What makes me so different?

Friday I was getting ready for work. It was after five, and as everyone was winding down their day, mine was just beginning. With the kids out front with the Hubbs and the neighbors, I enjoyed making my dinner and listening to the news in the background. As awful as the news can be, I'm a self professed news junkie. I half listened as I enjoyed some alone time, thinking I could not wait for the weekend to begin. 
Then I heard it. Another report about another mother, brought to the edge of motherhood, and beyond. I froze. I turned around. And soon I found myself on the floor of my kitchen, crying.
Ebony Wilkerson has been charged with three counts of first degree attempted murder and three counts of child abuse after she attempted to drive her three children, ages 3, 9, and 10, and herself into the Atlantic in her mini van. Reports say that she had been acting "crazy" since arriving in Florida a few days before to escape an abusive relationship. Reports say that members of her own family tried to have her committed just days before her drive head on into the ocean, but she did not meet the criteria for a 72 hour involuntary hold. Until she drove her mini van into the ocean.
As I sat there on Friday with huge tears in my eyes I knew what would become of Ebony Wilkerson, if only in name. She would be labeled a monster. A criminal. The worst mother to walk the earth. How could she? Why would she? What is wrong with her? She will be the hot topic for months and maybe years to come. I'm of the Susan Smith generation. Perhaps you are of the Andrea Yates generation. But we will forever remember those names, as long as we live. Because they are mothers who's minds took over. Mothers who couldn't get the help they needed, even if they didn't desire the help.
Why would a story like Ebony Wilkerson's or Cynthia Wachenheim's affect me so? Because every time I hear their stories, I think: What makes me so different? What made them snap? And what has saved me from snapping?
The same day as I was sitting in my kitchen floor, staring at the TV in horror, was the same day a friend of mine on Instagram posted a picture of her running away from home. It was only for an hour or so, but motherhood had gotten the best of her, so while she ate in a restaurant alone while crying, she posted her confession. Because she needed to know she wasn't the only one. She needed to show someone else that they weren't the only one. She needed to document the point where she said, I need this. I need to breathe, I need to re-group, I need a time out.
Did Ebony Wilkerson ever have that opportunity?
Saturday night, after my hell of a day, I cried in bed as I recounted all the ways I had failed at life that day. Then I started to tell the Hubbs about Ebony Wilkerson. How she just drove into the Atlantic. And I told him that I got it. That some days are so incredibly hard that all you want to do is run. Run away and never look back. I asked him, what makes me so different? And while I would never consciously do anything to harm my children, (that I have nightmares that anyone would ever come to that conclusion about me) I didn't immediately think Monster when I heard Ebony Wilkerson's story. I immediately thought, she had no where to go. 
I've said before if the only thing I ever do is to open the conversation about how difficult motherhood can be, how isolating and crippling it can be, then I will have served a wonderful purpose. Yes, motherhood is beautiful and wonderful and everything and nothing you have ever wanted. But damn if it isn't the hardest thing you will ever do. It will make you crazy, it will make you emotional, and it will make you stronger after every battle, after every failure, after every fork in the road. Many of us are lucky. We have support systems, friends, family, and dare I say, blogs. When we break down, walk to the edge, need a time out, and most times we can get one. We can look at our children and remember why we are doing this. We can count to ten, breathe, and convince ourselves that the best solution is a Starbucks in an aisle at Target, and not a drive into the Atlantic.
There will continue to be reports about Ebony Wilkerson. No matter what they say, no matter what truths we may find, one truth remains: She was a mother. A mother who in that very specific moment felt that she had no other options. That after enduring abuse, after being evaluated, after thinking she was fine, she made a decision that changed her entire life, and the lives of her children. No matter how many people call her a monster, believe she is a monster, and call for her to be treated as such, at the end of that day, and at the end of her days, she will still be a mother who was pushed to the edge.
Today, I'm asking you, no begging you, say something. If you are the one who is hurting, speak up. Even here in the comments if you want, or email me at mamma_megs@yahoo.com. If you know someone who is hurting, talk to them. It can be as easy as saying, "Motherhood isn't easy, in fact sometimes it blows". It may be the thing that saves them. Even if you are in Target today, and you see a mom, with one in the cart and another hanging on her leg, both crying, both throwing gold fish all over the floor, smile at her, with kindness and say, it's the hardest job in the world, and you are making the best of it. She may just kiss you on the spot. Because there is nothing worse in the world than feeling like you are the only one struggling. That you are the only one who can't breathe. That you are the only one, two tantrums away from the edge of the ocean.

