Amelia discusses her “nuclear” PMS (called PMDD for Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder), her first pregnancy and the pressures she felt for everything to be perfect and the crushing Postpartum Depression that followed. She also talks about the childhood traumas that might be linked to it.

Episode notes:



For more information or personal journaling about PPD visit www.postpartumprogress.com or www.dooce.com

Episode Transcript:



Welcome to the episode 147… [laughs] wasn’t really sure what episode we’re doing. Episode 147 with listener, Amelia, and we’re going to talk about postpartum depression. I’m Pual Gilmartin. This is the Mental Illness Happy H… [laughs] keep going ahead. The Mental Illness Happy Hour, an hour or two of honestly about all the battles in our heads from medically diagnosed conditions, past traumas, and sexual dysfunction to everyday compulsive negative thinking. This show is not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling. I’m not a therapist. It’s not a doctor’s office. It’s more like a waiting room that doesn’t suck. The website for this show is mentalpod.com. MentalPod is also the twitter name you can follow me at. Go check out the website. You can take surveys, see how other people filled out surveys, read blogs, support the show, join the forum, all kinds of stuff. So, go check that out.

This interview with Amelia was done… I think it was done about a year ago so if there is anything in there where you’re like that doesn’t make any sense, let’s blame it on the fact that it was done a year ago. Also, at the end, I kind of get down on myself for having misunderstood her several points during the interview. I think I edited those out because I can’t have you guys see me make those kind of glaring mistakes. Otherwise, you would abandon me. I wish that wasn’t true. I wish I didn’t feel that was true. I know that’s not the truth but I’m working on it. I’m working on – anyway… I digress.

I want to kick it off with an excerpt from a survey filled out by somebody who – this is from the Struggle in a Sentence filled out by a woman who calls herself Kathy Z, and she writes on any comments how to make the podcast better, “please tell me how I can leave my verbally, emotionally, and sometimes physically abusive spouse (I do hit back) when we are in a consumer debt program and have no savings. We have a house together and both have full time jobs but are living paycheck to paycheck as we pay off debt. There is seventy six hundred dollars left. I can’t fathom going to an agency that could help me.” You know, the only thing that – I don’t have any experience with something like this but my first thought is go to a domestic abuse shelter. That’s what they’re for. They’re custom-made for situations like yours so that would be… so, either call 211 from a landline, if that’s the United States, or google. I wish you well. It’s going to be really really difficult.

This is an email that I got from Garret Plumer who writes, “although this was a short episode and simply contained you reading an article,” he is referring to the mini episode I did where I read an article written by Dr. Allen Rappoport about co-narcissism which was so penetrated. So many people, to the depths of their souls, including myself were like YES! That’s what I’ve experienced! Garret is writing about this and he writes, “it had quite an impact on me. As a son of a narcissistic father I identify with a lot of what the article said but more importantly I was able to share the episode with my sister and mother. My sister texted me that she couldn’t stop crying while listening to the episode and she transcribed the important quotes back to me. She was able to express a lot of emotions to me that she had built up inside that she previously was unable to tell me. This was an important step for her in an on-going healing process. I wanted to thank you for what you’re doing and I cannot express enough how much I love the podcast.” Well, I appreciate that and I can’t express enough how grateful I am to the listener who forwarded me that article. God bless you. I lose track of who sends me stuff and I apologize that sometimes I can’t remember who it was but you guys are so thoughtful at forwarding me things and having the other listeners in mind in terms of trying to keep this community we’re building going. I appreciate it and I know a lot of other people do. Just taking that minute out of your day to share stuff and I apologize that sometimes I’m overwhelmed and am like you know what? I can’t finish reading this. I can’t read this article. I’ve talked and read and thought enough about mental illness today or this week or whatever. So, if you don’t get a response, that’s probably where I’m coming from.

Alright, this is from a Struggle in a Sentence survey filled out by a woman who calls herself poor slob without a name. About her anxiety, she writes, “anxiety is like being covered in kerosene and walking through a Fourth of July party and they’re about to light the sparklers.” About borderline personality disorder, she writes, “it’s like loving and hating the thing you loved or hated the day before.” I think I understand. She is saying that how she feels about something switches from day to day. That’s how I interpreted that. Always nice to read ones that you aren’t really sure what the hell they’re saying. I seemed very sure of what she was saying when I printed that out and put it on the stack of stuff to read.

This is same survey filled by a guy name James about feeling the victim of racial or cultural bias. He writes, “it’s like I’m always wearing a SiFi device that disguises my appearance by confusing some people into seeing me as some sort of alien life form and no matter what I say, they will never believe I’m a human being.” He identifies as gay so my hunch would be that that’s the homophobia that he’s experiencing.

I also want to wish you guys a Merry Christmas or as I would like to call it, Wednesday, and I hope it treated you well and family didn’t drive you crazy. My wife and I have been having fun playing – We got a Wii (we have a Nintendo Wii) and we’ve been playing games and I think my favorite part might be playing Call of Duty and just shooting a room full of people as Jesus would have wanted.

Paul: I’m here with Amelia who’s a listener that I’ve corresponded with for probably a year (maybe?)

Amelia: Yea, about a year.

You heard the Teresa Strasser episode a while back. Actually, if it was right after Teresa’s episode, it’s more than that. It’s probably two years.

It was 2011.

Yea, two years and that episode really touched you.

Yes.

Specifically the stuff about after having a baby and having anxiety and stuff like that, and Teresa didn’t call it postpartum depression in her situation but in your situation, it was clearly postpartum depression and explain some of the concerns you had about – because there is a chance your family will hear it and you don’t want them to get the wrong ideas. What were the concerns that you had because you’re going to talk about your past and your family and stuff like that.

Right. I had a difficult childhood in some respects but not in all respects. I had a difficult relationship with my mother and we’ll get into that. But I don’t want it to seem like it was a terrible childhood across the board because it definitely was not. There were a lot of my family members who completely stepped up and you know… I once saw a therapist and she said ‘you know, if you are not crazy, it’s because of all these other people who made you feel loved and valued and …’ So, I’m kind of afraid that I may, in telling the story, make it sound like that wasn’t true so I want to make it very clear that I had lots of wonderful support from family members and from friends and that the bad part of my childhood I’m talking about is one specific thing.

Okay. Great. You live in France?

I live in France.

When you watch the naked ladies dance through the hole in the wall, can you see it all or is that just a myth?

[laughs] I’ve never gone to see the naked ladies. There are some.

So you live in France?

So, I live in France and I have for fifteen years and –

And what brought you there?

A relationship – not the one I’m in now.

Can I ask how old you are?

I’m forty seven. I moved to France when I was thirty three. I was in a relationship with a French man that did not work out but it was very passionate. Somebody had to move somewhere and I moved there and then I got a job there that I really like working for an international organization and it’s a very multi-cultural situation with people from all different countries and I really really enjoy that so I ended up staying. It was a bit of a struggle to work it all out but I ended up staying and then a co-worker at that job that I was working at introduced me to her ex who is my current… I’m gonna say partner because we are not married (he’s a man.) And, we’ve been together for eleven years. And, we’re the same age so about three years into the relationship, we started talking about having a baby and one of the reasons was I was thirty nine years old and I jokingly said, ‘wow, this is the last month that I could get pregnant and have a baby before forty.’ And he said, ‘oh really? What are you doing next weekend?’ And I thought, ‘this poor man has no idea. It doesn’t work like that.’ It did work like that. So, it wasn’t like a surprise. It was something that I wanted to do and I think (we’ll get back to it but) my complicated history like with my mother… having a child was never really really high on my list and then there was like this strange 3-month period around that time where I suddenly wanted one. Like I don’t even know what happened. I mean maybe it’s a biological clock. I don’t know but what was strange was the time lapse between ‘hummm, maybe this a good idea,’ ‘yes, lets do this,’ and ‘baby in my arms’ was less than a year and a half. So I was incredibly fortunate. I mean incredibly fortunate… when you think about couples that just go through years and years of this.

Emotionally, what was it like though going from –

It wasn’t exciting. It really was. It was… I was com… I mean I think a lot of my family were absolutely shocked. I mean because of my age and my lifestyle and everything, people were like well that’s not going to happen and then suddenly I was saying, ‘oh yes, this is happening.’

And the baby was healthy?

Absolutely. I had a very normal pregnancy. Baby was perfectly healthy. I had a cesarean section which I’ll go into that too but that is kind of… I wasn’t planning to. That’s kind of common though with older mothers, I think. I’m understanding that like after a certain age, the chance of that increases. So, I was very very happy about the whole thing. I was you know… I’ve been thinking about it and I don’t really remember being afraid of being depressed. What I was afraid of was being a bad parent. Like was I up to the task?

I wonder if those are related.

Oh, absolutely. Oh yea. And one of the reasons that I felt okay about this plan, about having a baby with this particular man, was that I thought I might just mess this up like you know… but he won’t. Like he is a stable person, an honest person, and somebody who I greatly respect, and very kind and if I just blow it, like… she’ll have him. So, that’s what happened. Should I go forward or backward?

When you say that’s what happened, what do you mean that’s what happened?

So that’s the circumstances under which… the postpartum came later. It didn’t happen like on the day that my daughter was born. It came on about 4 weeks later and… ok, I’m going to go backwards a little bit. So I’ve always… I’m a person who’s always had bad PMS. So, everybody knows what PMS. PMDD is sort of like termonuclear PMS.

That was the band after the Clash -

[laughs] right, that’s going to be my band. I was taking Zoloft for it for many years. Just very very low dose because that seems to be the antidepressant that they think works with that.

Was that prescribed by a doctor or a psychiatrist?

I went to see a therapist in my 20s because I was sort of like having 3 normal weeks and then 1 complete chaotic horrible week where I had to apologize to everybody after it was over and then start again. Seem normal and then fall apart. So I did go to see a therapist probably for 6 months and at the end of the 6 months, he said, “I really think that this is your problem.” He was like, ‘cuz the rest of the things you are telling me about your life, you’re not doing any behaviors that would lead me to think that…’ you know… He said, ‘but something is wrong.’

