Coming Out to My Kids Or There's Another D to Talk About and I Don't Mean Drugs

A few blogs ago I wrote about how I was adding love to my four Golden Rules. So now it looks more like five Golden Rules:

1. No drinking/drugs
2. No smoking
3. Always respect women
4. Always practice safe sex
5. Love everyone but the assholes – we don’t discriminate

Friends, there is another very important conversation we need to have with our kids and I’m guessing it’s one you don’t want to have because I struggle with it too. Nancy Reagan helped us with Just Say No, the NFL (tries to) promote respecting women, the Dalai Lama teaches us not to discriminate, and I’ll coach you with the sex talk. But shhh….notice the silence? We don’t want to talk about depression and mental illness. I watch the news and see babies committing suicide. It literally breaks my heart and I’m sure you feel the same way. Yet I have not really had a conversation with my kids about mental health and depression.

I have no excuses. I used to teach about depression when I worked in wellness. I work on a college campus and mental illness issues have risen at a rate college campuses cannot keep up with. I have had family and friends impacted with mental illness. I know there should not be a stigma surrounding depression and other mental illnesses. And I am silent.

Why is it so easy to talk about the dangers of drinking, smoking and drugs? I’ll admit, cracking the conversation on safe sex was difficult but now it’s easy. Heck, just the other month, I answered the question “What is a dildo?” barely batting an eye. I’m still working on talking about race and discrimination. Depression though? Shhh. We don’t talk about that. But we need to start. The time is now. We cannot waste another minute.

Have you lost someone – friend or family - to suicide? I have. As I watch the news, we are seeing children killing themselves for various reasons – bullying, drugs, mental health problems. It is devastating. It is frightening. We need to have open conversations about mental health with our kids. Just like the sex talks, I want my kids to feel comfortable telling me if they feel depressed or if they have questions about it or if their friends say something troubling. I want an open door policy and the only way to get there is if I open that door.

We are so used to knowing everything about our kids physically. How much they weigh, how tall they are, what they had for breakfast, how tired they are at the end of the day, if their tummies hurt after certain foods. Often we stop at the physical though and don’t want to ask about the tough mental stuff. It’s scary. Suicide completely frightens me because it is so final. There is no treatment after a suicide. Game over. No more tokens. If I found out that my child was struggling with depression or another mental health illness and I didn’t know and didn’t get him help, I’d be wrecked.

Are all suicides preventable? No. It’s no one’s fault. Depression and mental illness are diseases, sometimes fatal ones. We just want to pretend they aren’t. If you had cancer, we’d crowdfund you, throw you a benefit breakfast, start a meal train. We’d rally! You are a fighter! If you find out someone in your family is battling mental illness, you are going to take that journey with a lot less people by your side. There will not be a pancake breakfast. There will not be t-shirts made in your honor, no viral ice bucket challenges. Yet mental illness can be expensive to treat, insidious and long-term, and emotionally and physically draining on the caretakers, just like cancer, ALS and other illnesses that affect families. We aren’t going to mention it in the Christmas cards though. You aren’t going to hear those remission stories. In fact, chances are that no one is going to talk about it at all. That’s not okay.

How did we get here? Mental illness is scary. It causes symptoms we can’t necessarily see, like the way we can see tumors on an MRI. But if you talk to someone with mental illness, they will tell you it feels like one, the way it can take over your mind. Our society perpetuates this by providing inadequate mental health resources and benefits for mental illness. Access to care can be difficult for some, only further hindered by a population that is hard to treat. For example, it’s not uncommon for someone with bipolar disorder to go off their meds because they are feeling better – except it was the medicine that made them feel better in the first place. Back to the cycle. There are so many different depression medicines available now and it can take time and trial and error to find the right combination and dose, which can seem hopeless to group that already feels hopeless. Supporting our friends and family with mental illness can feel daunting and solitary.

So many in our homeless population suffer from mental illness and we see them in an untreated state, which can be disconcerting. If we are disturbed seeing their behavior from the outside, can you imagine the inner turmoil they are in? Or have you watched someone starve themselves intentionally? They "want" to do it. Now find them help. Even the best insurance plans will balk at providing adequate care.

It’s time to cut the stigma of mental illness. At our house we are going to start talking about mental illness. No one is immune. Personally I have dealt with an eating disorder since I was 16. I have been battling it for 24 years. I have been going to therapy for more than four years. I have not told my children. Therapy appointments are simply called doctor’s appointments in our house – not because that’s what they are but because I don’t want to tell my kids I go to therapy. Heck, I hardly tell anyone. I may say I have some “eating issues” – we all take dieting to the extreme sometimes don’t we? Just like we all have “bad days” or feel “blue.” I downplay it. But in reality, I have not had one day in 24 years where I did not have a conversation with my eating disorder. Some days are better than others. Some years are better than others. I’m starting to accept that I’m going to be dealing with this, possibly for the rest of my life. It impacts me every day. It is part of my history, it is a part of my present. It has shaped who I am. But shhh. We don’t talk about it.

