While I created this Substack to share my story following my daughter’s suicide attempt so that other parents could learn from our harrowing experience, my initial posts focused on my own self-care journey. This was intentional. Society indoctrinates parents early to put the needs of our children ahead of our own. This is even more so when you are a mother, let alone a working mother. How dare we think we can have it all! Indeed, many of us from time to time question if it is even possible. When we don’t get it right, inevitably society and that quiet voice in the back of our heads tell us it is our fault.
I am doing what I can to change that narrative. The best resource I can provide my children is the gift of somatic awareness so they can identify their needs, the confidence to ask for help when they require it, the ability to recognize when it is necessary to set boundaries with emotional vampires, the independence to self soothe when they are sad, and the ability to love themselves even when they make mistakes. It is essential that I am resourced to model this behavior. I am doing them a disservice if I give to them at the expense of my own hopes and desires. To do this, I am unlearning codependency. I think it’s time I share my Substack’s origin story.
The morning after I admitted my daughter into in-patient hospitalization, I naturally spent my quiet early morning hours deep diving how we got here. How did I allow my family history to repeat itself? We put our children in therapy at a young age as soon as we saw a sliver of anxiety and depression. I taught my daughters to meditate. We journaled. We discussed topics such as emotional regulation. Sadly, I also taught them perfectionism and anxiety.
My youngest “graduated” from therapy just before things took a turn for the worse. We weren’t quite sure if it was the right move, but we trusted the advice of her therapist with whom we’d partnered for years. As we discussed her care plan and benchmarks for success, it was hard to question her therapist’s recommendation. Our daughter had achieved them all. She was ready, or so we thought.
The stress of her final elementary school year was too much to bear. She felt isolated from her friends when she shared no classes with them and as much as we tried to support her as a family to step outside of her comfort zone and make new friends, our recommendations were never quite right. Nothing anyone suggested was enough. She was lost in the feeling of hopelessness and there was nothing we could do to rescue her.
She didn’t want to be rescued. As a lawyer, I pride myself on being a strategic problem solver. My specialty is in health and safety, which requires me to regularly review and advise on risk assessments. I recommend strategies for implementation of the hierarchy of controls to mitigate known hazards to acceptable levels based on known human behavior. Suicide is a hazard that is very familiar to me. I lost a close family member to it when they were just an early teen. I thought I knew the warning signs. I thought we were implementing appropriate controls. We reenrolled our daughter into therapy after we saw that our attempts to promote a growth mindset were futile. We met with a holistic psychiatrist to investigate potential metabolic concerns with the hope of avoiding exclusive reliance on antidepressants. We regularly engaged with the school counseling team. The warning signs were there and we responded to them. Sadly, depression has a mind of its own.
Hindsight being 20/20, I now know that not only is it important to develop and implement an emergency action plan in the workplace, but such strategic planning is also important at home. Despite our best efforts, we misinterpreted signs that foreshadowed far worse than depression. We let her self-isolate behind a locked bedroom door. Inside, she hoarded toys, trash, and all sorts of personal items that had value only she could understand. She threw tantrums anytime our cleaning team tried to tidy her room or when she lost a prized possession. I blamed missing scissors on art projects and allergy meds on the disorganized chaos of my house. Her grades plummeted. She went from being a straight A student to missing multiple assignments and refusing to participate in class. While I found it incredibly concerning that she hid herself in her father’s oversized sweatshirts, which would fit like a dress even on me, I excused it away. Maybe she was just hitting that awkward hormonal stage where she was desiring to envelop into herself? I was certain she was a caterpillar. Soon, she would blossom into a butterfly and emerge from her cocoon with nurturing and time. It was just a phase.
It wasn’t a phase. She attempted to end her pain one evening after school right around the start of the new year. I had just returned from vacation with my father. I was hoping it would be my fresh start for the new year. My husband took her to the ER after we noticed her isolating and behaving even more irregularly than normal. She spoke incoherently and stumbled around, unable to navigate the stairs she’d known her whole life. I stayed behind and cleaned her room, desperate for answers. I found numerous scissors, screwdrivers, and other sharp objects strewn all about her room. I deep dove her phone and learned she had been cutting since September and first threatened suicide in October. Of course, her 10 year old friends thought they were being loyal to her and didn’t say a word. It wasn’t until she returned from the hospital that we found she had been hoarding antihistamine and took it in large quantity. Ever heard of the Benadryl challenge? Yeah, I hadn’t either.
Finding the pills and coaxing her to confess to her actions was sufficient to get her the support she was craving. We admitted her for in-patient treatment at a hospital that specialized in pediatric mental health. We followed this up with two and a half weeks of partial hospitalization. We then outlined a plan to introduce her slowly back to school. She started by going to the hospital for outpatient treatment from 8-3 daily and then slowly began school a couple times per week. We then closed out this period with three months of intensive outpatient treatment for several hours after school. We are continuing with traditional therapy, which has done her a world of good. She’s thriving and showcasing her emotional intelligence in ways I’ve never seen from a child. She’s incredibly perceptive and empathetic. She uses her words and communicates her needs. She validates the needs of others and immediately knows what to to do to help them feel seen. She would make an excellent therapist.
We put in the work as a family too. We started weekly family therapy, which turned into bi-weekly, and now monthly. We each are in individual therapy, which has instilled tools for us to cope with the challenges we’ve faced. While I committed to setting better boundaries with work, while modeling self-care and resilience at home to mitigate the potential for a reoccurrence, I’ve learned through increased therapy, coaching, and deep personal work that someone else’s depression is not a problem that I am resourced to fix if they don’t want to fix it. Neither is anyone else resourced to save me as I’ve struggled with the weight of supporting my daughter. More to come on that next week.
My hope is that our story can touch at least one family who is struggling on a similar path. I was fortunate to have two amazing social worker friends to walk me through the appropriate steps to resource my daughter. Below are additional resources for supporting your loved one through depression and anxiety:
Your courage is contagious Gwen💙
Wow! My heart really goes out to what you & your daughter are going through. I also deeply admire your bravery to share this outwardly and honestly. Your ability and willingness to do that is beautiful.