And it was cyclical.

Definitely cyclical and he sent me to a psychiatrist. I think it was a psychiatrist. It could have been a gynecologist and they prescribed this and I felt much better. So it worked for me.

And then, did you take that for years? Are you still on it?

Yea, I’m back on it.

When did you go off it?

When I got pregnant.

Okay. Was that because you wanted to or they advised you to?

I wanted to.

And what made you decide that you wanted to? You just thought any SSRI when you’re pregnant is a no-no? Which is a myth by the way.

It is a myth.

Oh absolutely.

It is a myth.

Yea, are you asking me or telling me?

No, I’m telling you.

Oh. Ok, yes, we’re on the same page.

Yea, yea. It’s a myth but I also think that was my decision for me. I was taking a very low dose too so it wasn’t like huge taper or anything like that. It was just my own personal decision.

So you’ve been on it since your mid 20s to 39.

To 36. Yeah.

That’s great that that worked so consistently for you.

It did. It did. I had also… by the way… some of the theories about that particular problem and also postpartum depression is that it has to do with progesterone and some people try to treat it with progesterone cream, natural progesterone cream, and I had tried that also. It did help me also but it was such a strict regime of like you know… this at this time and this amount and stuff that… I realized after some time that they were both sort of doing the same thing and I’m not even sure how that works. And, to be honest, I was like this is just easier. Like just taking this pill every day is easier. It’s more consistent. I don’t forget it. I don’t lose it you know, because I’d be somewhere and –

I don’t mistake it for suntan lotion.

Exactly! I don’t mistake it for toothpaste [both laugh] which I have done.

Have you really?!

Yup.

That is not tasty!

My teeth looked great though. So, anyway. I went off of it and strangely enough, I was fine. So, that… Because, possibly (I’m not a doctor) pregnancy is all about progesterone. Your body is flooded by progesterone when you are pregnant and one of the theories about postpartum depression is that it’s that drop of hormones that sends a person into it. So, I was fine during the pregnancy.

And if I can just interject too, there is another thing that happens which is when you’ve been on a med for a long time, there is a buildup of it in your system that will carry you through sometimes months after going off it.

That could be too.

I had that happen to me where I went off my meds and I was fine for 5 months and then it was like a light switched off. That can also be the case.

Yea, I mean I just think that in my case, it was a clue that everything was hormonal. So, back to the c-section. I had a c-section and I’ve been a pretty sporty person all my life like I danced for a while. I love very strenuous things like backpacking and I looked forward to the birth as like this is going to be the ultimate challenge for my body. I studied it. I read books. I was absolutely ready to the point where I never even read the chapter on cesarean sections.

Because you were like -

Not going to happen to me. You know I was on my little birthing ball and you know… that was not going to happen to me. That happened to me.

What did you think when they said they were going to do a c-section? Was it something said ahead of time or was it like the day of… we’ll induce c-section?

No, my daughter went 2 weeks past her due date and they kept saying, ‘you know… we’re going to have to induce this.’ And I would say, ‘please, let me do it. Please let me do it.” Like I wanted this experience so bad. And, at one point they induced me and then I was in labor for sixteen hours.

Oh! [uncomfortable laughs]

And, I kept saying, ‘please, please, let me do it. I know I can do it. Just give me 2 more hours.’ But I guess once you start getting induced and you have an epidural and all that stuff, your chances of like a natural child birth are going down down down down cuz now you know, your body is not… you’re out of sync with your body so it was 1 o’clock in the morning and all the doctors are standing around and they’re just like okaaayyy, and we noticed that her heartbeat on the monitor was starting to slow down and my obstetrician said, “I don’t like that at all,” and then it was like, ‘ok, let’s go with this.’ So now I had no –

And then did they put you under to do the c-section, or because of the epidural you don’t need it?

No, and I was also –

No, you don’t need it because of the epidural?

You don’t need it but they have to… I got very sick from the epidural. That happens to some people. So they have to give you like… I think I had 3 of them because they were waiting so long and it’s usually not like that and so they had to give you like a mega dose. Because I can’t… If I know… If I understand correctly, they can’t change drugs like at the last minute. They’ve got to go with whatever they’re doing. So they gave me like a mega dose but they knew that I was going to be sick because I hadn’t tolerate it well before. So I sort of went through like the whole birth vomiting. It was… It wasn’t very elegant.

You should have shit too then you could have had it all come out from all three -

There was some that too. You know, whatever. Whatever. So my beautiful birth experience that I had planned for and you know, I knew how exactly I was going to say to my daughter when she was born and I was going to lovingly look at her and say, you know, ‘happy birthday.’ I kind of puked it out the side of my mouth. Like… It just… yea. So, that was strike number 1. I didn’t do this right. Like I messed up the birth, see?

Have you always been a perfectionist and a type A?

I’m not a type A but I’m definitely a perfectionist.

Because that, you know… that ‘I’m not going to have a c-section’ and ‘I’m going to do this right,’ ‘I got all the stuff, you know, mapped out’ –

Well, it was also kind of romantic in my mind like you know… and, that’s part of this whole problem too. It’s like the romance of the baby and the… you know, this and that and it is so televised and you know, I watch all those lifetime shows and it’s like… sometimes, it’s just not like that. You know… it’s –

Does fantasy play a large part in your life good and bad, like projecting into the future and how are things gonna go?

Not really. No. It’s just… you know, it was just my idea and it didn’t come through.

So, you feel like it comes more from a romance part than a –

Well, it comes from everyone telling you. Just like you know, wedding. This is the most special day of your life. People say the best day of my life was the day that my daughter was born and the best experience was watching her come out of me. It’s like ok, well, I was like puking my guts out. You know, watching her come over. I mean it was a beautiful experience. It was… you know, probably wouldn’t make a good movie.

Definitely not a good 3D movie.

Yeah, the good news was my daughter was extremely healthy. I mean, really healthy.

Did she come out lifting weights?

She came out like wide awake staring at everybody like ‘here I am!’ and it’s kind of amazing after all she’s been through for the last sixteen hours.

And you were feeling, other than the nausea and being exhausted, mentally, maybe a little disappointed that you had to have a c-section?

Very disappointed. Immediately.

Ok. But was it a depression or more just disappointment at that point?

Well, the next day, one of the nurses who had been on staff early in the day, came in and I guess the reason I… I guess what happened was I was never fully dilated. So, whenever this happened I was at 5 cm, when they made this decision, and the nurse came in the next morning and said, ‘but you were at 5 cm. Why didn’t you keep going?’ And I thought –

That’s kind of a nasty thing to say!

She was kind of nasty but it was… yea, I mean I had a little help. It was like wow, you know you could have stuck in there and it was like, ‘well, you weren’t there. You don’t know what happened.’

And why would you say that after the fact? So, how did that make you feel when she said that?

Horrible because I was already thinking that. Now I know that like you know, if I had really researched it, the chances of me actually succeeding at this were pretty low given my age. But yea, I mean the whole first day, I was thinking yea, well, I screwed that up.

And the result of the screw up being that you couldn’t say, ‘I did it all natural,’ or that you are left with a c-section scar or what is the disappointment in? That it wasn’t a “clean victory?”

Well –

You cheated? I mean what –

There is so much for pregnant women, especially now. There is a really wonderful documentary out called the Business of being born.

I have seen it. It’s awesome.

Okay, you have seen it.

Ricki Lake produced it. Right?

Yea, and I think there is even a sequel to it.

I had no idea c-sections were done often because the doctor doesn’t want to be called in after you know, dinner.

Right, and like the statistics… they happen to have… they often happen on a Friday night, or right before summer vacation, or … and I… that documentary came out after this experience, but you see something like that and you… you know, you do feel like you took the easy way out which was not the case.

No.

This was… The baby’s heartbeat was slowing down and this is what they had to do, but when you’re reading natural child birth books and you’re hearing the birth stories of your friends and other women you know who have done it naturally and how it was like this warrior moment and you know… when you’re talking about cesarean too, like there is danger to the baby. You know, pumping you know, the baby full of that much drugs. All that stuff and it’s… I had an extreme guilt about it. So, it wasn’t like ‘oh, I didn’t do it perfectly.’ It was ‘oh, I failed my daughter. Like she didn’t get to come…’ ok, here is something crazy –

How do you think that that is going to make any difference?

It doesn’t.

Yeah, I know but what in your mind made you think that the baby is going to be invested in how she came out of your body?

I’m telling you. This was the beginning of what was going to happen next. This was like… this was all… It was already starting like look, I’m just not suited for this. Like ‘I told ya! I told ya!’ Like every time something would go wrong, ‘I told ya!’ This is crazy. My daughter was born at about 1 o’clock in the morning and I was so freaked out about like ‘she’s not gonna be able to choose her own birthday.’ Like how dare we choose her birthday?

What!

I know! Like it doesn’t matter but I was like she should decide when she comes to the world. That’s why I kept –

Wow! I mean it came in like a dam broke. The PDD.

I think I was very mystical about the whole thing. About that. Just about… I mean I am a little bit –

What do you mean when you say mystical about the whole thing?

About faith and chance and karma and all that. I thought like you know, this all needs to happen as naturally as possible and you know, everything is a sign, and then it got very medical all of a sudden and that was just a shock. And, as for the cesarean, I was extremely lucky. It went very well. I healed really fast. I had the right, because it was France, to stay in the hospital for 5 days. Went home. Was feeling fine. So, however, one of the risk factors for postpartum is a difficult child birth or a traumatic child birth and I would not even say that I had a tra… I didn’t have a traumatic child birth. I was just disappointed in the way that it turned out but it wasn’t traumatic. It was… I don’t know.

It didn’t sound simple. It didn’t sound easy, although, I can’t imagine how many child births could be considered easy, but –

Yea, I mean everyone is different.

