day of spring, my children had a snow day from school.

No, the irony does not escape me. Yes, I realize our region of New England does not preclude such occurrences (one blizzard happening several years ago on April Fools’ Day – apparently Mother Nature has a healthy sense of humor every year). Alas, the snow totals fell drastically short of the predictions and the sun shone and snow melted by what would have been dismissal time.

As I lay in bed Sunday night, after receiving the robo-call from the school department, I was more relaxed than usual knowing I wouldn’t have to rush the kids out the door the next morning. I did say to my husband, however, that I wasn’t looking forward to a whole day inside with the kids. He agreed with me that my comment didn’t exactly sound nice, but I’ve gotten used to some quiet school days as a respite. Plus, I’ve been having iPad battles with the oldest (see previous post), all the girls have been having battles with each other, and I just end up yelling.

It made me laugh, then, when a friend called in the morning, saying I had a ‘bonus day’ with the kids. None of us were dressed. I’d been on my phone all day. They’d bounced between their rooms, the Wii, iPad, and computers. Her use of ‘bonus’ implied unexpected and appreciated quality time. I think I was on vegetation/survival mode.

I finally got my butt in gear enough to strip all three of their beds, a task – believe it or not – they’d been bugging me to do. My very particular middle wanted tightly tucked sheets. My little wanted new blankets. The oldest sleeps with such reckless abandon her bed was just torn to shreds. I figured with them home, perhaps they could help me. I also hoped I’d find my middle’s long-lost library book shoved under her mattress. Ha ha!

When I pulled the bunk beds out to sweep for books and animals lost to the abyss, I made the mistake of leaving the room for a bit afterwards. We all know what empty spaces and crevices and unexpected configurations are for, right? For me, it meant extra room to tuck in those pesky sheets on the far side of the bunks. For them, it meant fill with stuffed animals and baskets and blankets!

'Sure I know what would solve this problem. More floor space.'

Or personal space . . .

Suddenly, awash in piles of bedding flooding the hallway, random crap scattered everywhere on the bedroom floors, another step added to an already unwelcome task – I was transported back to days when all three were pre-school. When it was one step forward, two steps back. When it was literally shoveling shit against the tide. When keeping them happy and/or entertained and a house with the least order of squalor attainable and some semblance of sanity was a nearly impossible balance.

And I was scared.

I was reminded what life was like with a house full of littles. As the sole caregiver, comforter, cheerleader, coach, craft guru . . . I am well aware that I need not be all these things at all – and certainly not all at once. But my anxiety treats any deviation from a perceived plan or expectation as a misstep, a notch closer to irritation, panic, anger. It makes me hide in a corner of my couch, balled up in my pjs, content to try nothing rather than get frustrated with things not going according to plan. Or overwhelmed by the enormity of a whole day with all these people – when it should be about the moments.

Even when summer vacation starts and I have not only the new infant, but the older three, it will not be the same as those insular days when they bounced off the walls like ping-pong balls. They are not all toddler and preschool age. They can have some independent and alone time. Even while I tend to the baby, they can play on their own or swing outside. Hopefully they will understand that I won’t be able to – nor should I – entertain them all day. Hopefully I’ll remember that, too.

And to take each moment one at a time for what it’s worth – not worrying the whole day away before it’s even started.

Children, parenting

Musical.ly Inclined

Many a lazy weekend day in my childhood were filled with concerts. Right in my own living room.

The Eurythmics were repeat performers. Annie Lennox would sweep her hands down into the crowd, imploring them, would I lie to you? Dave Stewart would run the driving back beat down the neck of his guitar.

But even though I hosted the party, there was no front row seat for me. I was Annie Lennox, playing to my imaginary musical sidekick. During the advent of compact discs and their newfangled players, it was exciting to try out the new wave artists’ albums my parents had just acquired – even better when the tiny insert had the lyrics, which made memorization a lot easier than starting the song over and over. Usually, Saturday nights, my parents would retire to the TV room downstairs and I’d transform the living room into a concert hall. However, it was such a common occurrence and I blared the music so loudly, my parents knew my weekend ritual and my mother crafted me a wooden microphone for just such occasions. I played to the crowd, I played to the huge rectangular mirror that hung above the couch, I rallied with my band mates.