To remember, to regret, to renew

This wasn't the post I had in mind for a Friday.  It's a little heavy right on the cusp of the weekend, but it's also heavy on my heart.  With that, here I am.  Talking again about a really hard time in my life, that, because of good reasons, I'm having to think about, rehash, and reexamine.  It's been refreshing.  It's been painful.  But I have to believe that there is good reason for it.
It's no secret, that motherhood didn't come easy for me.  I've talked about it a lot here. Motherhood was and remains that absolute hardest thing I've ever done.  The hardest job that I continue doing.  It has become, with and without regret, the biggest part of my identity.  I let it consume me.  For better or worse, I let it take over every aspect of my life.  Some days I regret that.  Some days I don't.  Yet, I have no problem identifying myself first and foremost as a mother.  I'm also a wife, a daughter, and a friend.  Yet, six years ago, I forgot all of those identities.  I checked them at triage, and went to the birthing center, bare, without identity.  I didn't know that at the time because I still felt very me, very Megan.  I thought I knew what to expect.  I know now that I had no idea.
Until this past week, I've spent little time dwelling on what my mothering identity crisis did to the other people in my life.  I guess I figured since I was the one who suffered with depression and anxiety, with complete and total self loathing, that I should get a free pass.  That I was free to do and say as I pleased.  That I was free to push people away.  I did that.  I was so consumed with fear, loathing, and disappointment that I totally and one hundred percent pushed out the people I loved.  I was a zombie.  I was emotionless.  I was completely checked out.  I was not the wife I promised to be.  I was not the friend I had proved to be.  I was not the daughter I knew I could be.
Six years ago, I couldn't see this.  Even today, it's taken someone else to point those actions out.  I have no defense other than to say that I'm sorry.  I'm sorry that I lived in that fog of anxiety and fear.  I'm sorry that I for months I held on to life, white knuckled, hoping and praying, by the hour, that I would not fail, would not fall apart, would not let go.  I'm sorry that I pushed so many people away.  That I wouldn't have taken help if it was offered.  That I was so lost and so focused on surviving at the same time, that I couldn't let anyone or anything else in.  It took everything I had just go through the motions and take care of my child.  To make sure she didn't cry.  To make sure she ate.  To make sure that I gave her everything, while giving myself nothing.  Because I felt she deserved more than I could give.  And that killed me, every single day.
It took me close to a year to figure out that my daughter loved me.  Isn't that crazy?  Isn't that the nuttiest thing you have ever heard?  It took me almost a year to acknowledge and understand, to accept that my infant daughter loved me.  That she loved me despite my failures, which if we are being honest, were self inflicted.  I had help with these realizations.  A good friend, who thank God, finally just said, that this shit (motherhood) was hard.  That I didn't have to love being a mom, as long as I loved my daughter.  Could I even admit such a thing?  At that point I had no choice.
Once I could accept that my daughter was never going to sleep through the night, that she was never going to latch on, that I was going to have to formula feed; I could accept this job of motherhood.  I could accept that despite my best efforts some days were going to be crap. Some days were going to be spent in pajamas.  Some days were going to be filled with Yo Gabba Gabba and goldfish crackers.  That some days, I was still going to be holding on with white knuckles.  
On Tuesday I got my hair done, and my hairdresser just had a baby six weeks ago.  Six weeks.  The sweet spot.  Where it's still so new.  She was talking about her pants, which were never as tight as they were now.  She was talking about getting back to her old size.  Try as I might, I couldn't help but offer her this:  If you want your old body back get it, but it's only been six weeks.  It's ok.  But if I could offer you any advice it would be to enjoy your baby now, at this age, in this stage, because it doesn't last forever.  Because six weeks is a blink of the eye.  It doesn't last forever, and nothing, not even your jeans size matters much when your baby turns one, or two, or twenty.
I have a lot of regrets about that first year as a mother.  I wasn't blissful.  I was angry.  I was sad.  I was disappointed in myself.  I was in such a fog that quite honestly I don't remember a lot about my first six weeks with my first born.  I don't remember a lot about the first six months.  I can't get that time back, and that is a huge regret.  I also was a horrible wife, and not just because I didn't clean or cook, but because I froze out the Hubbs.  Because in my mind, he couldn't possibly understand what I was going through.  I shut out my mom too, not really telling her all my truths.  I was too embarrassed.  And I shut out some really close friends.  I made it impossible to be my friend.  I made it damn near impossible to help me. Because that's what happens sometimes.  When you can't see yourself, or your actions. When you are so deep into it, that you feel like you are blind.
It's taken me a long time to get to this new identity.  To shed that skin of the anxious ridden and depressed mommy, and to live in this new skin.  Don't get me wrong, some days I'm still holding on white knuckled praying for grace.  I don't think those days will ever go away.  But I don't need perfection these days.  I don't need a clean house, I don't need a shower, I don't even need my kids to eat their vegetables.  I just need to remember that my children love me anyway.  That they love me always.  Even if I'm royally effing up.  I need to remind myself that every day is a fresh start.  That every moment is teachable.  That every moment is a gift. Even the moments where one kids is crying, the other just peeped their pants, and the pots are boiling over.  The mornings where no one in the entire house can find their shoes.  The nights when not a single child will fall asleep before Greys Anatomy.  All of it.  The good the bad, the incredibly ugly, is a gift.
Motherhood is hard.  It may be the hardest thing that I ever do.  That's all I ever needed to know about motherhood.  Plain and simple.  That in motherhood the best laid plans are the ones that never come to fruition.  In motherhood it's not always going to go your way.  In motherhood you have to be flexible.  You have to have so much patience you can taste it.  In motherhood you have to pray for grace, and humility, and wine.  That motherhood will tear you down and build you up again.  
To remember is to regret, but it's also to renew.  I'm in the process of trying that last one. I can't go back to that person I was before I was a mother.  It's not that she doesn't exist, or that she isn't there.  She is, but she's changed.  Some may say for the better, some may say for the worse.  It doesn't matter.  I'm here.  I survived.  White knuckles and all.