Sixteen hours of vomiting –

The vomiting was just at the end but yea, I’ve heard much worse stories. I’ve heard better stories. I mean… I’ve heard much much worse stories about child birth. I mean it wasn’t… you know, she wasn’t in distress. There wasn’t, you know… And again, she was perfectly healthy. It was all good. And, so, then I had what people call the baby blues which almost everyone gets this. It’s that hormone crash after the delivery and it usually happens in the first week. You know, a lot of weeping, a lot of… and it… for most women it passes. So I was sort of going through that when I took her home and then I spent about a week just staring at her like, ‘oh look, there is a baby at our house. [laughs] Wow!’ I think also, when I was pregnant, I was trying so hard to bond with her. Like when she was inside me and I was just not feeling it. I was like, ‘what is that?’ I mean there is somebody in there like kicking me and I just, again, that whole magical thinking, and I thought well, we should already like be communicating like... you know, we should be talking to each other and stuff and I just, you know, no, there was a baby in there and I was rubbing my tummy and I had people tell me that’s normal. Don’t… You know, it’s going to take a while. You know?

Are you somebody who always has really high expectations for things?

Yes! [laughs]

Because, I mean, my God, expecting to bond with your baby before it’s even out of your body… I mean, I don’t know much about pregnancy or what women go through so I don’t know if that’s normal or not, but that’s seems like you’re setting the bar REALLY high for what you’re your experience is going to be, I mean right out of the gate.

But the bar is set for you also. I mean there is so much writing about motherhood and stuff and it’s… That’s why I wanted to speak about this because there is so much more about the, you know, the experience and the bonding and… it’s all true.

It almost strikes me as a version of pornography not in a sexual way, but in a way of creating a fantasy –

It is a little bit that way.

-that is really not that realistic and sets you up for disappointment because your experience is’nt that.

Well, I think… I’m guessing that for the majority of people that is the way it goes. I mean I have plenty of mother friends that it’s exactly the way it goes. But it makes you feel like if you’re not joining the party, that there is something wrong with you.

And I have received many emails from women who haven’t been honest about their experience so if they’re not being honest about their experience –

You mean they’re saying, ‘I feel this way but I’m not being honest with my family and friends?’

Yeah.

Oh absolutely.

That they don’t feel bonded to their baby… that they’re not happy about being a mother… that they’re terrified and they feel no connection to this thing sitting in the crib from them. So, I just wonder how many… what are the real statistics –

Exactly!

Of it, and everybody buys into this fantasy and everybody is afraid to admit, you know, that –

Well, look at, you know, Johnson and Johnson commercials. You just need to look at those with like… you know… It’s… It’s all so interesting when you have a child, it’s like getting married to someone you never met. Right? It’s like the most important person in your world who you are 100% for just showed up! And babies don’t do a lot for a while. It takes about 3 months for them to start interacting.

How awesome would it be a dipper commercial where mom –

[laughs] Mom is on the phone!

-is snapping at the husband.

I’d love that!

He is not doing… or he is doing what he’s supposed to do but she is cranky because she’s having mood swings and they’re both miserable and the baby’s crying and something gets knocked over and spills and you just see the name of the dipper.

Which is what happened to pretty much to every parent ever.

Why not have that?

It doesn’t sell dippers?

I bet it would. I bet it would. I bet a lot of people would go ‘YES! Thank you!”

Yea, they could have a whole line of products for like real parents. That would be really interesting.

So go ahead. I tend to get side tracked.

No, no. So, I went home from the hospital. Spent like this kind of weird spacy week like trying to figure out like what just happened. And then I was very fortunate that my best friend came from the States to spend 2 or 3 weeks with me. And, some of my family came over as well so suddenly, we had kind of a full house every day and that… I don’t know if the depression hadn’t hit yet, or I just didn’t have time. Also, my best friend is extremely funny person and we tend to just laugh our heads off about everything so we were just giggling too much the whole time about like this alien, you know.

Was that nice to have her there and to laugh?

It was wonderful. She actually came over to see if she was going to be able to have a baby like she was kind of trying mine on. She went on to have one so I guess it was a positive experience. So, everybody eventually had to go home and that’s about when it came on. So, two things happened at the same time. One was I got… I came down with mastitis which is an infection you can get when you are breastfeeding (extremely painful.)

Do you have to discontinue breastfeeding when you get it?

No, and I didn’t know that. I was taking antibiotics for it and I thought I shouldn’t do that and breastfeed, and I was wrong about that. And, it actually hit me on a weekend and I faxed the obstetrician and said, ‘here is what’s going on. What should I do?’ And she actually faxed me back a few days later saying, ‘keep breastfeeding.’ But I didn’t. I had already sort of gotten off schedule and I never really got back on schedule exactly the way it was before. So, some people think that breastfeeding protects you from postpartum depression. So, the two things that happened at the same time was I was suddenly alone and… I mean alone with my partner and I was sort of having a tough time breastfeeding so again, I was messing up like ‘oh, can’t get the breastfeeding right.’ Like… So, that’s when it really started to set in. I also, like I said, I’m not a type A but I’m pretty organized. I wasn’t sleeping. That’s a huge thing. I for a while –

Because of your own choice or baby’s needs? Or because you had insomnia?

I have the illusion that I could deal with the baby and still sort of keep my life together. So, like we would get her down to sleep and I would go, ‘ok, I’m going to go clean the refrigerator.’ You know… ‘catch up on my email.’ I should have just gone to sleep. But I was trying to like maintain the way things had been going until that point. You can’t! I mean you can’t. Maybe… maybe if you have a live-in nanny or something you can, but you can’t.

Well, what does the person do that can’t afford the nanny?

If they’re smart, they’ll just realize, ‘hey, I just had a baby! I’m gonna give myself a break.”

So there is a time period that you can just shut down the rest of that stuff and go out get to it? You know...

Yeah, I mean you have to realize like this major thing just happened in your life and you’re physically exhausted and you know every new parent knows that the sleep thing is a big deal and so… I was having a lot of sleep deprivation that I was bringing on myself. I wasn’t allowing myself to sleep because I just… I kept trying to get it all done; get it all done. And I on maternity leave and because I live in France, I had very generous maternity leave. I had 6 weeks off which is amazing.

What do you do in France by the way?

I work for an international organization and in the climate change area. I’m not a high flying super important person but I have a job that I really like and I do some freelance writing. And I thought… I also… I think this is also true of a lot of people who take some time off after having a baby. I always thought, ‘oh we’ll then take the baby and travel! We’ll go to Russia! Why not?!’ You just don’t know. You don’t know and… Yeah, lack of sleep, not good, and then, that’s when the crying started.

They baby or you?

Me. Yea, just weeping, weeping, weeping all the time. Starting to feel more and more worthless by the day.

Just because or are you associating it with certain things or failures on your part?

Everything was a failure on my part.

Real or imagined?

Imagined.

Give me some examples.

One day we took my daughter out in a stroller and it was a sunny day. It was like a sunny fall day and we were going down the driveway of our house and I happened to look at her and her eyes were crossed like in this really crazy way, like… really crazy way. I thought, ‘ok, I didn’t just see that.’ And she did it again and I thought, ‘ok, something is really really wrong here and in fact, what was going on was that the kid was in sunlight and your muscles that move your eyes take a while to work themselves out so she was just like… and I immediately thought, ‘ok, brain damage.’ Like, I’m sure that I dropped her or she fell backwards on her head because I think maybe she had fallen down like during the day or you know just a little bump or something. I was like, ‘ok, there we go! Shaken baby syndrome.’ So, we went back to the house and I called my sister in law (like my partner’s... We all call each other all those names even though we’re not married.) I called her and said, “have you ever seen this before?” She said, “no, not really.” Then we called an emergency house call doctor to come to the house and shine a light in my baby’s eyes and you know he was like, “I think she’s fine.” And then he said, “but I’m not so sure about you.” Because I was a wreck. I was just a wreck, a wreck, a wreck. And then he left and I spent at least 8 hours sobbing. Just sobbing.

What was your partner doing during this? What is he saying? Or are you trying to hide it from him?

No, no, he was perplexed. I mean he was just… he was worried. He was perplexed. Postpartum depression does not get the same attention in France and I was beginning to know that there is something wrong with me that was like beyond what was normal. And I kept trying to explain it to him and he didn’t understand it because I don’t think he had ever been around anyone who had it. Although, one of his cousin’s wives had just had it. No, she had it after I had it and you know she had it very badly and her 3rd child and she was fine on the first 2.

Were you aware that this was a thing that existed before it happened to you?

Vaguely.

But did you make the connection? Did you ever think to yourself, ‘I wonder if I’m experiencing postpartum depression?’

I thought that something is not right. Something is not right. This is… I… this is going too far.

Like chemically something is wrong with something beyond my control is wrong with me.

Well, once I started being treated for it, I understood that what I was having was called intrusive thoughts. I was not hallucinating but I could not stop like very-horrible thoughts going through my head. They were not about me harming the baby. Not ever. But they were about terrible things happening to her that I could not prevent. And it was excruciating. It was exhausting. I could not reason myself out of these thoughts and for example, we had a garage that had steps going down into the garage and into the right of the steps was a shelf that was built in concrete that had a sharp corner. And I just replay and replay and replay this baby’s head smacking into that corner. You know like, I would be holding her and have to go into the garage and you know if there was… I mean I could just see the whole tragedy unfolding. There is no reason to think that would ever happen. Like there is no reason to think I would not be careful every single time. We had a pond in the backyard of our house (it was pretty large) and I was absolutely sure that my daughter was going to end up in that pond. I didn’t know how but she was going to end up in that pond and I focused on it all the time. We ultimately moved actually when she was a toddler because I was still worried about it. And to be fair, I know someone that that happened to. I had known someone whose toddler brother like wondered into the pool so that was somehow the horror story… or the pond… so that was kind of the horror story that I always had in the back of my mind. And I was just obsessed. Obsessed, obsessed, obsessed. Like couldn’t talk myself out of it.