Imaginary play is a fantasy. If not in a world of your own creation, where else can you be the star? But – is there a line between imagined best case scenario and narcissism?

The reason I revisit this memory now (as well as any time I hear The Eurythmics) is because of an app called Musical.ly. My eleven year-old has discovered this via – who else – her friends. It started out innocuously enough. She wanted to watch a handful of videos friends had shared with her; she needed to have an account to do so. Once she saw her friends hamming it up, of course she wanted to try as well. The videos are shorts, mostly voice-overs of popular songs or memes to which the kids lip sync and dance – not unlike what I did in front of the decorative mirror in my living room. One HUGE difference, however, is that I never recorded and uploaded my goofy performances for cyberspace to see. I also don’t remember how well I imitated Annie Lennox’s sashay across the stage; my daughter has got way too many of the head-shaking, arm-waving, hip-swaying moves down. She stops mid-move when I enter the room, just like I did as a kid due to embarrassment for being caught in mid-performance, but the video lives on. She doesn’t want me to see it, yet posts it on this app. She does have a private account, only accepting followers she knows as friends. I’ve checked her profile info and posts. I’ve impressed upon her the caution she must take when connecting with people or sharing information on-line. But to see my baby creating her own music videos, trying to look just like the singers who are either much older and more worldly or act way above their own ages, I want to destroy it all. Never mind the self-image lessons it could be teaching; the self-esteem lessons from obsession over number of likes and followers . . .

So am I overreacting? Am I a hypocrite? Is she simply a modern-day make-believe Annie Lennox? Was I as narcissistic staring into the mirror with my microphone as she is gazing into the tiny lens of her iPad? I’d like to think I made it through with a modicum of modesty. Will she as well?

Or is this new medium of childhood fantasy too grown-up for our kids’ own good?

lie to you

Uncategorized, Weekend Write-Off, Writing

Pietro

“Excuse me . . . miss.”

The way he addressed me, I almost thought he mistook me for a clerk. The blue and white check on the shoulder of my rain jacket flashed as I turned and reminded me it looked nothing like the blue polos of the store employees. He spread his fingers across the bridge of his nose.

“My glasses. I forgot them.” His index finger moved to the half gallon of milk he held in his hand and its mottled hieroglyph of a date stamp. We peered at it together.

“March 26^th,” I said.

“Today’s . . . the . . . 11^th,” we said together, the last part punctuated by the speed of certainty.

He tilted his head back and forth as if weighing the amount of milk against the weight of days.

“That gives you time,” I said.

I’d seen the same dance from my grandmother countless times. What was an easy decision for me – to throw two full gallons of milk in my cart for my burgeoning family – was agonizing to a single person afraid of pouring sour dairy down the drain.

We laughed, relieved to have solved this problem together.

“Eh, the basket, where do you get them?” he said. At least that’s what I thought he said. The beautiful lilt of an Italian accent rounded the edges of each word. I went through the convoluted description of obtaining a shopping cart from the coin-fed chain contraption all because of one misunderstood noun.

“Oh no, the pasta. Pasta fagioli?” He uttered a few other phrases to clarify what he was seeking, which included Germany in there somewhere, I think. I finally nodded in assent and scanned the signs above the aisles, pointing to the next one over.

“Pasta!” I said.

“Next aisle, ah yes. Thank you very much.”

After he shuffled off and I resumed the task of picking out paper towels, his voice carried over the rack of metal shelving separating us.

“Pastina,” he said. “Pasta. Pasta fagioli.”

“Pastina? You mean little pasta?”

“For pasta fagioli,” he insisted. “In Germany.”

“This is all the pasta we have, sir.”

He had found a clerk this time, but I could tell she was as thrown by his accent as I had been. And obviously hadn’t been raised on the tiny bits of pasta Italian families added to their soups and fed buttered to their babies in high chairs.

Armed with the knowledge my Italian husband and his family had fed me with, I figured I’d better hightail it over to the pasta aisle and intervene. I’d failed translating the first time, but maybe this time, I could help. Plus, I needed some campanelle of my own.

