An Optimist Suffering With Depression

After what I realize was many years of worsening depression, I finally spoke to my doctor about my symptoms a year ago. I look back at how bad I felt and am so relieved I chose to get help; however, I have a problem.

I am often confronted with questions. "What do you have to be sad about?" and "Why are you depressed?" I try to be patient and explain it, but have more recently replied with "mental illness runs in my family, I guess it got me too!" That generally shuts people up, but it closes off some much needed influence I could provide.

I am very content in my life. I have a great family and we enjoy a middle class lifestyle. I am an avid book reader and home school 3 of my 4 children. I of course will cry if I am unmedicated, but not from sadness. Depression symptoms are sometimes hard to spot, my most apparent was extreme exhaustion. I fought many years trying to pull myself up by the boot straps, struggled through college, exercise required a nap (never the energy boost promised), etc. The symptoms of depression feel hopeless. I am not "sad."

I am an optimist. I have always been able to endure hard times while holding onto glimmers of hope. Even in the throws of the more difficult situations, I have the ability to be content and happy. As an optimist, I had a very difficult time "giving in" and seeking medical help. I kept telling myself it was environmental or socially driven and would naturally be alleviated at a future date. That date never came. I now realize it is chemical. My brain isn't working as it should and I have no guilt for needing medication.

My hope is that more people will let go of the "sad" idea and learn the truth. Just as each person is a unique individual, depression is unique to each individual. Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps doesn't work and you don't have to keep doing it.

Atheist Homeschool

My youngest petting a shark

Yes, we are atheists. Yes, we home school. Why is this weird to so many people? I don't use a curriculum necessarily. Everything starts with a book in our house. Good books, real books. I read aloud to my children, even the teens, and stop for every question (tedious most times). There isn't a lot of support in the atheist community (that I have witnessed) for secular homeschooling. My oldest son has a few textbooks, all older versions not able to be sold back to the college, mainly science and algebra. I print worksheets and we do experiments. The internet is such a valuable tool, USE IT!

As a homeschooling parent, I find the juggling of interests the most difficult. My twins are 8 and complete opposites. My son, the one petting the shark, loves math, magnets, Minecraft, and earth science. The questions he asks can sometimes send me down an internet wormhole for hours and leave me feeling inadequate. His twin sister loves stories. She easily uses 20 pages of notebook paper per day writing stories, jingles, riddles, jokes, leaving clues for scavenger hunts, etc. She also loves all animals, even the creepy ones. I value their interests and encourage a desire to discover for themselves. I also home school their 14 y/o brother. He is a voracious reader and teaches himself his math and science. The way I encourage studies in other realms, is a good ole-fashion debate. I always pretend to know more about any subject than he will ever know. It may take a few days, but he will revisit our debates to prove me wrong.

The twins doing Chemistry

I am a "veteran" homeschooler (7 years collectively). As a family, we left moderately fundamentalist christian religion (7 years ago). Previous homeschooling included, I just choked a little, Creation "Science," bible study, and ready-made, expensive curriculum. Secular homeschooling is completely new to me. I have "mommed" for almost 17 years now and have taken a "just go with it" attitude with our home school. My goal is for my children to find their area of expertise. I do require they stay on grade level with math and English, but other subjects are scheduled weekly at the whims of current interest. My children laugh at my uncouth way of asking strangers to share with them; like the fisherman that caught the shark at the beach. Yes, they were mortified that their mom said "hey, can we touch it?" Yet, they all loved feeling its sandpaper skin and their research on Bonnet sharks (related to the hammerhead).

Fun day at the co-op

Above all, I want them to realize this is their education, their skills, their lives! I am only to accommodate and encourage a healthy love of learning. They definitely play more freely than their PS peers and have incredibly active imaginations. The days aren't full of oh's and ah's, but the occasional ah!hah! moments are worth every bit of the frustrations I so frequently face.

Raw Hide

I found that personification is my "thing" in my last semester of college. Be it my childhood and always trying to figure life out or some instinct from generations past, I have always wondered what the walls would say if they could talk. I surprisingly enjoyed poetry assignments and this poem never found itself erased from my drive.

Raw Hide

On an old 6-penny nail, in the dank closet,

Hanging motionless against the wall,

He hung awaiting his sentence.

His dreams now forgotten, he had only one job.

He remembered his hopes of shiny adornment,

Like those the cowboys wore,

But was willing to take on being,

The working-man’s support.

His neighbors enjoyed being picked over and chosen,

Gone to dinner or church.

But when the yelling began, the childish mistakes,

He began to sweat.

