Inherited Gloom: Our Experiences of Mothering with Depression
The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli (1781) - Image Credit Wikipedia
THE MOTHERLINE
SARAH:
My memories of my mother’s mental health problems are blurry, and I’ve had to ask my older sister to clarify a lot of what happened when I was young. She has told me that my mum would sometimes leave us three girls (I also have a younger sister) in the house alone while she went out; my older sister would look after us, and she tells me that I was very distressed when this happened. She has also told me that mum dropped the three of us off at a police station one time as she wasn’t able to cope with looking after us.
I remember frequently hiding on the landing listening to my parents screaming at each other as my poor dad, who was a police officer working in London, tried to deal with everything mum threw at him. At some point in my teens mum left to go and live in a big house in the country all by herself, which my dad paid for her to rent. She left us. We visited her regularly and she seemed miserable all on her own.
I didn’t understand it. We were told it was just because she and dad weren’t getting on anymore. I think on some level I probably blamed myself for her unhappiness. My older sister had taken on the carer role, looking after us, and my younger sister was too young to really understand what was going on. I was just the right age though I think to understand and absorb it and think it was all my fault. This is something that has plagued me throughout my life - being a people pleaser and longing to be liked by everyone.
VON:
I didn’t really understand that my Mum was ill, not in THAT way. I’d get up for school, get dressed, eat toast, run to the door shouting BYE. Mum would be smoking a cig and drinking coffee in her famous red kaftan. I’d come home again and she would often be on the sofa watching telly or sometimes already tucked up. That big biscuity dralon sofa doubled up as her bed.
I also remember Mum glamming up, sitting at the window on the arm of a chair, smoking a cigarette, and blowing her nail varnish dry while waiting for a car to arrive to whisk her off somewhere. I suppose she was prone to long periods of low moods.
We had fun times though. My childhood, tainted by some pretty heavy events, was mostly a happy one. Kids only see what they know. She did the teas at the cricket club so I spent a lot of time running up and down the Thames playing with other local kids. But when we got home to a dark and empty house there was always this feeling of...something...ennui. Like a balloon with all the air slowly going out of it. And then we’d be back to the beigeness of everyday life, like everything in the day had been a performance.
My Mum also ran away when I was a young teen, leaving my brother and I to fend for ourselves. She went to her mother’s which only shows how desperate she was, their relationship was pretty dire. She left no money so my brother cannily got stuff from the milkman. When I took a yoghurt he lost his temper and I ran away too, to my sister’s in Slough. Another desperate act as I didn’t like her much. These patterns do tend to repeat, don’t they, and I still hate yoghurts!
IN THE DARK; THE EARLY YEARS
SARAH:
Being a parent with mental health issues can feel impossible at times. My battle with depression and anxiety started in my mid-teens, I think closely linked to my mum’s depression, and I’m now 35. My two boys are five and seven, and when I look back at the last seven years of parenthood I can’t help but remember all the days I found it so overwhelmingly difficult that I just wanted to give up.
During both pregnancies my depression escalated, partly to do with gradually weaning myself off antidepressants but also because I felt so unbelievably anxious and scared about becoming a mum. I didn’t think I would be good enough at it (I often still feel like that), I knew it would change who I was fundamentally (it definitely has, but not necessarily in a bad way), and I knew it was a decision I could never reverse (I’ve never wanted to). At times I worried it was the wrong decision for me, because of who I was as a person.
There is something incredibly final about motherhood. You’re a mum forever and that brings with it huge expectations and responsibilities. During pregnancy well-meaning people tell you about how much love you’ll feel, about all the milestones which will make you beam with pride, and how you’ll never feel such purpose as you do once you become a mum. And this is where women are continually short-changed.
Yes, I love my children, but it’s not like romantic love - it’s almost a savage, visceral love. Their little bodies are connected inextricably to mine and always will be, and I would fight to the death to save them from harm. I do feel those surges of warmth and happiness people talk about, and I recall whooping delightedly when they reached a milestone as babies or did something remarkably cute, but I also remember most of that being overshadowed by this aching exhaustion in my bones and a low-humming sense of dread which would never leave me.
I think this was fear and depression mixed together; not a good combination. Purpose wasn’t something I had time to even acknowledge as I lost myself deep in the thick sludge of what felt like a thankless life. In the baby and toddler years, I just survived, trying to get through each day whilst struggling with anxiety and depression, on top of the normal sense of discombobulation that comes with new motherhood.