“Pasta fagioli,” he said again to the confounded clerk.

They both looked at me as I approached. “You mean in a can?”

My Italian relatives would cringe at my suggestion, but the way he kept repeating it, I thought maybe he wanted some ready-made.

“No, no, the pastina, to put in the pasta fagioli.” His thumb and forefinger made a small gap of light to show its size.

I had assumed that’s what he had wanted all along. Even though he was elderly and shopping alone, living perhaps presumably alone, a man who requested his type of pasta by the Italian name of the dish it was destined for, in a voice tinged with his mother tongue, would want to whip up a batch himself.

The clerk repeated that what was in the aisle was all they had. I agreed that I didn’t see it, nor the ditalini I instinctively knew would also work.

“Sorry,” she said as she moved back to the front of the store.

“Are you Italian?” he said.

“My husband is,” I said.

“Your husband,” he repeated as if processing the information.

“Yes.”

“What is your last name?”

I’d had this conversation many times before in supermarkets, nursing homes, and once a cab ride in Rome. It was not an interrogation. It was a sharing of roots; whether common ones or airing your own; a sense of pride; a tradition borne across the world.

“Basile.”

He was not the first one to stumble on my last name, but his was not due to pronunciation. Once his hearing clarified it, he pronounced it more precisely than I could.

“Calabria, Campagnia, Sicily?”

I knew, of course, where the maternal and paternal shoots of my husband’s tree hailed from, but struggled to find the short answer in the middle of the supermarket.

“Rome.” I decided on the branch that bore our surname.

“Ah, Roma.”

“Si,” I said.

He smiled.

“And you, you are American?”

I shouldn’t have been thrown by such a question, especially coming from someone who certainly did not sound like a native English speaker. Yes, I was American, but my family had been for three generations now – and that was the most recent immigrant branch.

“Yes, Jennifer. My family is Irish,” I said.

“The Irish,” he said.

My genetics must have been ingrained with the biases my ancestors dealt with, for I was almost afraid how he would react. I wanted to assure him with my grandmother’s assurance made just fifteen short years ago, that Irish and Italians marry well.

“My daughters,” he said. “I have two. One she lives upstairs from me. The other, she lives in New York. She married an Irish man. Kevin O’Rourke. He’s a good man,” he said. “Even though, you know.” He paused to make a guzzling motion with his thumb and pinky extended, then laughed. I couldn’t tell whether this was an indictment of his son-in-law or the Irish in general.

“Well, I don’t,” I said. “Especially now,” I quipped, indicating my pregnant belly.

He smiled. “A boy?” I couldn’t tell whether he was rooting for a boy as any Italian relative I’d encountered during any of my pregnancies did, or if he was just wondering whether I knew the sex of the baby.

“I don’t know, yet,” I said. “We already have three daughters.”

He indicated pleasure rather than the surprise that admission usually met.

“And what is your name?’ I asked.

He extended a strong hand spotted with age. “Pietro.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Pietro.”

“Yes, you have a good day now,” he said. “Good bye, ciao, auf wiedersehen.“

His litany of multilingual greetings threw my mind into a tailspin. It spun wildly for the words to wish him a good day in Italian.

Perhaps he mistook my pause for confusion, for he explained ‘auf wiedersehen’ was from the German. I realized I’d never asked exactly from where he’d hailed. He was obviously tied to Germany as well as Italy.

“Si,“ I agreed.

He laughed. “Ciao, bella.“

As he left, I turned back to the pasta. Not only did they not have pastina, there was no campanelle either.

– Jennifer Butler Basile, 2016

postpartum depression, Recovery, Uncategorized

Growing

Baby #1: I was excited. I was in awe. I read all the baby updates in all the manuals on the assigned week. I brought my legal pad of questions to each appointment. I was petrified of labor. I cried the hollowest cries while my husband slept beside me on the couch cradling our baby. Who would now console me?

Baby #2: I was excited. I was exhausted. I worried about my first baby with a new baby. I began to look forward to those late night/early morning feedings for the quality one-on-one time they provided. I was so fiercely devoted to protecting baby’s soft little skull and sacred nap time from boisterous big sister, I screamed a lot.