What a great example of the power of mental illness. It’s not about rationality or neglect.

No, and if you are a rational person, which most of the time I am, that’s what… It’s so frustrating because you know something is wrong. You know you’re thinking crazy and you can’t stop it.

Because you think that the thing that is warped can help you unwarp the thing that is warped.

That’s exactly it. Yea, you can’t think your way out of it. So, I think I told you this in an email. I one day thought, ‘ok, I’m gonna take the bull by the horns. I’m gonna get out of my thing about the pond. Like I’m gonna take this right on and it was winter. I think there was a little snow on the ground. It was very cold and I wrapped my daughter up in a blanket or I put her in the baby bjorn actually. Wrapped her up really carefully. Warm myself up and I decided I was going to go walk to the edge of the pond and prove to myself that like this can’t happen. And I got to the edge of the pond and I froze and I couldn’t take a step in any direction. I couldn’t go backwards; I couldn’t walk back into the house. I was just frozen. Frozen. I mean not by the snow… with this feeling that she was going to fly out of my arms into the water.

Was the feeling that you couldn’t take a step because if would endanger her or because you couldn’t will your body to move?

I was afraid that like if I move, something else would happen. It was like you know ok, like this, we’re ok. As long as I don’t move, we’re ok. And I kept thinking well, eventually I’m going to have to go back to the house and I stood out there for a good forty minutes, forty five minutes and it wasn’t helping. My mind didn’t go, ‘see? It’s ok.’ My mind went, ‘yea, this is really bad. Get back in the house.’

How did you finally break out of the frozen?

I willed myself back in the house. I don’t think I’ve told many people that story.

What did it feel like when you took that first step towards the house?

Like I wasn’t going to make it.

What did you think was going to happen? The baby was going to fall out of your arms and roll in the pond or what was the… what was the scenario in your head?

You know the feeling in dreams when you can’t move your legs? It was like that. It’s like I’m not… I don’t know.

‘I’m going to fall down and die here in the cold?’

‘I’m going to fall…’ no, it wasn’t that cold. But I mean… ‘I’m going to f…’ Yeah, ‘I’ll trip.’ ‘She’ll fall.’ or you know… just… it was… you… I often describe it as like, you know, there is planes flying over our heads. Now, all over our heads, all the time, there must be like, you know, 7 planes going over at any time. You know. We don’t look up there and go, ‘oh my God, that thing is coming for me.’ But when you have… my experience of that was like, ‘that plane is coming straight for me!’ Things that you never think of as being hazardous, you know, and that could also be you’re looking out for this, you know, infant, so you are hyper aware of like danger in every single possible way that it’s coming and my… I would almost say it was way more anxiety than depression.

It almost sounds like a half-dream state or a half-nightmare state where yeah, you’re in reality; you see your surroundings but it’s like all of the lack of logic in terror of a dream. I wonder… I wish there was a way that you could measure… I bet they can. I bet they can measure the brainwaves –

They could probably.

Of somebody… I should ask. There was a guy that I interviewed, I haven’t aired it yet, but he measures brainwaves in people and I’m actually going to go in there and he’s going to do mine. But I wonder what the findings are on women in that state and what their brainwaves are and how closely they resemble somebody in the state of sleep.

Can they do that? I mean…

I don’t know why they couldn’t.

The state of sleep?

For having a bad dream.

There is probably a serotonin component to it as well but -

This is where it would be nice to have that expert. I wish we could teleport the expert when we need them.

Yeah. But to my knowledge, no one is doing anything like that. They are still arguing over, you know, whether it exists. I mean it does exist but here is an interesting fact. The new DSM came out this year. The statistical manual that they use for diagnosing mental illness and postpartum depression is still not in it as in its own category. It’s like a… It’s a version of mental illness but it’s not its own category. However, the PP… no –

PMD?

The PMDD that I was talking about before, that is now in there as its own separate category.

You forwarded an article to me written by a woman who was talking about the Andrea Yates... Andrea Yates was the mother who killer her children and this woman wrote this great article about why do we treat her like a criminal when there are other people who have committed crimes that… because she was found to be mentally ill and –

There were two trials. She was convicted the first time.

But it was overturned because she was –

No, she was convict… she was… the first time she was convicted in 3.5 hours. The jury deliberated only 3.5 hours and they were like… and then, they re-opened so she was re-tried and then she was declared mentally ill or by reason of insanity, I think. Yeah, that’s a tough one and –

But the reason I bring that up is there are so many instances where mental illness is not understood, you know, and I think of like Amanda Bynes who is so clearly mentally ill and is a punch line for so many people. It’s like if she had cancer, nobody would be making fun of that.

Absolutely.

And I think it’s because the person that has cancer has the benefit of knowing they have cancer and not… general not impeding progress to try to get better and so… but even then we wouldn’t be making fun of somebody but mental illness is so stigmatized and so misunderstood because you can’t measure it.

I wish there was a term for it. I mean, I wish there was a better term for it because if you have high blood pressure, you take high blood pressure medicine. You have a high blood pressure condition. If you have… If you take heart medicine, if you have diabetes, like, you have this condition. But because it has to do with the brain, it becomes mental illness. You know… That’s… It’s a condition and in most cases it’s treatable. I think maybe it’s just because… well, I’ve been traveling, you know, the last few weeks and I noticed that CNN was running this Crime of the Century series, I guess they do, and one was on Andrea… Yeah, Andrea Yates and I find that just horrifying. That may be a tragedy of the century but, you know, comparing her to Timothy McVeigh or, you know, David Koresh… I don’t know every single detail about that case but I do know that she had been diagnosed with postpartum. She stopped taking her medication. She, if I remember correctly, she was in a relationship where, you know, she didn’t want to continue having children and she was on number 5.

You know, and if I can just interject, and I would even say that those people who’s… Timothy McVeigh and David Koresh… that while I think they were responsible for their actions, to think that there wasn’t any mental illness at play too would be –

Yea, and you said that. Actually, you said something recently about… I think it was about the cinema shooting and I thought that it was really profound. You were saying that if you… if you don’t deal with a mental illness issue is like handing these people a gun. You can’t not… You can’t not address this in society and then act surprised when these stuff continues to happen.

Pain is gonna come out. One way or another... and society has to deal with it and the best way to deal with it is to try to go to therapy and try to treat it but it’s hard when people… because you can’t make people do what they need to get better. A certain part of them has to want it and submit to it but… and I think that’s what makes mental illness trickier than physical illness or other, you know, things where person can see, ‘oh, yes, my bone is broken. I do need to wear a cast.’

Yeah. That’s exactly right.

It’s a… But, you know, that line is so gray between at what point is somebody responsible for their actions. You know… How do you measure that? How do you? That’s a tough one. That’s a really tough one but let’s get back to your story. I’m sorry. I sidetracked us.

No, that’s ok. But I mean one difference I would make between what you were saying is that with postpartum depression, there are people with a history like you know. I’ve had, you know… with the previous hormonal stuff and there is a sort of a genetic component in my family for depression but some of… some women, it just hits them. You know. They are like very together, professional,… That type of person has no idea what’s going on. If you’re a person who has ever experienced depression and you know… I think that’s probably why I knew something was wrong. I was like, ‘oooh, I kind of know this feeling. This isn’t good.’ But if you are, you know,… that’s not something that happens in your life, just suddenly feeling like you’re absolutely losing your mind, you’re not going to tell anybody that and that’s what frightens me especially when, again, you know, the pampers commercial and you’re supposed to smiling, smiling and it’s –

That’s kind of the version of the person that tells the depressed person, ‘look how much you have to be grateful for.’

Exactly that. I wanted to say that to like ‘oh my God, you have this beautiful healthy baby’ and you know, ‘man who loves you’ and all these stuff. All of a sudden it’s like, ‘yes, all those factors are true. It has nothing to do with what’s going on.’ Nothing. Your brain is like going wacko on you and it has nothing to do with that. And, again, I think there is hormonal component to it.

So what was the next thing that happened? So you freeze with the baby by the pond. Then what?

I think that was about… because it was right before Christmas so I think that was the point where I was like, ‘okay, this is really bad.’ So I went back to my OBGYN and I said… I described this to her and she actually said, “I don’t know what to tell you.”

What?!

She is a really good doctor too. This was in 2005 and she’s like, “I hear ya.” Like I get it but she’s like, “I honestly don’t know what to tell you.” She was like, “I could recommend you read Brooke Shields’ book.”

You’ve got to be kidding me!

But she was trying to be helpful. I mean, she really was like, ‘I don’t…

How does she not know that there is medication for postpartum depression? I mean, did she use the word postpartum depression?

I think I said to her, “I think this is happening to me,” and she said, “I am a bit at a loss because there are not a lot of resources out here,” and that is as… especially true in France. I mean what I did with my daughter’s dad was I went… had this terrible teary day and like this little village library in the country and I just flipped through books and books and books until I found something in French that sort of resembled what I thought was going on with me and I copied all the pages and I was like, ‘here! See? This is what it is! This is what is!” because there is no… I definitely almost never hear it talked about over there and so I did read Brooke Shields’ book which, you know, wasn’t very… hadn’t been out for very long and I thought, ‘yeah. This is exactly what’s going on here.’

Was that comforting?

Yes. Very much so… very much so, and then I went back to the doctor and I also didn’t want to stop breastfeeding. So, I went back to the doctor and said, “I think this is a progesterone problem based on everything I think I know about my own hormones. So, let’s try to do this with progesterone.” So, she gave me a prescription for progesterone and I tried that and it didn’t work, and then she referred me to a psychiatrist. And, that was about a week before Christmas and when I got there, I was just a mess. A mess!

Always a good time to be depressed too.