As the stomping grew louder, and on flew the light,

He’d have hung, head down, if only he could.

This time, that old 6-penny was yanked on one last,

It clanked to the floor.

Folded over just once and tight in the man’s grasp,

No one ever asked how he felt.

He was hoisted to the highest of reaches, then

Brought down so swift the air whistled through his notches.

He felt himself bite, heard the child’s quick yelp,

Followed by sobbing.

Oh! How he hated being used on a child’s

Back end.

Debates on discipline have reached an all-time high. Corporal punishment is as hot-button an issue as abortion and taxes. I simply think consistency is key. Whatever you do, do it consistently. For our family, spanking worked when they were little to stop them from immediate danger, but did little in the way of encouraging them to think. If used to teach boundaries, why wouldn't a map work? Have you ever thought how the belt felt? The spoon? Any other instrument for exacting your special brand of discipline?

On Parenting

I have seen some of the most absurd parenting brags on social media lately. 5 weeks old "potty training," debates on the validity of the cry-it-out method, and your typical "so proud of my kid/look what it can do" boast posts.

I have 4 children. A 16 y/o daughter, 14 y/o son, and boy/girl 8 y/o twins. In short I have dealt with my fair share of insanity. I used to have it all neatly packaged and knew exactly what to do. Then, as if some cosmic force slowed the earth's orbit, I had an awakening. What awakening you ask? My awakening was that indeed I was fucking up my kids, we all are!

Of course, I do have 2 hard and fast "rules." First, never live vicariously through my children and protect their autonomy (even from me their mother). Second, celebrate their individuality. That's it! Physical protection is in there somewhere, you know the "mom gauge" of the severity of this current adventure going awry (tree climbing, starting fires, etc.). So long as potential injuries won't require more than 6 weeks of healing, I let them be.

The judges, of whether we are fucking up or not, are our kids. BEWARE! No one knows your flaws, nerves, and hurts like the ones that spent 9 months inside of you. They will use this knowledge to their benefit at the exact onset of your weakest moments! No one means to raise an asshole, but I sure have met my fair share of them!

In short, cease immediately potty training the newborn (I think you are suffering a breakdown or have the rose colored mom goggles tinted to magenta honey), hold your kids or leave them in the crib, and for the sanity of us all stop boast posting every moment of your children's lives!

Survival Mode Marriage

My son loves to make knives and learn about basic survival life, how to make shelter, fire, and kill the occasional zombie. He feels he is fully prepared to survive any circumstance life throws at him. While these are worthwhile skills to posses, these aren’t what I am speaking of. My husband, of 16 years, Justin and I are recently reunited after a separation. We have been dedicated to determining what happened and preventing it from ever happening again; a much harder task than you would believe. Finally, last night as we were talking, we realized what happened to us...survival.

Justin and I have weathered some tough storms. Our marriage started out “doomed,” pregnant high school sweethearts with my parent’s signature required for us to be wed. We worked hard to achieve the “ideal marriage” to prove others wrong (well I did and quite ruthlessly demanded perfection). We purchased our first house at 19 and 21 years old, quickly experienced the height of economic abundance, and in 2009, its unexpected (to us) collapse. Tack on a drug addiction and you have the makings of any marriage destroying story; however, we made it through that experience and moved 1100 miles from our hometown and all we both ever knew, that’s when the real problems started.

We thought we had made it, had escaped our problems. We found the perfect place for our children to live, I found a job within a week of living here and a second one a month later. Justin had a harder time finding work at first, but still had a year’s worth of unemployment to rely on so we weren’t too concerned. We both busily tended to our new rolls he staying at home and me working. He seemed to truly enjoy the time rekindling his relationship with our children and I enjoyed the break from my decade of mothering. What we didn’t notice was our marriage and the relationship that had been long neglected.

Within 3 years, Justin had found work and I had returned to college. We were busily raising 4 kids with very active lifestyles. Our finances continued to struggle, marred also by ruined credit thanks to the 2009 crash, and we lived paycheck to paycheck. We also were no longer sleeping in the same bed and were miserable. As I look back, everyday for me seemed like a race against the sun. I woke up, dressed kids, sent them to school, did housework/schoolwork/went to work, and fell asleep exhausted at the end of the day. My mind raced with a checklist of must-do’s and my relationship with my husband never made that list.