Baby #3: I was blindsided. I was in shock. I was overwhelmed, agitated, obsessive, irritable. I still hadn’t come to terms with the idea of a new baby even as I lay on the delivery bed. I loved her so fiercely I was afraid someone would take her from me. I flipped out at hair elastics stretched over finials of dining chairs. I swore, I flew off the handle, I hid in the bathroom. I cried, begged for it all to be over.

Baby #4: I was surprised. I thought I was done having babies. I have moments almost daily where I think, ‘we’re doing this again?’ and yet, I’m strangely at peace. I still get irritable. I hurt from the physical toll of four pregnancies. I put myself to bed before my children sometimes. I see a therapist. I take meds. I go to acupuncture. I do yoga. I pray the rosary.

But I’m okay.

When I look back at the timeline of my pregnancies, I can see the mounting mental anguish I couldn’t at the time. What could’ve been the ‘baby blues’ with #1, escalated into moderate mood dysfunction with #2, and plunged me into the deepest despair of postpartum depression and anxiety with #3. It still irritates me that something that was probably underlying all the time was manageable for me until I kept adding layer upon layer. However, I am not superwoman.

I am a woman, a mother armed to the teeth with resources and self-knowledge. Fighting, clawing out of that hole after #3, I will never let all that hard work be in vain. I will see the signs early on; I will know which preemptive strikes to take; I will make self-care measures so that I hopefully won’t even need the interventions.

I do not feel strong as a victor shining brightly; but stronger in my resilience, in my survival, my steely will to not succumb.

There is life after postpartum depression. It is different. It’s not easier – but somehow it’s clearer. The unrealistic mist of life as we thought we knew it dissipates. The real, the ugly, the harsh – and the beautiful – are etched crystalline. We see it all – and appreciate the beauty that much more.

To the life, growing inside all of us

Humor, motherhood, Uncategorized

Ode to Maternity Clothes

Thank you, maternity clothes, for making me feel less attractive than I already am

I realize the orb-like appendage extending from my midsection leaves you with lofty goals to attain; still, you fall grievously short of your endgame

With fabrics somewhere between highly viscous jet fuel and canvas starched to within an inch of its life

With shoe-string thin ties that either knot in one’s back or threaten to dip in the toilet in an already awkward dance

With handkerchief hems that add volume to our thighs, yet leave our sausage-like backside showing

Thank you

Thank you for pricing anything that looks remotely like real clothing out of range of anyone in her right mind – for three months of wear

Thank you to your merchandising gurus who decided to place your displays next to the plus size wear

Thank you for providing an infinite amount of baby-doll tops to go with three proffered pairs of pants

And to your partner in crime: the fitting room mirror

Thank you for showing me the parts of myself that I hadn’t realized has gotten so hairy under that belly

Thank you for accentuating just how wide my side view now is

Thank you for sallow skin, double chin, and purple circles under the eyes

Maternity clothes, you suck – only slightly more than trying you on

‘Portrait of an Unknown Lady’ by Marcus Gheeraerts II

Uncategorized

Embarazada: A Truly False Cognate?

No one likes to be contradicted – least of all by oneself. But that’s what I’ve unwittingly done within the confines of this very blog. Looking back at certain older posts from this blog – even ones written just before this pregnancy – I spoke of ways my life was altered by motherhood and ways it might expand as time went on. There were posts lamenting the fact that I’d never have the chance to do mommy and baby yoga; pondering grand dreams of what I’d do with my life now that my babies were more self-sufficient; worrying that I still hadn’t fully recovered from the postpartum mood and anxiety disorder that had started six years earlier.

Jennifer Butler Basile

Looking back, with all of the facts and the whole picture visible, it’s easy to cringe. But if nothing else, I’ve dedicated this blog to my true state of mind at a given point in time. And those feelings were true at that point in time. Did I foresee this new off-shoot of our family tree? Absolutely not. Was I closed to the idea of new life and growth in our lives? Absolutely not. So the before and after of this point on our timeline are equally authentic.