Oh yeah. No, I was at the end of my rope and so this wonderful woman, she was just… I don’t know if she specializes in this but she was so kind and she was about to go on vacation for two weeks with her family, and she said, “I’m going to help you get through this.” She was like, “I can help you get through this. I’m going to help you get through this.” But she was like, “I hate…” She is just… she is like, ‘poor you.’ Like, ‘look at you! You’re in such a state. You don’t have to suffer. I’m going to help you. I promise.’ And, she even gave me her portable phone number for during the vacation that I could call her and it was just that little spark like it’s going to be ok.

That must have felt like a glass of water in the desert when you found her.

It was. It was. I mean, it took me a while to get to that person but when I did, you know, that was exactly who I needed. So, we first tried putting me back on the Zoloft and I stopped breastfeeding. Again, my choice. I just said I’m going to stop this and I’m going to start treating myself and that was probably also part of the reason I waited. Because I just kept feeling that it’s more important to do this for my daughter than to like deal with this problem and I can manage it and I wasn’t managing it. And then, that didn’t work and then in Spring I started taking Effexor. That did work. I had problems with it. I had side effects and ultimately it was really hard to get off of.

Did you find it hard to wake up in the morning?

I found everything. It was like it was difficult but it was working. That was the thing. I mean I have mixed feelings about that drug but I have to say that it did help me in that situation. It probably saved my life. And I was on that for about a year.

What… where did you see the relief? In being on that drug? The intrusive thoughts stopped?

Yes, they did.

Were you able to feel a connection to your baby?

Yes, I was able to s… I was just able to lighten up. I mean here is the strange thing. It was like all this time when I’m, you know, doing all these crazy stuff and marching around the pond, I was being a very good mother. I mean I was taking excellent care of my baby. I was cuddling her. I wasn’t like you know locking her in another room.

You just weren’t feeling it.

No, I was doing it. I was doing it but I was not feeling it. Yeah. And I was not giving myself any credit for doing it also. You know.

What was your childhood like?

My mother was… my mother had us when she was, my brother and I… she had me when she was 21. For all kinds of reasons, and I’m not sure what they all are, I don’t think she was cut out to be a mother. I don’t think that she was happy with being a mother. And she ultimately left when… left us when I was an early teenager. Moved far away. Left with a man and moved far away which was actually kind of a relief because my relationship with her was… I was… I didn’t feel that she loved me and I did not feel that I loved her which was really strange like from almost the beginning. I just… that thing that’s supposed to happen between mothers and daughters never existed between us.

Now I see why you related to the Teresa Strasser episode.

Yes, exactly! And I told you. I just listened to it recently and I forgot about that part.

Teresa’s mom had really emotionally abandoned her for all of her childhood even though she might have been there physically and when Teresa had her baby, her mom said, “we’re just not cut out to be moms.” And God, what an awful thing to say to –

Yeah. Emotional abandonment is a really very way of putting it.

And then try to drag your daughter down with you to… because you weren’t a good mother to say, ‘it’s a genetic thing with us.’ It might have been a genetic thing with her mom. Who knows what the reason was but don’t –

I don’t think there is a genetic thing to it. I mean, I’ll… I’ll tell you why. Because I think another issue in this for me, like I said, everything that I did wrong, it was like, ‘oh, here we go. Can’t do it. Not cut out for it.’ And then it all just started to happen. You know, it just… the maternal instinct that I was absolutely certain… I wasn’t certain but I was terrified wasn’t there, just happened. Like… It’s kind of hard not to love your kids, you know?

But you had to get on the meds to feel those feelings.

No, the meds were more about stopping the feeling like I was messing it up like back to Teresa Strasser. I told you… you know that little part that you in the intro, and she says at one point like, “it would be better for everyone if I just left.”

Meaning left the earth?

Yeah. Like everybody is going to be much better off without me. That’s exactly how I felt too. Like I am a mess. I’m gonna ruin the kid’s life, you know, I’m in the way. And none of it was true. But I couldn’t… I could not tell my brain that it was not true. And the medication helped me stop having that conversation in my head.

You know, I think feelings are so important that if we can’t get a taste of that feeling that leads us out of the darkness, it’s impossible for us to intellectually believe that there is a way out of the darkness. You know, we need a taste of it and sometimes when depression is so profound, there is not even a taste or whiff of that hope or that joy or whatever it is that we can cling to. Even somebody sometimes telling you this was my experience, your body and your soul tells you, ‘you’re one of the lucky ones.’ I’m not so lucky. That’s not going to be the case with me and that’s a lie.

Oh yeah. And again, you know, you’ve got the experience of people saying, ‘hey, cheer up with you’re depressed.’ But it’s the same with this. It’s like you can’t. You just can’t. And you know you should be and you also brought this new person into the world and you want to be like the smiley happy Betty Crocker mom that you, you know… and you’re not doing it.

That’s like telling a diabetic, ‘hey, suck it up. Produce some insulin.’

Right.

Do you think… and what was your relationship like with your dad?

Excellent.

So, when your mom left, there was… you said there was some relief?

Well, they had divorced and my mother had custody of us and my father was with the woman who is now my stepmother. So, I think there were always… I think everyone kind of knew that it was not great that I was with my mother but just like Teresa Strasser said, in those days you didn’t do that. You didn’t like challenge the mother.

Nobody went with the dad. Did you get the feeling that… Why do you think your mom wanted you? Got custody of you? Was it to look good because it –

Yes. I’m sure she didn’t want to be the woman who gave up her kids so she tried it but she wasn’t there a lot. You know, she was barely there. I was raised by… well, not raised. I saw my father every weekend. My father was excellent and we weren’t that far away from each other but I saw my dad like all the time but then you know, Monday through Friday, you know, we were with a baby sitter. And, she was just not present. Not emotionally present. It’s a difficult subject because she had a difficult childhood and you know, I’m at that point in my life where I see how all that stuff kind of happened and it’s hard to be… I see how it happened but it also happened to me so you know they say you’re supposed… You grow up and you can forgive your parents. I can forgive her. I can actually forgive her because I know… and she’s had a very very difficult life. But the situation did affect me.

And I think it’s important to give yourself that room to say I’m going to grieve for the childhood that I didn’t have and not to make your mom feel bad but so that you can get those feelings out of your soul instead of trying to keep them down. I think that a lot of people think that going back to the past is just wallowing in sadness and it’s not about wallowing. It’s about feeling it so that it can pass through you or out of you or you know, the power can be taken out of it because it’s not going anywhere.

No, it’s not. But it’s also confusing in that, you know, again, part of my life was great. I had a lot of support. You know, I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of great times, a great dad, so it’s like I was never completely collapsed because there was somebody holding up the other side of it. So it’s… I think, I don’t know. Becoming a mother has made me understand some the things that she went through, some of the frustrations that she had. And also, has made me not be like sympathetic at all to what she did like how could you do that whereas before it was all a mystery.

I wonder if it helps to look at that when you think, you know, how could she have done that. I wonder if it helps to look at that as a positive that I’m breaking the cycle.

Yes, definitely.

I know you have to feel those feelings that I didn’t get that and that makes me sad but thank God that –

No, and you know what is wonderful, I have to say, I am so happy to be on one end of this relationship like even if I’m the mom, and I have the daughter, it’s so healing to be on this side of the relationship because I’m getting some of that mother-daughter goodness and that part is amazing. It’s wonderful. It doesn’t heal things with my mom but it definitely… I get it. It feels really really good.

One of the things that you shared with me in an email is about the husband of your baby sitter. Did you ever tell anybody?

I told my mother. She didn’t believe me. I did not tell my father.

Did you know he was going to kill the guy?

No, I… the guy…

How old were you when it happened?

Between 8 and 10.

And how many times?

It was… You know people downplay these stuff. We slept over at their house quite a bit because my mom was out and so, I would say it was more like an inappropriate touching but nothing… inappropriate touching. He was telling me that this was happening because your mom is not here and I can kind of see some truth to that. Like yea, where is she by the way? Why are we over here? And I was so dependent on my father and my aunt and all these people on my dad’s side that I was terrified that if I told them, I would lose them too.

Who could blame you?

Yeah.

Wow. That is so heavy for a fucking kid. That is so heavy.

I was also kind of a smartass and I would like spar with this guy all day because that was like my… you know, my standing up to him and it was just messed up and it would come back on me later. I think I also mentioned in the email that my daughter’s had a babysitter 3 times. We’re working on a 4th time. I’m just terrified to leave her alone which is part of the problem. I probably should have had somebody take over for a week. But there is no way. No way, no way.

Which seems so natural to me when that happened to you. You know, how could you not be? You know, the babysitter survey that we have on the website, every person that had something done to them by a babysitter was like nobody babysits my kid. You know… or it’s a family member I really trust even then, you never know. You never know and I hate to say that to freak people out or they never go to see a movie in their life now.

Right? In fact I have to go!

Talk… walk me through approaching your mom with that information. What were you thinking and feeling? What did you say to her? What was her demeanor? What did she say and how did you feel afterwards?

I didn’t tell her… I have to remember this exactly.

Did you tell her while it was happening or afterwards?

We moved actually which was good. We moved and that ended that. I had discussed with her several times. I still don’t think she believed it or that I was exaggerating or trying to get attention. It was like an attention seeking thing. I just I held it in. In fact, I held it in for a very long time. I didn’t tell anybody till I was about seventeen and I still think that is something that I’m still managing. I probably am not.

Give me a couple of snapshots of your relationship with your mom other than that thing that could kind of exemplify.

I’m really afraid that my mother will hear this and I fee like –

You’re throwing her under the bus?

Yes.

You know I go through that too but you’re just speaking your truth. I even heard you say you mom isn’t a bad person. I heard you say your mom had a tough life and she didn’t know how to deal with what she was feeling and I don’t know how any person could take offense.

