Letter to my elder son.

 Dear  son -Where to begin?

There is nothing in this universe to convince me, or get me to agree that you are incompetent, or not good enough. And though I cannot dispute your theory about the origin of your pain, I wish to add a different theory; I believe that it originated in what was happening to me while I was pregnant with you.  I don’t usually talk about how bad things were for me, but honestly - the time around your birth was incredibly difficult. I can imagine that this might feel as if I’m trying to say it was someone else’s fault. But sometimes, things really are that bad, and such things are passed on. It is true that Maternal stress is potentially damaging for a developing child:

 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8319845/ 

And though I did my best to split myself in two, and partition the truth of my situation, I couldn’t help but be in panic and despair during the months that led up to your birth. At that time I was in deep grief and potentially homeless; I was still coping with my first husband. I couldn’t see any way to get my daughters to be able to live with me, I was leaving them with a man who threatened suicide and worse, and my mom had just died. The pain of this was magnified a thousand times over as your father could not promise to return to you and I. So I had to try to partition that grief and pain, to do my best to keep my head, and try not to feel it. But the shattering awfulness of what was happening was truly the most terrible nightmare, and you experienced the high levels of adrenaline/cortisol in my bloodstream.

The years leading up to this had been extremely difficult to navigate. I was a victim of coercive control, it’s a long story, one that belongs to your sisters, but the only safe way out of that marriage was to take all the blame. I let my first husband take everything else. It was important, because your sisters were living with him. I would catch the bus to the house every morning, or stay over when he worked away.

Our marriage had been destroyed because he would not, could not go into the origin of his tendency to hoard and get into deeper and deeper debt. What had happened to him as a child poisoned our marriage, and when I said that we needed to go to therapy, he would only agree to see someone who worked with his brother…so truth was impossible. I was way out of my depth. My first husband told the therapist his version of what he wanted her to believe and I kept quiet, and he thought that I was over reacting and blaming him. I accepted whatever, I had no other option if I was going to keep your sisters alive. 

You may think I’m being dramatic; so be it. But that was the first time I thought I stood a high risk of being killed. And you might like to believe that there is ‘help’ available? Trust me, it's over once the perpetrator realises that you have called for help. I got out of that marriage slowly and very carefully, and in a way that deflected any blame from my first husband. Thereafter again trying to do everything without upsetting him too much, I had to allow him to have as much control as he thought he needed over your sisters. 

After you were born my second husband offered us security. My heart was a bleeding mess, I was and still am in love with your dad. I knew I could love my husband but I couldn’t be ‘in love’ with him, if that makes sense. So we both did really well. A part of me knew that he’d leave me when I got to about 60 (I was so right unfortunately), but I accepted the deal; and it truly felt like I was making a deal at the time - selling myself for security, for stability, to be able to rest safe and be able to heal. I’d be able to give your sisters an alternative to being with their dad all the time, and you would have a good man as a dad, to protect and love you. The first three years are so crucial to child development, I had to get us to safety. 

It was a kind of self sacrifice, but one I made for all the best reasons.

After all this, after experiencing coercive control, the idea of forcing anyone to do anything against their will is abhorrent to me. I tried pretty hard to get you to go to school, not least because I wanted my life to be easier (!) and I wanted you to get an education. But the rules were that you had to attend every session they offered. For some reason you didn’t want to go, so I got you a place at another school, but rising 5s didn’t work for you and there is only so much bribery, or threat I could stomach using. There is no leeway in school systems, because there are always other children available to take the places. Again the concept of help? I hear this a lot at work, parents want ‘help’ and they want a ‘diagnosis’ so that their child can ‘get the help they need’ but to be honest ‘help’ is a funded laptop and a ‘hall pass’ so the child can leave the classroom to have a melt down alone. Consequence, the child refuses to go into the classroom, and the school agrees that they only have to attend two mornings a week, which they spend in the ‘safe’ area, until getting an appointment and medicated at CAMHs. I think the next stop is a school with other 'troubled children ' where they just do colouring in and hope they don't get bullied. It's not great... one day I'm going to check this.

I gave up making requests to schools for help. Enough of headmasters giving me warnings but no concrete, positive alternatives. And every home-ed child I’d ever met seemed a lot saner and confident than school educated children. I returned to the battle when you said that you wished to go to school (I got you a one week trial period at the first school, and I had to struggle so hard to get that! To get you a place at the next school, a few years later, was even harder, and they didn’t give you any opportunity to try). But on suffering and depression, I am so sorry this has been your experience, I’m sorry that there has not been a way for me to support you through this. I'm not saying that not going to school wasn't a bad thing for you. But I would like you to feel proud that despite everything you have got yourself so far, and have great ambition and plans. It might help to know there are alternative views of mental distress. My view (from Jung) is that mental suffering is the consequence of a conflict between the demands of adaptation and the pull of authenticity. Depression and withdrawal may be the moment when adaptation fails, not because the psyche is broken, but because it is being pulled toward a different centre, a withdrawal from false life. A refusal of false strategies. A turning inward toward something unnameable.

There is much more that I could say, but I will leave it there.

Proud to know you,

With love.

Mom.