grace and hope
There is magic in being a parent. Watching our children begin life, that first breath a sight to behold. Cradling one’s child for the first time, simply amazing. The firsts pile up. Holding his own head up. Taking his first step. Just living with a child is, as most parents would agree most of the time, a gift. The old adage is true, though, a parent is only as happy as her least happy child. And so it has been in many of our worlds.
Mental health struggles are theoretical–until they aren’t. And, when they aren’t, the sense of parental despair is indescribable. The darkness that fills one’s spirit in watching her child struggle is daunting. Each day begins with palpable fear. Will he be ok this morning? Will he be able to get out of bed and go to school? Tears. Tears. From both parent and child. Where to turn?
I watched my own child struggle with a sense of helplessness. Despite being professionals in our own worlds, my wife and I found ourselves overwhelmed and intimidated by the mental health world. Who? How? Appointments, meds, forms, and facilities. It’s a world no parent wants but so, so many enter with their hearts full of fear.
And in the human existence, at least for the unlucky of us, there comes what I call the Darkness. It’s hard to put it into words, but it’s a place, as real as Times Square on a wet, dreary afternoon. This ugly place is the home of enormous pain and suffering. An unimaginable place of hopelessness. Where life itself seems so entirely not worth living.
The weird thing about the Darkness is that one child can be there, in the Darkness, while the people beside them, in the same house, feet away, are living normal lives with normal problems and solutions. But there that child is, stuck in hell, contemplating the worst. His family can see him and even try to help him. And yes, he can see and talk to them too, but to no avail.
In the musical Hamilton Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote, and the character Angelica sings so beautifully in “It’s Quiet Uptown,” “There are moments that the words don’t reach, there is suffering too terrible to name. The moments when you’re in so deep it feels easier to just swim down.”
In all of the songs I’ve heard and literature I’ve read, this captures the Darkness nearly perfectly. But not perfectly, not exactly. For a child’s Darkness is unique to him, impossible for anyone else to understand. Not his family, his doctor, or his therapist. Nobody. What he must trust and believe is that those around him know this and will help anyway. Their goal is only to help him escape the grips of this place and move toward the light. To swim to the surface and ask for help.
There is nothing they can say or do to enter his Darkness. Nothing. What they can and will do is stand with him. Hold him. Listen to his scream. Wipe away his tears and keep him safe from the Darkness’ siren song suggesting he swim down, deeper and deeper. This they will do, for he is surrounded by people who will not stop keeping him safe. People who love him–really love him–as the person he is today and will become tomorrow when he escapes the iron grip of the Darkness.
No. They will not stop. All they ask is that he remain alert, scanning the horizon of his mind for glimpses of light. Listening for whispers of hope. And yes, it will come, it will. And he will never forget the Darkness for it will periodically come back, sometimes with a vengeance. But this too shall pass and he will find ways to protect himself from dwelling in its shadow.
“There are moments that the words don’t reach, there is a grace too powerful to name,” Angelica continues. “We push away what we can never understand, we push away the unimaginable.”
That grace is surely hope.
It’s an arduous journey, and along the way my family stumbled upon a beacon of light: Mental Health Advocates of Western New York. Our initial exposure came in the form of our child interacting with a peer advocate–just one of many arrows in the MHAWNY quiver.
This was a young woman who could openly and honestly speak with our child, providing an outlet we didn’t know existed. She put meaning behind the advice offered to us by a very wise therapist we met along the way: Mental health struggles are very different than catching a cold. There may not be such a thing as “getting better.” More likely, the goal is learning to struggle better. And for us, struggling better was what peer advocacy was all about.
Our child wasn’t the only kid ever to struggle. Anxiety, depression, suicidal ideations, so many–too many–have been there. And they have found ways to live within themselves.
A parent’s love is sometimes not enough to heal the wounds. For us, it took outside support in many forms, and the time our child spent with a MHA peer advocate was invaluable in our journey to recovery. We are thankful beyond words.
MHA of WNY is many things. So many resources. A not-for-profit organization funded largely by community support, Mental Health Advocates is a jewel in our region’s mental health system.
photo by mark dellas