This brings us to last night. As we sat musing about our moody teens and rambunctious 7 year old twins, I said “you know, I never doubted you loved me and I never stopped loving you. I think what happened was we were in survival mode, an instinct from our distant relatives even. What if our bodies and minds were stuck in that mode? Is it possible that mode prevents relationships because there isn’t room for it?” I continued to give examples of the surviving: scrounging food money, where would the electric bill money come from, our car broke down, kids need this and that money for school tomorrow, etc. “What if there is no way possible to maintain a loving and purposeful relationship when your body and mind have entered the survival mode?” I asked. “I think you’re onto something, I really do,” he replied. We sat in silence for a few seconds then together said “how do we prevent that?” We have worked hard since I returned home with the kids to keep our relationship front and center. We have set goals together both as individuals and a couple, planned and followed through with time just for us, and doing therapy. While I enjoy this time and activity with one another, it isn’t really anything we didn’t do together before, not the “aha” moment. The survival mode talk was the “aha,” but not the answer. The answer is going to take some digging I determined.

I stumbled upon this article titled “Is Our Survival Instinct Failing Us?” by Dr. Jim Taylor at http://www.drjimtaylor.com/3.0/psychology-is-our-survival-instinct-failing-us/ and gleaned quite a few new insights into what Justin and I discovered happened to us. What I learned (see article for further information) is joy and love are “cool emotions” and take longer to be felt and are less intense because there isn’t a pressing need for them to be felt. We (our children included) were in a survival mode for years. We struggled to provide food for our offspring, and that survival mode to breed and carry on our bloodline came into play for us both, and spent that time in a heightened state of awareness where impulses intensified. Dr. Taylor went on to explain that the way we think and the emotions we feel have survival value that produces behavior. Essentially, our behaviors during that time were largely out of our control. No thoughts or redirecting would pay bills or produce food on our table. With a survival threat on our hands, love and joy were pushed to the “back burner” for many, many months.

Now that I understand the survival instinct a bit better, I am dedicating myself to determine how to recognize and prevent its effects in our marriage. I know we aren’t the only couple that has suffered this scenario, many close friends were hit hard by the economic recession and likely found (or are still in) themselves in this situation. While it served our cavemen ancestors well when saber-toothed tigers were a threat, survival mode doesn’t serve a marriage well at all. There is a tunnel vision that each partner finds themselves in where the pursuit of the necessities for life are front and center. We can’t avoid this reaction, as I know of just yet, but can learn to counteract it to save our relationships.

I will continue to research and experiment with my new understanding and report back with any more “aha” moments or information. Thanks for taking the time to visit and read my blog. Now that I am back in “the swing of things” I intend to no longer neglect my blog!

How To Be A Mother

“I am so sick of people trying to strip me of my title of mother!” my head screamed. Any variance in the disciplinary practice of me and a fellow “mom” and I get “the talk.” It always starts the same, with a pity laced tone, in this manner “Jennifer, I don’t want to hurt you when I say this, but because you never really had a mother, you don’t really know how to be a mother.” I used to accept this statement, take it completely to heart and let it destroy me. The truth is for years I tried to mimic “good moms,” you know the ones with monogrammed tote bags and daughters with perfect hair and matching outfits. I tried the sweet mom approach, the “now sweetie don’t do that” and the “ignoring it and accepting all disciplinary problems as phases and childish ways.” Until I had a child reach her teenage years and realized she had witnessed me accepting the words of others, did I finally stand up and essentially shout “screw you! All of you that stripped me of my title!”

Being a mother is a fairly simple, albeit painful, process. You have sex, wait nine months, and out comes a kid (or choose the long process of adoption). Boom! You’re a mother. Now, the notion of what a mother is and the natural competitiveness of animals comes into play. Women are vicious, yes I will hate on my own end of our species, and some live to destroy others. In the eyes of some, I am a very strict mother, in others I am a wimp. Considering these two indications, I see that as putting me directly in the perfect section of the motherhood bell curve.

After years and years of hearing and taking this to heart, my daughter used it against me in a particularly stressful situation; it hurt me to the core. I had to take it in, let it hurt, then figure it out. She wanted me to hurt because her feelings felt especially hurt, but this particular situation called for the “never back down” side of motherhood. I feel as the months have passed since this incident, she has come to realize if anyone has her back, it’s me.

Dealing with my fault in accepting the insults and hurts slung my way is another story. So many books have been written to help people learn to accept themselves flaws and all, they have yet to help me! It’s a personal journey and I have no answers. Some days, I feel amazing, I feel beautiful, intelligent, a master of motherhood, and a flawless woman; others, I feel like a failure, bloated, ugly, and useless. It’s natural, it happens. I realize I gave permission to those that insist I “don’t know how to be a mother,” I allowed people to say it to me and I allowed it to hurt me. The truth is, being a mother requires you only give birth or adopt. There are no prerequisites to motherhood and we all parent differently. The other truth is, those that have said these words to me are assholes. They knew, and inflected in their “scolding tone,” exactly the purpose they had in uttering those words. They have manipulative, abusive, self righteous character flaws and they are their problem, not me!