It’s going to take some courage but I’m going to come out to my kids about this. If Mom can have mental health problems, anyone can. I happen to think that while I’m not perfect, I’m not doing a half-bad job most days (depends on which kid you are talking to.) My eating disorder impacts me but does not define me. There is no shame in being a survivor. It means you are a warrior. Trust me, I go to war with my eating disorder every day – I am a fighter, just like everyone else with internal battles. It’s time to stop hiding our mental health issues. If we talk about them, our kids will know that they can talk about them too. If one of my sons is feeling depressed or is hearing voices or having hallucinations, I want to be the first person to know. I want them to feel as comfortable telling me if they are depressed as they do telling me about a hang nail. And we will treat it with the seriousness and dignity it deserves. We will not hide in the shadows. Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of – our attitude towards it is. 

When Is Intermission or The Ringmaster Needs a Break

If I had to pick one motto that constantly surfaces in my life it would probably be “The show must go on.” This is a phrase that I have repeated to myself for years, starting from when I was young, teaching group fitness classes and personal training. When you teach, no matter what you are teaching, you are putting on a show. And that show must go on no matter if you are sick, tired or hurt. And it better be a pretty damned good show. My boss and I taught through stomach flu, strep throat, sprained ankles and pregnancies. We didn’t miss a beat. I taught with a heart monitor hanging from my neck, I taught the day after an ultrasound to see if I had a pulmonary embolism. I was scheduled to teach the morning I delivered my first son. I taught the first day back from maternity leave.

As I’ve gotten older, the show has changed. I may not be teaching exercise classes like I used to, but my life has filled in with a career, a marriage, and two busy kids. There is never a dull moment. Every night is “something.” Sometimes it’s sports or music and sometimes it’s just the usual drill of homework and dinners. But there is always something that needs my attention and if for a minute I should forget that, I will hear the “MOM” call that we all know and love (?).

As life has gotten busier and more people depend on me to be a ring master, I’ve been thinking about that motto more and more. And I’m not unique in this. Every mom I know has done the same. We are like the post office – through rain, snow, wind, heat, the mail is always delivered, and Mom is always there. Too much is counting on us. Some of us are working full-time outside the home and full-time inside the home when we get off work. Some of us have the 24-hour job of working inside the home. All of us have jobs to do in one way or another and there is not an option to take a time out.

This, my dear friends, is bull shit. One Saturday I stole 50 minutes while everyone was awake (normally my “me” time is between the hours of 4-6 a.m.) and went to the gym. And I felt like I was on borrowed time – I had my phone on the console of the elliptical, prepared to take whatever need came my way. I had to still get groceries, unload everything, and get people ready for their next sporting events, where I would spend the rest of the day being the supportive ever-cheerful mom that I am not always. And I thought to myself the usual “the show must go on!” But this time I paused and had a thought that had never occurred to me before. “When the fuck is intermission?”

You see, recently I have been struggling with the toughest moment of my life so far*. And yet…the show must go on. I hide in a bathroom to take a deep breath so no one knows anything is wrong, because the ring master is always smiling and directing the clowns and dancing bears. I take 5 minutes in my car to scream at the universe and then smile at my children as I enter the house. Because Moms don’t get breaks. Moms don’t get intermission.

How many times have you been physically or emotionally hurt, sick, or exhausted? And how many times have you ignored what you need so that the circus that is our lives can continue on? We spin those worlds so that everyone else gets to be fulfilled with their activities, have their emotional and physical needs met, and still read books at the end of the day and we ignore what we need. Now sometimes we are sick enough that we have no choice but to lie in bed (for a day – you get one day). But I’m willing to bet all I have that there are constant knocks on that bedroom door asking math questions and “what’s for dinner?”

So when IS intermission? When do we get a break when we absolutely need one from our lives? When things are so bad that we can barely function, we still press on. After I had knee surgery and could barely get myself to a bathroom and had to have other people dress me, I rallied, took some pain medicine and dragged myself to my son’s school activities because I don’t dare miss them for something as minor as major knee surgery. I planned on going back to work immediately because I am not going to stop this show for something as trivial as my physical healing. Slap some ice on it, take some pain killers, dry your tears, hide your pain – people need you and the last one you will attend to is yourself.

What makes us resist the idea of taking a pause, a break when we really need one? There are times when we would heal so much faster if we would listen to ourselves for once and take an hour, a day, a week or maybe a month to just let all of those acts run themselves for a bit and just tell the world, “I need a moment.” And without apology too. Instead we push ourselves to still be that one person to everyone because that’s what is expected and what they demand. There are times in our lives that require us to put all of our energy into ourselves instead of into others, just to survive whatever tribulation we are experiencing. And those moments need to be honored and respected for their gravity by giving them space to breath and recover. Those moments require an intermission.

Right now I’m in a place where I just can’t always be there for the show. There are times I give up and admit defeat and take 10 minutes to fall apart, before gathering myself up for the crowd. And let me be honest; I need more than 10 minutes but it is all I can give myself permission for right now. It is humbling and reminds me that I am human and sometimes I just cannot. It’s a forced baby step towards something we all need to do for ourselves. It’s hard but it’s only fair. Sometimes the ringmaster needs to take off the fancy costume and let the monkeys run the show for a little bit. Because if we don’t take care of ourselves, the circus will drive us into the ground. I’m not good at it. I’m not going to pretend that I have the answers on how to go about it. But next time you are running in circles and struggling to hold it all together, and you think to yourself how much the show must go on, maybe take a moment and realize that even the greatest performers take an intermission.

*Not for public consumption. I only mention it so you know that if you are going through something too, you are not alone.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” –Mary Oliver