Last month, I wrote about a conversation I had with a young mom who told me she had hit “rock bottom.” I couldn’t stop thinking about her, because I so deeply felt her sadness. I tried to encourage her, tell her not to worry, that everything would be ok. I believed I knew how she felt, and I wanted to help.
But then I read about – and watched –some of the Lindsay Clancy trial. And while there are many takeaways from the trial, it has made me re-think that conversation. I wrote in the August issue that once I realized what the young mom was saying, “I turned to her and really listened.”
But did I?
If you aren’t familiar with the Lindsay Clancy trial, I’m going to ask that you look it up. I don’t want to write her story here. It’s devastating. But it’s also sparked vital conversations about postpartum depression and something called postpartum psychosis, which honestly I had never heard about.
For me though, I’ve been thinking about how quickly I downplayed what this young mom had been telling me. I kept telling her everything would be ok, and everyone would be fine. I was basically telling her that if she just stopped having these negative thoughts, she would see that her life was good.
I said all that knowing firsthand it’s not that simple.
I first wrote about postpartum depression years ago because I wanted to share how I felt after I had my first daughter. For weeks after she was born, I didn’t feel connected to her. I had this overwhelming feeling – overwhelming – that I had made a mistake becoming a mom. There was a time late one night when I wondered what would happen if I gave her up for adoption.
These feelings went on for weeks. I lost a lot of weight. I didn’t feel any joy having a newborn, and I didn’t tell anyone. Luckily for me, those feelings just one day stopped.
In 2024, I wrote about taking an antidepressant, because so many women had been telling me about their hesitancy to start medication, even though they were feeling pretty hopeless. I wanted them to know my experience, so that maybe it would help.
All this time, I’ve been thinking I can just share my experiences and tell everyone it will all be ok. I know there is value in letting people see hard times I’ve experienced, but that isn’t always enough. It may take more than kind words to keep things from turning bad.
I learned this from the Lindsay Clancy case, because she told person after person how much she was struggling. And people who loved her listened and worried and took actions they thought were enough. They didn’t recognize the alarm she was trying to set off, and that’s so troubling. I wonder if there have been times when someone was sounding an alarm, and I didn’t hear it.
Usually I end this column with a quick anecdote that wraps up the message in a pleasant, positive way. But not this month.
I’m still trying to figure out if all those times I thought I was helping, I wasn’t helping at all. I’m still trying to figure out if when I spoke with that young mom, I truly heard her or did I immediately share my past experience, which may be nothing like what she was living through.
So no happiness right now. Just a hope that when someone needs help, they have the strength to ask for it, and someone hears them – truly hears them.
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