Truth is, none of us “knows how” to be a mother. We all screw up, we all regret some decision, over discipline, under discipline, the list is endless. We need to become accustomed to extending the same courtesy of being human to ourselves as easily as we give it to others. It is beyond difficult to quit being my own enemy. I vow to stand up and stop anyone who tries to “put me in my place again.” I have self-destructive tendencies enough on my own, there is no more room for spiteful, hateful people.

Season Reasoning

The last few months have been chaotic for me. I am still very unclear as to my mother's charges against her, her condition, her psychological state, etc... With the holidays singing in the air, I have struggled terribly to be happy with everyone else. My mind keeps going back to the most ridiculous scenarios I have dealt with for the last decade and a half.

One memory that refuses to leave my mind is how my mother was treated, in my presence, by a mental health tech in Lake City, Florida. My mother had been on a "petty crime" spree and the jail transferred her to an indigent facility, I later transferred her to a better facility in Gainesville, Fl. The building was beige, all beige even the chairs. It stunk and it was tiny. There were 30-40 patients in a small T.V. room to the side of the intake room where I met police as they transferred my mom. She had been there just the previous week and getting her transferred the week before had been unsuccessful by phone, so I chose to drive the 100 miles to do it in person. It was required that this facility take her vitals before we loaded her back into the police cruiser and head south to her usual facility. I stepped in quietly and listened as the barely-eighteen tech began taking her vitals. My mother was calm and doing as he asked, raising her arm for the blood-pressure cuff, lifting her tongue for the thermometer, etc..

He began speaking to her extremely condescendingly, but I knew he didn't know who I was so I chose to keep my mouth shut. He began "Now Juliet, are you going to behave for me this time?" She was still being perfectly cooperative. He continued "You don't want this to get physical again do you? You aren't going to act like you did last week, you saw how that ended for you!" and with his last statement I opened my mouth. I questioned first "do you realize I am her daughter?" He shook his head no, then decided to jump to his own defense, "you didn't see it! She was a wild woman!" I cut him off "and she is being perfectly fine now. I understand she can get belligerent, but you are trying to instigate her to action!" "I am not!" he retorted. With my smirk and head wobble I began my speech "if I am here right now and you are speaking to her this way, what are you doing to the family-less patients here? I do believe you are the reason my mother had 2 black eyes last week, I was suspicious of that, but now I know!" His supervisor came out to intervene and "deescalate" the "situation." He explained the tech was new and please forgive his indiscretion. I refused forgiveness and demanded he be fired, the supervisor looked at me blankly and said "no!" I requested his supervisor, whom conveniently was on vacation, and a contact number. I called numerous times and was never contacted nor informed whether the tech still works there. I cannot let go of what my mind tells me happens to those patients that don't have family willing to intervene.

It is extremely difficult balancing having my mother around when I have 4 children myself. I often worry, and am blatantly told by some, that her being around my kids will damage them somehow. I never choose her over my children, when an incident beyond control takes place, thankfully there have only been a few. My children love and accept my mother. My older two understand there are issues that play into the often strange advice that comes from her, but they have a tremendous understanding of how delicate our minds truly are. They are fully aware of how grateful they should be for their minds and ability to think. The twins adore my mother, and while sometimes they know she does silly things, she meets them at their level and they have a kinship with one another. If it weren't for my being unwilling to forget my mother, I don't know what would have happened to her.

Yes, "letting her go" would realistically be "simpler" for me, but deep within me I cannot do it! I rarely receive thanks from my mother, but when I do it is touching. My heart hurts for those like my mother defenseless and in our justice system. They have no one fighting for them, no one in their corner, and are often "demonized" by local media. They receive no fair trial, because so many have used "insanity" pleas, and accept whatever heavy-handed judgement is deemed. They sit in prisons, often being taken advantage of by other inmates, and waste away. No visitors, no letters, no commissary money, nothing. Those that make it to hospitals for their sentence often end up in indigent care where "techs" are a dime a dozen and provoke their illness.

I am currently working on getting my mother's official police incidents, papers, etc... I have help from a family member that is an attorney and she has been such an amazing gift! Truly I hope my mother will not die in a prison in Georgia, but the possibility remains. The next time you see a "demonized" criminal whose actions seemed unreal, they may have been. They may be like my mother.