My Mother’s Depression
by Elouise
My mother’s depression
Is not my depression
It doesn’t belong to me
Nor did I invite it in to stay
Yet it lives in me now and again
A link to this woman who bore me
Deftly intertwined it moves
As though it were mine
A weight I bear unbidden
My lot in this half-life
What would it be like
To let it go as an alien?
To visit without falling into the pit?
To understand it from her point of view?
I’ve been turning things like this over in my mind and heart for the last week. The insight isn’t mine. It’s a gift from a friend who has walked with me for several decades.
‘My’ depression isn’t mine. Yes, it’s real and present. Yet it was and still is my mother’s deep depression, fed by my father’s behavior toward her and toward me. The sad price of being a gifted white woman in post-depression (ironic) and post-World War II life in the USA.
Held back, kept in check, insanely busy with housework and babies, submissive preacher’s wife, versatile church musician without a pay check, resourceful volunteer ever ready to help others in return for nothing, cheery and even-tempered, industrious and persistent, she held it all together in her bent and broken body.
Uncomplaining, weary, in pain 24/7 and depressed. Sometimes crying herself to sleep. Other times waking with horrifying cramps.
My heart goes out to her today in ways it couldn’t years ago.
Yet I can’t accept her depression as my depression. It isn’t mine. This one insight invites me to stay connected to her reality without making it my reality. I can only breathe my air, not hers.
These days it seems ever more acceptable to trash women of all colors and make them into problems they are not. In response, I want to do justice to the woman my mother was while showing mercy to her as the woman she could not be or become.
She was not the problem then, just as I am not the problem now.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 16 November 2018
Book cover photo found at bookdepository.com
Telling the Truth 
Thank you for sharing this. It resonated so much with me.
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You’re welcome, Herminia. I’m grateful it resonated with you. I think I’m just beginning to appreciate the cost my mother paid for keeping me fed and in clothes. Though I would love for her to have done more, I now appreciate better the price she paid in order to give her daughters the stability she never had as a child.
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A really fascinating read. I touched me deeply. And my heart goes out to you both.
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Thank you for this comment. I think many mother-daughter relationships suffer from unspoken pain and untold stories about how things were and are. My mother died in 1999. She was only 78 years old. Though I still miss her, I feel more connection with her now than I did for most of her life.
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Yes I totally agree. I have a very good relationship with my mother… however I know my mother does not have such a nice relationship with her mother (my grandmother) and it’s something I was never aware off til I got a bit older. I think mental health had such a huge stigma attached to it in the lives of older generations that it was never talked of and consequently never made easier for anyone… I think there is still a stigma today actually but luckily we’ve come on leaps and bounds and although there is further to go we have made progress which I am eternally grateful for!
That is interesting how you feel about her now after she is passed, but I can empathise with, albeit indirectly, that and see why that might be.
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I grew up in the late 50s through the sixties in a suburb not far from where you live, Elouise. Few of the mothers worked outside the home. While there were some very good things about that time (the freedom to be out and about without fear of harm, mostly intact families, many neighborhood friends), I recall the emotional environment surrounding the women being much like what August is like here – weighted down, humid, and oppressive in feeling. It is probably not an accident that I chose not to have children given the observations I made at an early age regarding the “lot” of women. Thanks for sharing your insights!
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You describe it so well, Meg. The emotional environment, that is. I can’t remember seeing my mother or the mothers who always lived with us (in WEC missionary homes) doing anything but household work on behalf of everyone including guests and multiplying children. To be a child (even in that strict environment) was almost a picnic compared with what my mother was expected to do. I understand your choice not to have children. I would never give up my now-adult children. However, the load of expectations even today is as as you say, “weighted down, humid, and oppressive” just like August heat. Thanks for your observations. I don’t think we’ve begun to do justice or show mercy to the women who carry the weight of the world’s next generation on their backs without equivalent pay, benefits, or support.
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like a beautiful awakening to self, to see and feel with empathy yet not be sucked into the darkness, just to see with clearer eyes that which was cloudy before. ❤ ❤
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Yes…That’s exactly how it is, Kim! I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We were at our son’s house, with his wife and children. A little sad because they’re getting ready to move, and the house they’re in now has been part of their life (and ours) since their daughters were about 1 year old. They’re now 18, and their ‘little’ brother is 15. Where did all the years fly?
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Why do I always sense depression when I visit,why not happiness with what we/you have?
I never allow depression to take over.
Cheer up!
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🙂
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