I had never wanted to be a stay at home mum, so I went back to work when the boys were only a few months old. With that came the inevitable guilt, a feeling that I wasn’t giving them enough attention. I had a stressful, high responsibility job and struggled to manage that with raising two young children. Anxiety consumed me, about my job, my kids, my relationship with my husband, money, and housing - pretty much everything. In 2018 I had a breakdown and quit my job, and I’ve been trying to redefine my identity ever since.
VON:
I was 29 when I had him and it was a shock in every possible way. I’m not sure we really bonded, I had a terrible labour and I couldn't breastfeed him. I felt like a total failure. About four months in, things started to feel very wrong and the little things I'd been brushing off were becoming big things. For the next four years, I was in the deepest, darkest, and the most terrifying black hole of depression. And, like Sarah, it cast a shadow over everything.
I’d keep the house nice, look after my son, go through the trials of his Dad losing his friend from leukaemia, swiftly followed by the break up of our relationship. And although amicable it was still really difficult. The logistics of being on my own became really hard. I kept my son in a buggy WAY too long, then stuck him on my bike, I needed to be mobile, be able to get home quickly in case of a panic attack. I’d rehearse the routes in my head making the trips as fast as possible. I was only relaxed when I was child-free and drunk, swiftly followed by guilt and shame. The bright lights of my nightlife were often snubbed out pretty fast when I got home to that familiar weird empty feeling in the house, the quiet was deafening.
When my son was 2, despite my being severely depressed, I did a stained glass course one evening a week. It was MY thing, nothing to do with home and babies. I started to get a little faith in myself and see a possible future. When he was 6 I quit drinking and got a business start-up grant and started working from home, the best situation for an agoraphobic I thought.
My son had to deal with my erratic moods, unwillingness to take him out adventuring. My inability to give him the sort of life I’d imagined for us. But life had given us a very different story.
I think I followed a little too closely in mum’s footsteps at times and it worries me. Sadness seems to be in the DNA.
FINDING FREEDOM; THE LATER YEARS
SARAH:
Last year my youngest started school and I’ve been able to gradually claw back some sense of who I was pre-kids. My depression is something that ebbs and flows, a constantly fluctuating backdrop to my life. Often it manifests as anger or irritability arriving from nowhere and I can’t always control it. My husband is incredibly supportive and I’m lucky to have that; he takes up the slack when I just need to disappear for a while.
Returning to writing has helped give me back my sense of purpose, returning me to something I loved as a child. It helps me work through my feelings; I’ve always found it easier to express myself through words than verbally. Through writing, I’ve reconnected with something deep inside me that wants to burst out and make itself known, where previously I stayed hidden in that dark cavern of fear and uncertainty.
Depression is a strange beast. I’m so scared sometimes that, despite my best efforts, it’s silently invading my children while I’m not looking, and lying in wait within them like a virus. And then of course I’ll blame myself, thinking I must have not kept it hidden enough - that I let it escape and infect the ones I love the most. But other times I think that they’ll become who they were meant to become, regardless of my mental health problems. I hope that’s the case.
VON:
I asked my son a little while back;
“Do you think my mental health had a really bad impact on you growing up?”
“I dunno, I didn’t know any different, it was what it was, it was ok”
I spoke to him more recently, he’s 22 now, and he says he doesn’t really remember much about being a kid, except school which he hated. He was happy at home. I believe it’s possible that my agoraphobia suited us both quite well, neither of us wanted to go out much and we were quite happy in our own spaces with our own distractions.
He’s a total shut-in, It could just be a thing, a personality trait, DNA, but I can’t help thinking it was me. I made him that way. And when I explore my feelings I feel deeply guilty about it. I should have done this more, tried that more, been better. But he tells me he’s happy enough. It’s possible he would have been a hermit anyway, but the guilty feelings remain and the questions go unanswered.
Life is bigger for me now, and a LOT better. I have a lot of really amazing friends and I’m happy. It’s been tough but we’re doing ok.
Written by Sarah Bones
Sarah is in the process of making a career change into freelance journalism from Higher Education. She likes to write personal essays, opinion pieces and features about various topics, including issues affecting women, parenting (she’s a mum to two young boys) and mental health.
Written by Vonalina Cake
My name is Von, I’ve lived in Bristol since 1992 and I’ve lived a lot of lives since then.