That Girl
I am that girl. A cliché. A walking stereotype. I am a young, Mormon mommy. You know, the one with three kids who usually wears a jean skirt and button-down shirt that sits behind you in Relief Society. I also take a little white pill every morning to keep the crazies at bay. Yes, I am a depressed LDS woman. And I am not alone.
On June 3, 2002, CBS News reported on a groundbreaking study that said, "Utah leads the nation in prescriptions for anti-depressants . . . one possible explanation is the state's dominant Mormon culture, which demands much of its people, especially women."[1] The byline for the story was Logan, Utah—my hometown—and had I been paying attention then, I might have read the story and not been so surprised by what was going to happen in my own life.
Almost exactly one year later, in June 2003, I gave birth to my first child. When my husband and I decided to have a baby, we'd been married for one year and both received the prompting separately. We knew it was the Lord's will that we have a baby, so with great excitement, we did. When she was born, our little girl was over eight pounds and more than twenty inches. She was an amazingly healthy baby with a full head of hair, pink cheeks, and little rosebud lips. She was truly a gift and a blessing. But at the time I couldn't see it. The veil of depression had slipped over me while I was pregnant and suddenly what was supposed to be the most fulfilling thing in my life wasn't.
I had been struggling for months before she was born—I had thought my lack of interest in life and my desire to lay in bed all day was just how all pregnant women felt—and when the baby came home, I just fell apart. With the added pressure of being a first-time mom and the steep learning curve that comes with it, my anxiety and frustration grew each day until I could no longer calm down. It didn't matter how much I cried or if I screamed myself hoarse, my body couldn't back away from the emotional and hormonal precipice that having a baby had put me on.
I remember one night, when my baby was about a month old, she was crying and crying. I remember thinking she was hungry and trying to feed her, but she wouldn't latch on. As I sat in the dark nursery, I started to get angry. But not just the average, everyday, frustration-type anger. This was a different anger. It was stronger. It made me feel stronger—heady almost.
As my baby lay flailing and crying on my lap, I could feel my heart start to race and my chest get tight. A scream began clawing up my throat as I picked up the baby, my hands already shaking. It was as if something else, a darker, stronger, fiercer part of me, had taken over and wanted to shake her. Shake her hard.
Then, in a heartbeat, a voice filled my mind and clearly commanded, "You will NOT shake your baby."
I was still trembling all over, but whatever had been raging inside me was caged for the time being. Realizing how close I had come to seriously hurting my baby, I woke my husband and handed her off. As I pretended to sleep, I wondered if I could ever trust myself to be alone with her.
I spent months this way—caught between my desire to be a good mother and my fear and uncontrollable anger. On good days I'd cry until my head hurt. On bad days I'd scream and, on occasion, break things. (I often fantasized about throwing the TV through our sliding glass doors.) I was always careful to put the baby in her crib and not freak out in front of her, but I knew I was getting worse.
I reminded myself that "contention is of the devil," so I tried to pray my anger and sadness away, but it wouldn't budge. I just figured I was doing something wrong. If I had more faith, I told myself, I'd be a better mom. If I were more righteous, I'd know how to handle this. Even though I was so messed up inside that I couldn't usually feel the Spirit, I still attended all my Church meetings, read my scriptures, and prayed. And although my testimony of the Book of Mormon increased, it had little effect on my anger and sadness.
However, God had not left me comfortless. When my daughter was just a couple of months old, my sister, who lived very far away but spoke with me on the phone every day, gently suggested that I might be depressed. She said I didn't sound like myself, that I didn't sound happy. She pointed out that it wouldn't hurt to talk to my doctor.
To be honest, it took a little convincing for me to accept the idea. The idea of me and depression just didn't seem right. I was married in the temple, active in my ward, and starting my family. I studied my scriptures and said my prayers. I was pretty sure I was doing everything right. Being righteous was supposed to make a person happy. So why wasn't I?
I couldn't answer that question, but eventually I was crazy enough not to care. It happened one Sunday. I had felt out of place at church for a while. I was a wreck and everyone else in the congregation looked so pulled together. That Sunday I just couldn't stand to be in the same room as the rest of them. It felt too unfair, too frustrating. I struggled through sacrament meeting and decided to skip Sunday school and Relief Society. I wandered the halls aimlessly with my little one, staring at the lithographs of Jesus, both of us crying. I obsessed over her sleep schedule and how nervous she always seemed to be. I relived all my angry outbursts and that one terrible night when I almost hurt her. I thought about the other young mommies in the ward and their babies. I knew I wasn't like them. Things were so different for me that I could hardly stand the thought of them, let alone being in the same room. I knew that if something didn't change in my life I would quit going to church. What was the point in trying if I was always failing? I was too tired to try anymore. I wanted to just let life go completely. Maybe my car would run off the road and I'd . . .