I even think there may have been postpartum depression. I mean for sure because it could be hereditary. I think there could have been, you know, after a second kid, like just the wheels went off because I have heard… I mean I’ve been told that when I was a baby-baby that she was an excellent mother but I have also noticed that, you know, there is a difference between being a parent to an infant, who is super cute, and one who starts talking like one who has opinion about you and can push your buttons. That gets a little tough.

Yeah, I think when kids start to look for that natural independence, that’s healthy and that the parent should encourage but also keep an eye on, I think that’s that gray area that people who were children of narcissistic parents, who I’m sure your mom was, they struggle with gray thinking. Everything’s black and white so I would imagine allowing the children to explore boundaries, you know, which is such a gray area would be really difficult for that.

If you have low self-esteem to being with and you need validation from people, kids are not a good place to look for it because… yeah. And that’s not their job. You’re the parent. You know, I mean, if you’re… yeah. And I can see that my mother, you know, she was young and she had a difficult childhood. She was feeling very vulnerable. She was… I don’t think that she understood that once she had a baby, that the baby was going to take over like the attention was going to go to the baby. People were going to stop telling her, you know, how wonderful and pretty she is, and they were going to start cuddling the baby. I think that was a big shock for her. So if you’re the kind of person who needs a lot of external validation, you know, it’s hard to pass that on. It’s… but that’s the way it works. That’s the way it works. Like you’re done. I mean you’re not done but it’s like, you know, you grow up… you know, you grow up and you have a child and we all keep moving on and we all keep moving on and we all keep moving on. You can’t be… you got to make room for the kid.

But if you’re emotionally stunted which most people who never processed their abuse or their abandonment, you can know that intellectually, ‘oh my God, I shouldn’t be jealous of my daughter,’ but –

Exactly. There should be no circumstances in which a parent should compete with their child. It happens all the time and it’s because they didn’t get what they needed and it’s… yea, that definitely happened between my mother and I. Definitely.

I would love to see a mother versus daughter beauty pageant.

Oh my God. I think they exist. Don’t they?

Are you kidding me?

Yeah, no, they exist. They definitely do.

Mother versus daughter?

Well, I have seen a documentary. I don’t know where it was –

I can see a mother and daughter being… and by the way I hate all beauty pageants. They make me sick. To me, it’s like a slow train wreck. It’s sadder to me than watching Faces of Death because at least the person in Faces of Death (I’ve actually never watched Faces of Death but I’m trying to picture the worst thing that you can watch,) but at least that person is done with their pain but the beauty pageant thing, I feel like I’m watching somebody in the middle of quicksand that you can’t get to because they’re like, ‘I’m good! Sand’s warm!’

I have actually seen, at some point, a documentary about a mother and a daughter that were in a beauty pageant together. It’s horrific. There are a couple of things I want to say. My relationship with my daughter is great so all that fear about, you know, like I mess this up, this is irr… what’s my word? irreparable. It was all fine. She doesn’t remember it. We’re thick as thieves. It’s all good. So, that’s the one thing.

Do you feel like she can come to you with anything?

Yes, absolutely.

That’s got to be a great feeling.

It is. And also, you know, it took me a few years to like go, ‘I’m doing this. I’m actually doing this. It’s going fine.’ Like, it’s… you know… it took me while to get my sea legs and I did and it’s… you know, I feel good about it. So, having postpartum depression is not the end. It’s not the end. It’s one of the easiest things to treat, if you go get help which is why people need to speak about it. You know? I think if you’ve said to the mother who lives next door to you with a new baby, like, ‘are you ok?’ I don’t think she’s going to do that… she’s going to say, ‘well, actually no.’ But your family, your friends, you know, I make it a point with all of my friends who have babies as much as I can.

You know, what I think may allow that neighbor to come forward is if you said, ‘you know, if everything is not ok, you should know that I had a really difficult first year and here is what happened to me.’

Absolutely. That’s what I would love to see people do.

Do you ever do it with anybody?

Always! Always and sometimes they’re like, ‘no, I’m fine! Please!!’ ‘Are you sure you’re ok?!’ ‘No, really!! It’s all good.’ ‘I know you’re not telling me the truth.’ ‘No, I’m fine. Please go away!’ But, you know…

But what a beautiful gesture on your part though.

It’s not even a gesture. It’s common sense. You know, here is the thing. When a woman has a baby, they’re like, ‘how are you feeling? How did you heal up from your cesarean section? How’s it going?’ You know, there is a fourth question. Are you okay? Do you need help? Do you need to talk to somebody? You know, are you feeling blue? Like, that should be… and I know hospitals in United States and different places are doing postpartum screening and there is a questionnaire of twelve things that they are supposed to answer. I think, and maybe it is in some programs, this should be part of like the prenatal classes. For sure. There should be… Like, I mean, Maybe there are, maybe there is, but you know, there should be a good half an hour in there.

It’s not wide-spread?

Nobody wants to be a downer. You know, and men should know. Men should know like my wife has not completely lost her mind. Men can help.

How did your partner –

He came around.

What allowed him to come around? What –

Education. I mean, just being able to –

From you? From outside sources?

From me because where I was living it wasn’t something that, you know, people talked about. The women that this happened to that I know about, like, kind of went to spend time with their parents and came back, you know and like those of us in the know knew what was going on but, yeah. It’s still… I think it’s still not ok to say, you know, she can’t handle this right now. So, another thing that I wanted to say is that I started reaching out once I figured out what was going on, I started reaching out on the internet to people that I didn’t even know. I joined chatrooms and things and it was mentally helpful because all those people were going through the same thing.

Talk about Kathrine Stones’ website.

Yes. There is a great website out there called postpartumprogress.com and this woman who I don’t know but I’m a huge fan of, she has… It’s kind of a clearing house for all things postpartum. She does sort of a blog about it but she also has incredible resources. You can go there and get the reading list on it. Some of the things I haven’t read but that is a great place to start. It’s a great place to get help.

And, we’re trying to get her as a guest. She lives in Atlanta and when she does come in town, her schedule is usually pretty tight but we’ve corresponded a couple of times so fingers crossed, we will be able to get her at some point.

It’s so helpful. There is another woman. Her name is Heather Armstrong. She is a writer.

She is so funny.

She is hilarious. I did… She was actually the first person I discovered just googling postpartum depression. So, her website which is called dooce.com –

D-O-O-C-E?

Exactly. When her daughter was born, her daughter was maybe a year or two old and she is a very very funny woman and she really suffered with this. I mean, much more severely than I did. And, she actually… So, she had a tradition of writing a letter to her daughter every month. I think it was every month. It was like love letter to her daughter. And so, her posts were between, ‘here is what’s happening with me. I’m losing my mind. I’ve had to go to the hospital,’ and this, this, and that. But then, these amazing letters about her daughter that were just… they’re so touching and loving and that helped me immensely because I saw like these things can exist at the same time and they do. And, she went on to have a second child. And, in fact, the columns about her first daughter have been made into a book and her experience with PPD, I can’t remember the name of her book but if you go on her website, you can easily find it. She did a whole book about that. That was an incredible help to me. She has a community on her website now where moms talk to each other about different things and you know, that’s always one of the topics and I was going to mention, one of the topics is ‘should women who have depression issues have babies?’ There is always someone on that website who is like, ‘I’m twenty-five years old. I have this problem; I have this problem. I think I shouldn’t have children.’ And, I would say no. I mean, well, I would say discuss it with your doctor like really assess the situation but don’t think because you have, you know, premenstrual issues or you have had episodes of depression, that that would make you a bad mother or that you would destine your child to a terrible life. Because I think that people who are very aware of their own mental state are actually much better at dealing with these things. When you know like oops, there is something not right here.

I wonder too if that could be a great example for that child on how to deal with crisis and that things can be managed if you’re willing to be open to what the help is and sometimes to doing things even if they’re painful or you don’t want to do them because you are going to be uncomfortable and lengthy and blah blah blah.

Well, of course I’m like on the lookout for any signs of this in my daughter. Any signs of like harm… I mean like she’s not old enough now, but even like, you know, depression because it runs in my family. Like, I’m just hawk-eye all the time now. I do talk to her about those things a lot. Like I don’t… I’ll tell her I don’t feel good today but here is what I’m doing about it or remember when I felt really bad yesterday? Like, here is what I did about it and today I feel better. And, I want to start that dialog with her because that’s the point. You know, we can’t hide this stuff. It’s too dangerous to hide it.

That’s so awesome too that she then gets a realistic template to go, ‘okay, you have good days and you have bad day.’

Yes and you’re, you know, the whole premise of your podcast, you are not alone, that is the point.

Is there anything else you want to touch on before we go to the fears and love?

I think that’s it.

I’m going to be reading the fears and loves of a listener, Rachel. Do you want to start with fears first?

Yes.

Okay. Why don’t you start?

I fear that despite everything I just said, I’m a crappy mother.

Right out of the gate!

Oh well.

Rachel says that, “I’m afraid that I’ll never find romantic love.”

I’m afraid that my daughter will inherit my hormonal issues.

“Because of this first fear, I’m afraid that I’ll never get married.”

I’m afraid of pigeons.

“Because of these first…” My wife is too. Freaked out by pigeons. Equally freaked out and grossed out.

They’re freaky!

Yeah.

“Because of these first two fears, I’m afraid that I’ll never have children. No one in my immediate family has given birth out of wedlock and I refuse to be the first. Also, my mom was a single mother for most of my life and has said that nothing would disappoint her more in life than for me to willingly choose to be a single mother.”

No pressure.

No pressure. Lots of support.

Wow, okay. I’m afraid that having a child at nearly forty means that I will not live or… live to see or enjoy my grandchildren.

“I’m afraid that when people look at me, they’re disgusted by my physical appearance.”

I’m afraid of my daughter growing up in a culture that hyper sexualizes young girls.

“I’m afraid that I’m breaking my mom and my grandparents’ hearts by living abroad.” Wow, there is so many similarities between yours –

This always happens!

Always happens. The Synchronicity of the fear and love off.

Alright, well, here is my next one. I’m terrified of something happening to one of my relatives and not being able to get home in time.