We have to save each other {the one about Cynthia}

A note before we begin.  

I did not know Cynthia Wachenheim personally.  I don't know her family or her friends.  I was just so moved and saddened by her story, that I had to write something.  It may be presumptuous or arrogant of me to speculate how this happened.  I apologize if you feel that arrogance or read it.  It's just that when I read her story I saw a small glimpse of what may have been for me, and what could be for other moms out there.  It's also a nod to the great debate about PPD.  There is a vast difference between PPD and PPP, Postpartum Psychosis.  Please know that what most officials and reports are saying, Cynthia suffered from PPP.  Also throughout the piece I refer to her as Cynthia, not out of disrespect, but out of remembrance.  To remember her and her story, so that other moms may not meet a similar fate.   My hope is that one day, with more conversations, 
that we can save each other.  

-Megan

I woke early on Friday morning, even though I didn't have to be at work.  I spent those first few quiet minutes doing what I love.  Checking Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, checking out some blogs, and reading whatever peaked my interest.  That's how I found myself crying before six thirty in the morning.  I came across a Tweet from Huffington Post.  It was a report about PPD, to those in the know, Postpartum Depression for those not.  The article included the stigma associated with PPD and the added stigma of PPP, Postpartum Psychosis.  The two are very different and unfortunately get grouped in together in the same conversations.  The article included the story of a woman, aged 44, an attorney, working for the Manhattan State court system, a mother of an 10 month old son, who despite all of those qualifications, all of those stellar achievements, strapped her baby to her body in an Ergo carrier and jumped from her 8th floor window.  To her death, but thankfully not her sons.