Still, it’s hard to reconcile drastically unexpected turns of one’s life on a public stage. Would people always wonder whether this child was the ‘surprise’? Would they ask whether his or her birth followed a remarriage, creating a second little family after a longer span? Would the silver strands that seemed more plentiful than my dark tresses make me look like even more of an old mother than I felt?

It was when I found a white eyebrow hair that I had a small fit in front of the bathroom mirror. How could I be making this journey I’d first started as a much younger woman once again? How could my body do this (and to me)? After a moment of reflection, however, I realized I wouldn’t be pregnant if I was too old to conceive and carry a child. My body was ready – even if I was not.

That’s not to say I can expect to let my body do all the work it did effortlessly the first time all those years ago. I need to exercise and modify and hurt more than I ever have before. I need to quantify and reconcile and deconstruct all my fears and thoughts. I also need to embrace the wisdom and experience my three previous journeys have given me. I have been on both sides, mostly all sides, of the multifaceted sphere that is motherhood. I’ve not always been on the right side, but I certainly have perspective.

Perspective can affect outcome and attitude on any given day in many different ways. As with any life change, it will not always result in a positive outlook. If I ever had rose-colored glasses, they were shattered some dark night of some postpartum period. There are and will be days I discuss those jagged images. However, there are some positives I never would have claimed had there never been this pregnancy.

For my previous three babies, I did not know how to knit. This time, I am able to create a blanket for my baby. With all three older children now in school, I will be able to rest and ruminate with this child like I did my first. I’ll get to try ‘wearing’ this child with one of those chic wraps you need to be a ninja to tie that caught on as my youngest aged. And maybe I’ll even make good on my long-held desire to practice yoga with my infant at some sun-soaked studio.

My most fervent hope is that this pregnancy will wipe clean a slate sullied by my mental and emotional anguish surrounding the process and act of childbearing. Even saying that worries me that I’ve set an unrealistic expectation – one of the paths to pmads – but I cannot deny the hope that struggles to blossom and grow.

Before or after; Expected or pleasant surprise; Prepared or brilliantly bewildered – Gracias a Dios for another chance at life.

What is a false cognate?

False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds and meaning, but actually have different etymologies; these word pairs can be within the same language or be from different ones. This is different from false friends, which may in fact be related but have different meanings. (wikipedia)

Living, Poetry, Uncategorized

Looking for Signs of Life

A brown curled claw
skittering along the ground

Singular movement amidst
the frozen expanse of pavement

Only when you get close enough to see the fingers,
knuckles scraping the rocky surface,
can you distinguish the knobs of an oak leaf,
stem protruding like a tail

Propelled by the wind

a legion of birds wrapped in wing
a chipmunk
a squirrel,
a lizard scampering by

All alive according to the eye

But in this cold raw place between snow and spring
dry, brittle leaves are all that dance
born on the rhythm of weather patterns and wishful thinking

Children, Humor, parenting

Murphy’s Child Outtakes

If you’d like to further tempt fate and play the odds for a surprise child, here are additional steps you can take.

Purchase a big family vehicle with one seat more than number of children you currently have. When your father-in-law comments that ‘you have room for one more’ and asks if you’re going to fill that seat too, say “Nooooooo! Not planning on it!”
(llbean)
When looking to hang the precious Christmas stockings your mother bought for each member of the family, you must have identical hooks. Be sure to buy the unique,weight-balanced ones, regionally made, sold from but one supplier – and only in sets of two. So when you outfit your last baby, you can tuck the extra hook into the storage tote, telling your husband, ‘you don’t think keeping this ensures another stocking (child) to fill it?’ You both laugh heartily at your superstition, but perhaps a little too much.
While giving visitors the dime tour of your new, larger, family-friendly house, point out the proximity of the bathroom to your side of the bed. Be sure to quip, ‘Too bad I got it after I walked down the stairs in the middle of the night for the three other pregnancies!”
Tell everyone about that woman you knew in your early twenties who surprised everyone, included herself, by getting pregnant at forty. She’d just joined a gym, replaced her wall-to-wall carpeting with refinished hardwoods, and sent her youngest off to middle school. Be sure to add significant shock and awe to your retell.
Try not to micromanage and embrace life in all its iterations. And you and Murph will get along fine.

angst, anxiety, Faith, medication, Mental Illness, motherhood, postpartum depression, Recovery, Spirituality, Survival

Not Mutually Exclusive

There is no need to shame a control-freak, God-fearing Catholic. There is no need to add to the torment she has already inflicted upon herself.