“I’m afraid that my coworkers think that I get picked for extra trainings because my dad is high up in our school district.”

I’m afraid that with all of the hormonal issues I’ve had that menopause will be sheer hell.

“I’m absolutely positively terrified of frogs and toads.”

[whispers] And pigeons! I’m afraid of flying.

“I’m afraid that I will be paying off my student loans for the rest of my life.” A lot of people have that one.

I think I’m done.

Let’s go to the loves. Why don’t you start?

Are these her loves too?

They are.

Her fears were good. Her loves are going to be –

They were.

I love in the morning when I drop my daughter off for school, let her out of the car when she’s dressed, her homework is done, her breakfast is eaten, and she smiles. That’s when I feel like we’re doing this right.

Rachel says, “I love living on a tiny island in the south pacific.” That sounds awesome.

I like trying a new food for the first time.

Me too! I have a hard time then not eating it every day for a month.

Yea, I do that. I get obsessed with like one thing and I eat… Yeah.

“I love when my students call me mom.” That’s sweet.

I love having exact change.

“I love looking at the Pacific Ocean on my drive to work each day.”

I love meteor showers, giant trees, and anything else that reminds me that the universe is very big and we are all very small.

Me too. The mountains always give me that. “I love getting hugged from behind.” Oh, that’s an interesting one because I would imagine for a lot of people that would be a fear.

Yeah. I love filthy and inappropriate British humor.

“I love listening to side 2 of the Beatles’ Abby Road.” Which I think ends with the End, right?

That’s right.

[sings] and in the end…

Drum solo. We can do it. I love sleeping with the windows open even when it’s snowing.

“I love having someone else brush my hair for me.”

Good one. I love discovering an author, film maker, or podcast that I didn’t know about, and knowing there is a whole body at work still together.

Isn’t that awesome?

Love it.

“I love the smell of a ginger lei?” L-E-I? lei, lai?

Lei like a leh? Around her neck? She must… she lives in the Pacific, right?

Yeah.

I think it’s a flower.

“I love the smell of a ginger… of a ginger lei.” Yeah, that must be a… Yeah, I bet that smells good.

I love the mental clarity that happens when I go on a very long steep hike.

There is something about the hike.

There is something about the marching.

I like it because it’s… it’s… you get all that energy out but it’s also sightseeing. At least if it’s a place that’s scenic. Oh, I love this one. “I love the sound of pouring rain on my tin roof.”

Oh yeah. I love when you’re stopped at a stop light, listening to music in your car, and the people walking down the street match the beat of the music and it all seems synchronized.

That’s awesome. “I love reading the stats of my former students who now play college football.” Oh, I know we have never had that one before.

I guess finally, I love the wise women who have mothered me emotionally and intellectually and creatively over the years and the fact that I’m old enough that I’m starting to be able to pay it forward.

That is beautiful. That is really beautiful. I think we should end on that one.

Yeah.

Amelia, thank you so much for sharing your life with us and I’m sorry that there were so many moments that I didn’t understand what you were saying.

No, it’s ok.

This might have been on my part. My clumsiest interview.

No, you’ve had much clumsier.

Thank you so much.

Okay. Thanks.

Closing

Many thanks to Amelia and you know, I emailed her afterwards. I typically shoot somebody an email letting them know that their episode is going up and we were both just saying how, you know, we hope that this episode helps women but we also really hope it helps the men in their lives because I think we are probably in the dark even more than they are. Let’s get… before I get in some surveys, I almost spared you the announcements. You almost got off. I want to mention there is a couple of different ways to support the program. The program? Really? [laughs] The festivities? You can go to the website mentalpod.com and you can support us financially by making a Paypal donation, either a one-time, or a recurring monthly for as little as 5 bucks a month and God bless you people who have donated and are monthly donors. I so appreciate it. You can also support us by shopping through our Amazon search portal. It’s on the home page, right hand side, about halfway down. It doesn’t cost you anything. Amazon gives us a couple of nickels. You can buy a T-shirt or a mug. Have I mentioned that we now have women’s T-shirts? Estoy Merchandise is our new purveyor of T-shirts and they do a real nice job and you can just click on the link on our homepage and go buy yourself one. You can support us non-financially… Oh, and we’re also… coffee. There’s a coffee co-operative that brands our brands of coffee and it’s a non-profit and they give us a couple of nickels when you buy a pound of coffee so I believe that link is on the homepage as well. Things are just falling apart. The wheels are falling off the announcements. I’m by the side of the road with flares and sticking my thumb out. Is it the 70s? [laughs] You can also support us non-financially by going to iTunes, writing something nice, giving us a good rating, or spreading the word through social media. Really appreciate you guys doing that. Alright. Let’s get to the surveys.

The first one I’m going to read is just an excerpt from the Shame and Secret survey filled out by a guy who calls himself Catman Struthers. He is straight in his 20s and deepest darkest thoughts, “I want to scream at my girlfriend and just dress her down for being so thoughtless when I’m feeling depressed. I want to commit suicide but make it appear as an accident.” I think those were two separate sentences. “I want someone to shoot me in the back of the head like in American Beauty. I find the idea of the bullet tearing through my head in slow motion strangely comforting. My dog is a rescue and can be aggressive. We all got problems. Am I right? Sometimes when she’s particularly hard to handle on a walk and she is not responding to positive reinforcement, I want to beat her to an inch of her life. Sometimes, I just want to leave. I want to look my life in the eyes and say fuck you and just walk the fuck away. I want to cheat on my girlfriend just because. I love my girlfriend but I want the rush of novelty and social disregard. I want to tell happy people to fuck themselves. I want to pretend to be normal and use my anger as a driver to be a ruthless business person.” I haven’t met very many happy ruthless business people. Most of them are really stuck in their heads and not very joyful. That’s just been my experience. Deepest darkest secret, “sometimes I swear on my head using the most foul sexist and racist language. Not because I’m sexist or racist but because I know those words are the most destructive. I have punched my dog in the face. To be fair, she bit me in the moment of her own rage but still I feel like such a shit. I actively maintain a secret online dating profile even though I’m in a long term relationship. I’ve never done anything more than email people but still it’s like a fucking time bomb I keep strapped under my chair just to have the rush of sitting on a bomb. I’ve manipulated data in my research to make the results better. I lie all the time by giving excuses for why I failed to meet deadlines and engagements. Really, I’m just lazy or anxious and don’t want to or can’t make them.” What if anything do you wish for? “I wish for simplicity. I get so easily overwhelmed by decisions in career advancement.” Have you shared these things with others? “No, or not really. I have gone to therapy and divulged “the clean version” of this to my psychologist. It’s too hard to own up to your darkest thoughts even here sometimes. Somehow acknowledging them trivializes them. That may seem odd to say as though I wish to maintain their importance. I don’t. At least not in and of themselves. I just don’t want to minimize their importance in how they shape my personality and drive my inner world. I’m not proud of these thoughts but they are a part of me.” I say welcome people in your inner world. I have… It’s been a lifesaver for me. How do you feel after writing these things down? “Relived and sad. It’s like going to therapy but your therapist is a movie poster. I do find comfort though in reading other people’s responses and finding that many share the same struggles as me.” Thank you for that.

This is from the What Has Helped You survey filled out by Daniel. She is gay and in her 30s and her issues are depression, anxiety, PTSD, and bipolar too. “I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety and PTSD since grade school. For the past 4 year, I’ve struggled with obesity. I was always a skinny bitch so this is worth noting.” What has helped you deal with them? “Unfortunately, nothing helps me currently. Writing, riding my bike, and walking worked for me in the past. Unfortunately, my anxiety and body pain prevent me from participating in these activities now. Yes, even writing causes me anxiety. Meds don’t work for me so I’m going to try ECT.” Which stands, If I’m mistaking, for Electroconvulsive Therapy. Sending you a hug, Daniel.

This is from the Shame and Secret survey filled up by a woman who calls herself Grim. She is straight in her 20s. Raised in pretty dysfunctional environment. Was a victim of sexual abuse and never reported it. She has also been physically abused and emotionally abused, and about the emotional abuse she writes, “my parents split up when I was a year old. My mother went from being a middle-class housewife and mother of four living in her home country to living in a foreign country, single, alone, and working 3 jobs to make ends meet. To some extent, she blamed me for their split. I had been unplanned, six years after my other siblings and the strain that put the nail in the coffin. Her depression over the reduced circumstances was directed at everyone but the physical abused was mostly directed at me. For years, she beat the crap out of me until I was fourteen and old enough and strong enough to physically overpower her at which point she never hit me again. My mother now completely denies ever having beat any of us as children.” Have you ever had any positive experiences with your abuser? “Since the death of my father 3 years ago, our relationship has improved and to an extent reversed. I now take care of her. Only in the last year or so I have been able to forgive this behavior and I choose not to duel on these emotions as I don’t see the value in dueling and making myself unhappy and straining our relationship.” Darkest thoughts? “I think about how worthless I am, how much I despise myself, how pethatic and unlovable I am to those around me and I think about killing myself. I project a very confident and somewhat arrogant exterior so these are things I have never told anyone.” Deepest darkest secrets? “I cheated on my current partner. This kills me. Part of me this stems from feeling worthless compared to him as he is younger than me and more successful.” What, if anything, would you like to say to someone that you haven’t been able to? “I would like to ask my biological father why he allowed our mother to raise us knowing the circumstances that we lived in both financially and emotionally.” What do you wish for? “I wish to be free of destructive thoughts and patterns.” Have you share these things with others? “No. Whilst I am getting better…” Congratulations on being our first listener to use the word, whilst. I stop eating from my English-Egg cup, pull off my crown, and salute you, fine lady! “Whilst I am getting better at it, I was for a large part of my life very emotionally reserved or closed off and felt that by sharing my emotions with another person, I was burdening them in portraying weakness.” I think those are the two biggest myths about sharing our inner lives with people because we think we’re going to burden them or look weak. How do you feel after writing these things down? “Weepy. Because I try to force myself not to think about these things but also, somewhat relived like ripping off a band aid.” Well, I hope it’s an elegant royal band aid. But all kidding aside, Grim, thank you. Thank you for that. You sound like a very compassionate person.