And I cried.  Tears running into my ears as I lay there.  Because without help, without a life changing conversation, that could have been me.

Cynthia Wachenheim left a 13 page letter, detailing facts that she was to blame for the evil she was about to do.  She said that she was to blame for the mental delays her son was experiencing as a result of two falls, once from a bed, another from a play gym.  That she could see changes in her son that no one else could.  Despite the insistence from the pediatrician and her family that her son was fine, she felt she was to blame.  What devastated me is that Cynthia didn't get to the edge of that window in one day.  That it's most likely that this was a journey that she made alone.  Was there a time, when she was alone with her son, that she looked around and thought, "It wasn't supposed to be like this".  Perhaps for Cynthia it wasn't that simple.  Or maybe it was.  

In reading her story, regardless of the guidlines and symptons of PPD and PPP I was forced to ask these questions.  How did a mother, who prior to her "break" appear happy, healthy, and herself, meet this fate.  When I thought about her, when I really thought about her, was her life in her apartment so different from mine just six short years ago?  Would all of those feelings of inadequacy, the feelings of dread, all culminate into to a PPP break, if I hadn't gotten the help I needed?  I don't know those answers, all I know is that her story haunts me.  Is it possible to save someone like Cynthia?  Could she have been saved days or months prior to her break?  Would it have taken hospitilzation, medication, or conversation?  Perhaps more education?  

It's unfortunate that PPD sees no color or class, it doesn't take into consideration tax bracket or education.  It can strike anyone anywhere, but for some reason a majority of women much like myself, believe that it can't happen to them.  We, of the college education, the media education, the parenting book education, feel we know better.  What on earth do we have to be depressed about?  For many of us we are married.  To good men, who have made good fathers.  Many of us, like Cynthia have good jobs, excellent successful careers.  All of us have beautifully perfect bundles of joy.  So again what do we have to be depressed about?

But we are.  We become devastated by the fact that the idea we had, while belly full and feet up with a pint of Ben and Jerry's, is not the reality we face when we walk back through the door as mommy.  Our perfect babies are supposed to sleep, latch on, get on a schedule, like their swings or pack and plays.  No book, no mommy friend, no nurse, will tell you that your perfect baby may not like your boobs.  He or she may prefer one am, or may only be content in your arms, for 24 hour increments.  As the days pass, things as simple as showers or hot meals go forgotten.  Sleep is but a sweet memory, formula and bottle making are endless tasks.  And before we know what hit us, we are in fact in an endless loop of somebody else's life.

This isn't the story of all mothers.  I know plenty of mothers who enjoyed every fumble and bump in the road.  They loved the dynamic nature of motherhood,.  Yet  for some of us, some like me who had never up until this point, met a task she couldn't learn and perform well, was a devastated mess.  When I think about Cynthia, I think about what her life was like in her apartment.  On "child care leave" from her attorney job.  Where her greatest accomplishments were now her sons.  Did she feel despair?  Did she feel like her world was closing in on her?  Were the every day tasks of motherhood wearing her down?  Did she look at the dishes, the laundry, and a crying baby and think, "Who the hells life is this??".  We will never know, because Cynthia never told a soul.  She kept up the appearance of "fine".  She smiled, she cleaned herself up, and went to battle daily the demons of motherhood, alone in her own head.

In writing this piece, which I'm calling a piece, because as you can imagine now, is way to long to be considered a post, I did some research.  I Googled Cynthia, and I cried more tears.  Already there is outcry that she was a monster, a murderer, a villain.  I'll be honest, prior to six years ago, I would have thought the same thing.  I, like many of us, are of the Susan Smith generation.  We think about those mothers who are monsters.  How could they, why would they?  I'm not saying that what she did was right.  I don't believe that jumping out a window is the answer, but when I read her story I didn't think monster.  I didn't think murder.  All I could think about was how alone she must have felt, how distraught, and how very very sad.  Six years into this gig, I get that the mind of a mother so distraught, so lost, will believe and can believe anything they tell themselves.  But this didn't happen overnight.  Cynthia didn't wake up two weeks ago Wednesday and decide that she was going to jump.  She had been thinking about it for months.