Yet, that is exactly what I found a quote from Marianne Williamson doing last night.

It has been six years since I started medication therapy for my postpartum depression and anxiety. Six years of low dose, slight increases, attempts at doing without – and it still serves me. And yet, a small part of me still questions my need for it.

Why isn’t this glorious life God has given me enough reason to rejoice? Why aren’t the three gorgeous gifts of heaven that are my children a daily cause for celebration? Am I not grateful enough for God’s blessings that I need an antidepressant to merely function, never mind embrace this life?

Catholic guilt is a strong force, but not one I blame for these thoughts. I confessed to my pastor that I feared my mental struggles were tied to a crisis of faith. I worried that turning to secular talk therapy turned me away from God’s gentle care. I fretted that medication was a crutch that kept me from leaning on God’s healing power.

My pastor told me that spirituality is an important piece of one’s healing, but not to the exclusion of other beneficial treatments. My trained counselor was helping me process my feelings without judgment and not keeping me from turning to God for quiet reflection. And if prescription medicine existed in God’s world, created by one of the people He put on this earth, why would I not avail myself of this beneficial tool? Most importantly, my pastor told me that God did not cause this suffering to befall me. It was not a punishment for some wrongdoing or turning away on my part. If I gleaned something good from the experience, perhaps God allowed the growth in me, but He certainly did not beset me with these troubles.

As always, the rational mind, while fully aware of such life-affirming and freeing arguments, still can fall prey to its irrational side. I thought I’d have no problem reading the social media post that started a furious online debate about postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. Yet, as I did, I felt some of the angst I’d been slowly putting to bed for the last six years come creeping back up.

marianne williamson

This statement plays to all the fears of the postpartum mother. The guilt of needing medication to enjoy the miracle of life and her role in it. The fact that she can’t come to terms with ‘normal’ changes in her body chemistry. That she has somehow failed by not meditating enough; praying enough; eating healthily enough. And then to judge her own success by the love of others – something over which she has no control. Or does that speak to the love she fails to feel for her child?

I am only living a modicum of successful motherhood because of the very real diagnosis of postpartum depression and its treatment with medicinal drugs. And yet, this statement still elicits a shameful, guilty feeling in me. After SIX successful years of such treatment.

What of the mother just beginning to wonder if she is struggling postpartum? What thoughts and feelings assault her when she reads this? She is already doubting herself and ‘succumbing’ to the crutches of medicine. She already thinks she’s failed. And now to tell her it’s all a ploy by ‘Big Pharma’?

‘Big Pharma’ is not issuing me any big paycheck. I’ve written thirteen different posts about the decision, pros/cons of taking psychotropic drugs, most notably Happy Pills. When the news initially hit that new recommendations called for all pregnant women and mothers to be screened for depression this was my reaction:

I never dreamed news that was so obvious to me would be seen as a negative by others.

I’m going to imagine that Williamson’s comments were born of the assumption that those standing to make a financial gain would encourage a mindless mass to pop a pill and forget their troubles – and a meaningful life. I do not encourage anyone to medicate their troubles away without also doing the hard personal work of introspection and spiritual growth. Meds are not successful in a vacuum. They must be supported by close medical monitoring, therapies, and lifestyle changes.

Choosing medication is not a mutually exclusive option over meditation, prayer, and love.

I fear that the way Williamson’s stance has been presented, the ensuing social media storm will portray just that. God-fearing people do not fear medical marvels. God-fearing people do not judge others for decisions they make concerning their own care. God-fearing people would never want someone to suffer needlessly while thinking it was a fatal flaw of character.

Chopping Potatoes

and other metaphors for motherhood

Author Archives: Jennifer Butler Basile