dinner’s in the oven.
the kids are in care.

let’s talk #mentalhealth .
candidly.

disclaimer: i come at this from the perspective of a child of someone with severe mental health issues. this isn’t my mum’s story. it’s based on my experiences & various family anecdotes.

a thread/

(i mean, like, a long one!)

in the jumble of accounts retelling my parents’ doomed relationship, one has particularly steadfast consistency across family members...

one day, my dad came home from work in france to find a note:
“dinner’s in the oven. the kids are in care.”

my mum was in the psych unit.

recently, my dad told me that when i was (in short order) retrieved from care, he thought the spark had gone from me.

my mum accepts she was unable to understand/cope with the needs of young children. in the language i now work in, she was emotionally unavailable to us.

her struggle to cope is aptly illustrated by the time a woman at an airport urged my father into the toilets to stop my mum shaking me. or when a family friend observed my brother so battered she threatened to report my mum to social services if she lay a finger on him again.

much later, in my 20s, a psychiatrist at the unit my mum was then admitted to, sat me down & fended off my attempts to put what was happening in a box. “we look to the symptoms, not the label,” he explained, but on my pressing said schizoaffective disorder was the best fit.

please understand this thread is not about an awful childhood (i was, sometimes unwittingly, incredibly well supported) or seeking to blame/shame my mother for deficits in parenting beyond her control. rather, i *hope* to shed light on context & impact.

as was almost always inevitable back in the day, dad lost the acrimonious ‘custody’ battle & returned to france while i was still toddling. he managed the journey back for ‘access’ astonishingly frequently, but the balance of time was not on his side.

he resolved to send us to private school (which had longer days & even saturday school), & eventually boarding school, which i attended aged approx 11-14. boarding suited me. my brother fared less well. both of us worried for mum. sometimes she forgot to collect us at home time.

my grandingmarrr once told me i was a sad child, but the predominant feeling i recall from my childhood is fear. irrationally, i was convinced my parents would die unexpectedly or were trying to kill me. i’d watch my mum coming upstairs to make sure she wasn’t carrying a knife.

i didn’t trust the people i loved not to leave me. i didn’t trust the people i loved to care for me. anticipation of abandonment has framed every relationship i’ve had & necessary self-sufficiency continues to inhibit my ability to accept support or express vulnerability.

this is what it meant (& means) for me having (had) a primary carer with a mental health illness. i developed an unhealthy staple of conflicting emotions & coping mechanisms. my adolescence was fuelled by defensiveness, resentment & rage.

but i also did pretty darn well.

in last week’s @42BR_Family webinar, speaking about the resilience of children exposed to emotional harm, dr laskey reminded us that outcomes for children are improved by the presence of even one supportive adult figure. in this respect, i was incredibly fortunate.

the ‘busybody’ neighbour was really ensuring our home was in a fit state. the teacher who asked what was going on with me every time i acted out, knew my rudeness was a symptom of something else. my dad’s family desperately plastered cracks as fast as they appeared.

although when i was too young to understand, mum’s periods of acute mental illness were chalked up to physical health issues, i suspect my brother & i were protected growing up (& indeed continue to be well supported) because there’s always been a degree of transparency.

for all the feelings & go-to responses i still struggle with, i know my reality would be very different had the adults in my life not been there for the 3 of us, & had mum not accessed inpatient & community support, such as the weekly art sessions she attended with @MindCharity.

which brings me to the importance of #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek.

unless we talk about mental health without stigma/shame, opportunity for people to access support is much reduced. mental illness is pervasive, yet often hidden. you never know what someone else is going through.

what i’ve said here won’t come as a surprise to those closest to me, but maybe some will find it an unexpected beginning for a barrister with all the privileges of a public school education... & that’s the point; mental illness affects all sorts of people & all sorts of families.

there’s no immunity or privilege that protects from mental illness. that other people have it ostensibly worse than you does not invalidate your distress.

please seek help if you need it... & if you think someone’s struggling, don’t be afraid to ask them how they are.



/fin