In regards to her suicide letter, thirteen pages in all, it has been reported she blamed herself for some developmental delays that she believed were a result of two falls her son had taken recently.  He was 10 months old, and probably on the move like an average 10 month old.   Is it presumptuous to believe that her son may have fallen in the short span of time that Cynthia was doing something for herself?  Say using the bathroom, eating, or possibly taking a shower?  Was she feeling the guilt because of the things she thought she did to her son, or because had "selfishly" taken time out her herself?  We may never know, but I know how she felt.  I know because once, my darling daughter cried for 25 minutes while I showered for the first time in 3 days so I could make a doctors appointment.  I know because I was convinced that the crying, any crying would leave her damaged and in need of serious therapy.  All I did was let her cry, so I can't imagine in Cynthia's mindset, how she felt about herself after those falls.

I've written in this space before about my struggles with PPD.  That I went undiagnosed.  That it took me the better part of two years to actually admit to myself and my friends that I had PPD.  I was embarrassed.  I felt like it was a dirty little secret.  I was naive to think it wouldn't happen to me.  I was lucky, though, I may have had the key to survival.  I had a friend, who wasn't afraid to cut the crap, and ask me.  I was lucky to have a friend who saved me.  Who admitted she had the same fears I did.  The same feelings of despair.  The same feelings of terror.  I was lucky that I was able to talk to her.  That I could admit that my daughter deserved a better mother, my husband a better wife.  I was finally able to admit that on more than one occasion I had wanted to run away, because it would have been better for everyone involved.  It pains me to write that, but at the time I truly believed it.

In the many articles I have read about Cynthia, I have debated whether or not to publish this post.  It's my understanding in reading those articles that Cynthia had Postpartum Psychosis.  In reading about the condition, it's not something that builds up, it's more of a break or an episode.  That's what the professionals say.  I won't refute them, but I will say that I don't think this happened overnight.  It may have escalated quickly, it may have taken months, but at some point, Cynthia needed to get helped or be helped.  I do not fault her friends or family.  Any journey of this nature is lonely, whether it's PPD or PPP.  It's the one thing that scares us more than childbirth.  I am no expert in either field.  I just know what I experienced.  What was going on with me, and when I have written about it, what goes on with other moms.  This isn't a post to diagnose or cure, this is simply a post to take away the taboo.  To talk about what's happening behind our front doors, and in our minds.  

I won't assume anything about Cynthia.  I don't think anyone will ever really know the answers to the numerous outstanding questions.  Even if she had survived, would she be able to answer why?  Maybe she thought that she was going to let someone down by admitting she needed help.  Maybe she felt like cracking under the pressure was worse in the eyes of her peers, than getting the help she needed.  Maybe she couldn't admit to herself that she needed help.  

For whatever the reasons that brought Cynthia and her son to the ledge that day, it's up to us to continue to have these conversations.  About women brought to the brink by motherhood.  Who should not struggle alone.  There is no shame in admitting that this life isn't the one you thought you would have.  There is no shame in admitting or seeking help.  And there should be no shame for Cynthia Wachenheim.  She was lost.  She was drowning.  She was afraid.  What she needed, she couldn't ask for.

So I'm asking you.  If the only thing I ever do in this space is open the conversation about PPD, then I will have served a wonderful purpose.  I ask you to open these conversations with mothers.  Friends, family, and strangers.  Talk about the things you love about motherhood, but more importantly the things you hate about motherhood.  Someone may just need to hear that's its not all booties and bottles, but more about poop and puke.  Someone may need to know that she is not standing in that, sometimes desolate park of motherhood alone.

Please.  We have to stop this.  We have to stop mothers from thinking that the only solution lies on the ledge of an 8th floor window.

We have to save each other.




For more information on Postpartum Depression please visit Postpartum Progress For more information on Postpartum Psychosis please visit Postpartum Progress: PPP in Mama English