This is from a new survey that I’m really excited about called Awfulsome Moments and the question is share an awfulsome moment or two from your life. Actually, it’s not a question. It’s instruction. An awfulsome moment or two from your life. Something that was awful and dark, but had an element that was awesomely ironic, sickly funny or bizarre. A moment that makes you want to cry and laugh at the same time and this is filled out by J. Monkey who writes, “I had a guy wheel out on me once. Seriously. He was riding his bike and got hit by a car and broke his pelvis. I bathed, fed, and housed him. We had already been dating for two years and had one of those I-don’t-want-to-be-your-boyfriend-but-I’d-still-would-like-to-have-sex-with-you relationships. He was the scooter-riding, tight-shirt-wearing, quadrophenia-jerk-off but I was addicted to him so I bathed, fed, and housed him when he got hit seeing that he has to be in a wheelchair for 3 months. Then one night, after many unanswered pages (this is dating me) he rolled in about 3 A.M. I said nothing but grabbed his crotches and rolled out.” Oh, “he said nothing but grabbed his crotches and rolled out. Not a word. I stood there dumbfounded. I ran after him down the alley way daggers in my eyes. There was a cab waiting for him with a girl in it. The fucker was cheating on me in a wheelchair. I stood at the door of the cab. He rolled the window down and simply said, “don’t get crazy.”” That is awesome! I want to see that in a movie. “Don’t get crazy,” From the cab.

This is from the… Oh, this is from the survey People’s Experience Being Hospitalized. And, filled out by a transgendered female to male… and by the way, I apologized when I recorded that episode with Amelia. I was still referring to people as transgendered and I had been corrected since then that it is transgender, not transgendered. C. Martin Jones is transgender male to female, bisexual, though not currently attracted to any sex or gender, is 20-29 years old, and writes, “I was hospitalized. Had told a counselor I was suicidal and I had a plan. It only…” Describe your experience as a patient or visitor and did it help? “It only helped tangentially. I was eighteen in my freshman year of college. I’d been suicidal for a while and decided to talk to someone before I killed myself. The counselor almost immediately took me on the subway to a hospital and got me hospitalized. It was an enormous shock. I had been outted as depressed and suicidal in my family and I basically went into shock. They took all my personal belongings but none of the hospital clothes fit me. I had to wear a gown with no pants for my first day. I was put in the adult ward because I was legally an adult but I was the youngest one there and it was really really scary. The majority of the other patients were much more profoundly affected by their mental illnesses. I spoke to several people who were actively hallucinating. But what was more disconcerting was how loose they were. My roommate told me, very matter of factly, that she had come to the US from Haiti because the devil was chasing her and her father was the Lion King. Even if you are not delusional, the boundaries of sanity get very thin when you are surrounded by the delusional. The shower in my room was broken and it only sprayed freezing cold water so I didn’t shower while I was there. I was given my clothes back and my sister visited on the second day that I was in. She brought a bunch of books so I spent the rest of the time reading Valley of the Dolls. Very apropos. I think I was in for 3.5 days. The entire time I didn’t speak to a doctor more than 15 minutes. I ate next to nothing but no one noticed or said anything. On the day I was leaving, a nurse brought me a breakfast menu for the next day and when I told her I didn’t need it, she said, “well, we’ll see. Fill it out just in case.” I still kind of hate her even if I understand where she was coming from, it was extremely traumatizing. It’s taken me years to build up trust in doctors and it’s only 7 years later that I can view it as not entirely a punishment for some personal flaw. I met one guy who was also there because of depression and he was the only bright spot. He was really nice to me. Actually sat and talked with me and I’m really grateful for that. I did start going to my therapist because of this and she is great. I do believe that if I hadn’t gone to the hospital, I probably would be dead but I think finding a good therapist would have been equally as beneficial. Thank you for that C. Martin Jones.

This is from the Happy Moments survey filled out by Danielle. She writes, “when my biological mother picked me up from my abusive adoptive “mother’s” home when I was a teen so I could live with her” oh, I see. The happy moment was when that happened. “I had spent my whole life wanting to be good enough for her to take me back and so I felt like I finally had. I felt relieved to get away from my adoptive mother. I felt excitement to see what it would be like to live with my biological mom. I was afraid she would force me to go to Christian school but I talked her out of it and into an alternative school. Falling in love with my high school girlfriend. Oh, the butterflies in my stomach. The all-body tingling when I first kissed her. The trill of holding her hand and having sex with her. I loved all of those things. I was in an alternative school and many of my fellow students were LGBT too so it wasn’t a big deal. Dating a woman was not an option in my home town. It felt wonderful to be in an environment where I could be myself. Thank you for that.

This is… this is also from the Being Hospitalized survey and this is filled out by a woman who calls herself, Recovering. She identifies as transsexual. She is in her 40s. She was hospitalized for eating disorder and she says, “to say I met some interesting people would be an understatement. The staff was lovely but easily manipulated. Rebelling against the rules was a nice distraction from my internal struggles. Although I did what I could to stay longer as I preferred the safety of the ward to chaotic world outside.” Thank you for that.

This is from the same survey filled out by a guy, also transsexual, who calls himself Braked. He is between eighteen and nineteen. I guess that would only leave eighteen and a half. He was hospitalized because he tried to commit suicide. He writes… Did it help? “It did and it didn’t. I was so scared and fucked up by the hospital that I went and got on medication and went to therapy which I’d been resisting for my entire life. But the hospital was a fucking hell hole. I had to speak to a doctor who clearly just wanted to go home and he asked me why I had tried to kill myself and I said that I’d had a sad life. And he said… and he asked what single event and I said there wasn’t any and he asked how long I had felt sad and I told him for years. And that motherfucker looked me in the face and said, ‘well, I can’t do anything to help you.’” What a dick! How do you do it? When somebody’s been sad for years, how do you…? I don’t understand that.

This was all the… this was from the What Has Helped You filled out by our friend C Martin Jones whose issues are bipolar II, self-harm, and anxiety. What has helped? Our friend is committing to therapy with a great therapist, medication, finding a community that I love and feel very accepted in, finding friends I feel comfortable being open with, and cigarettes when I really can’t cope. Thank you for that. That’s an awesome one and I agree with all of those but I do coffee instead of cigarettes because I’m better than you. That’s right. I’m superior.

This is from the same survey filled out by a guy who calls himself cold fingers. He is gay in his 20s. His issues are bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, anxiety and panic attacks, persistent suicidal thoughts, fucked up thoughts all the fucking time, and co-narcissism. What’s helped? “Sadly of late it’s been 3.2 beer and cigarettes, but it’s so many other things. I’m living with my sister currently and her support, her kids, and her dog have been a huge help. Winter is not a good time for me but having her and her family around has been so great. Aside from that, it’s small trivial stuff. I’m very active on twitter. People rag on it but it’s been real great getting to know people from all over the world who struggle with the same shit I do. The dildo jokes don’t hurt either. Taking photographs. Putting time and effort into an art project. Photography is powerful medium. There are so many other things but I’m sitting outside smoking and my fingers are getting cold. That’s why we have the name cold fingers I guess.

This is an email I got from a listener who just wanted to share her hopes and she calls herself Hopes Not Lost, and these are some of her hopes. “I hope one day I see past off my dark shadows in my past and see there is beautiful moments too. I hope I’ll be able to take off all the masks and show my authentic self. I hope I can break down the walls of pain and be able to be silly with my children. I hope I can one day accept that yes, abuse was wrong and traumatizing but how I coped with it has made me a strong, loving, compassionate adult. I hope that through this healing I can no more of… I can say no more often without feeling like I am letting someone else down or that they may think I don’t care about them. I hope that by diving into my abuse it will not drag me into a deeper depression. I hope one day I will see all the beautiful moments that I helped create. I hope that at the end of this journey I can look back and be amazed by the growth I have made and it is possible to truly believe I am all the nice things people say about me.” Well, that one makes me want to cry good tears. “I think one day I can take a complement without feeling uncomfortable, shameful, or without my skin crawling. I hope I don’t lose the passion for helping people but also start asking and accepting help from others. I hope I can stop looking for physical illnesses to validate receiving attention and being cared for. I hope I will always have access to therapy when I need it. I hope I remember to laugh. I hope I can experience sex as an act of love, not just what you do when you love someone. I hope I can stop feeling like a victim and more like a survivor. And finally I hope that the world can see all others on this planet as comrades rather than enemies.” Didn’t know she was Russian. I couldn’t resist!

And finally, this is a Happy Moment from Blue Rose who writes, “my best friend and I have both recently graduated from college and moved back in with our parents. We’ve been separated for most of past 4.5 years and both had some difficult times and unhealthy relationships while apart. Last weekend, after going to her boyfriend’s show (he is in a punk band,) we sat on the couch in our living room and watched My Fair Wedding with David Tutera, our girliest indulgence for 7 hours until 5 in the morning when we fell sleep curled up in balls next to each other under the same heated blanket. Later that morning, her dog climbed on the couch and we both sleepy sat and played with the dog laughing. Sunlight was pouring in through the window. My phone wasn’t ringing and I had nowhere to be. I realized it was the most comfortable I had been around another human being in a recent memory and I wasn’t worried about anything at all.” And what a beautiful, beautiful moment to end this episode on. Thank you so much everybody that helps this survey, thank you for all your support. Helps the survey?! Helps the show. Thank you for your support in this last year and looking forward to another… another year of getting to know you guys better, having you to get to know me better, and feeling more a part of the universe. And, if you’re out there and you’re feeling alone, don’t give up hope. Just ask for help and know that you are not alone. None of us are and thanks for listening.