But, then, what would happen to my baby?
I finally talked to my doctor when I was four months postpartum. She readily agreed I needed help and gave me a prescription. I still wasn't sure that I was doing the right thing, but I was tired of waking up at night and not being able to go back to sleep. I was tired of being so paranoid that I couldn't leave the house. I was tired of being angry or exhausted all the time. I was tired of not knowing how to love my baby. So I took the pills.
After a few weeks, my symptoms began to disappear. I could go hours without bizarrely violent images entering my mind. I could let my baby nap without worrying someone was going to climb in the window and take her. I went days without throwing things or lapsing into hopeless inaction. On one especially memorable day, my husband walked in the door after work and I looked up from the dinner I was cooking, smiled and said, "Welcome home." His face lit up like he'd had a revelation as he said, "There's the woman I married." It felt good to have hope again.
At the time, I did not know how typical my experience was. When the depression started to set in, I didn't even realize it, let alone that so many other women, sisters in the gospel, were going through the same thing. But now that I have three kids and a few more years behind me I see women—and men—all around me struggling with this illness, or others like it. They all seem to be asking the same question that I asked: I'm trying to be righteous, so how come I'm not happy?
Unfortunately, despite all the therapy I've been to, I still don't have the answer to that question. But what I do know is that it isn't the Church's fault that I'm depressed. It isn't my calling or my family or my role as a homemaker that makes me depressed. Yes, some environmental factors aggravate my depression, but none of them cause it. The cause is biological. Depression is an illness, not a failing or a weakness, or a sin. Just like you'd never judge a diabetic person for taking insulin, I'd hope a depressed person would never be judged for taking medication. And, just like someone with a heart condition can admit they have an illness and might need consideration, I hope people will start talking about their depression without worrying about the stereotype. That's what I'm trying to do.
It is now four years later and Utah is still the most depressed state in the nation[2] and I am again taking that little white pill. I've tapered off my medicine a couple of times—every once in a while I decide I'm not really depressed—and, eventually, I go back on. It's easier on my family, and it's easier on me. It's not that my medicine makes me perfect. (When I find that pill I'll let you know.) It's just that it backs me away from the edge of the cliff. It gives me room to breathe and a chance to figure out what to do. With my medicine, I don't waste energy trying to control an illness that I simply cannot. It lets me focus on what my real weaknesses are and how I can work with my Savior to make them stronger.
Last Sunday as I went to take my medicine, I realized I had forgotten to pick up my refill two days before. All three kids had been sick, it was finals week for my husband, and a sister I visit teach was having a family crisis. The refill had slipped my mind. Sunday was going to be my third day without a pill. Knowing how time sensitive antidepressants can be, I reluctantly decided to swing by the pharmacy on the way to church.
As we pulled up to the drive thru, my now-four-year-old daughter reminded me, in the-self-righteous-yet-innocent way that only small children can pull off, that it was wrong to go to the store on Sundays. I told her I had to get my medicine and, since I'd forgotten to pick it up before, I didn't really have a choice. I told her I was going to do better the next month and remember to get it before Sunday, but this time I had to do it today. Then she asked me a question that I should've expected, but didn't: "Mommy, are you sick? Why do you need medicine?"
I wasn't sure how to answer her. I took a deep breath and decided to tell her the truth. "It's medicine that makes it so I'm not so angry and sad all the time."
She immediately replied, "Oh, yeah, you NEED that medicine. You should take it every day."
Laura Hilton Craner earned her bachelor’s degree in literature from Utah State University. Her three kids, two book clubs, and various writing projects—including an almost published book on deaf people who survived the Holocaust—keep her on her toes. She blogs at butnotunhappy.blogspot.com.
Notes
[1] Hughes, Sandra. "Unhappy in Utah: Study: 'Beehive State' Lead Nation in Anti-depressant Prescriptions." CBS Evening News, June 3, 2002.
[2] Mark, Tami L., Shern, David L., Bagalman, Jill Erin, Cao, Zhun. "Ranking America's Mental Health: An Analysis of Depression Across the States." Mental Health America. December 11, 2007. 7.
