Over the years, it’s become clear to me while talking to people that “this animal is bigger than we know.”  Whether I speak to adults whose childhood was ruled by a person suffering from mental illness, or teachers who tell me that they need better tools to identify and reach out to kids in their class who might have a problem at home, it’s clear to me that sharing our stories is still vital to understanding and healing.    

I wanted to open a dialogue with other people who are still feeling the fallout. Time and again, I’ve talked to people who’ve been encouraged to find a way to “just be happy that you got out of there.”   What’s missing from the conversation? The shared feeling that people like me have that I didn’t reach my potential and held back as a result of coping with my mother’s illness.  The realization that if we don’t learn how to treat ourselves better, we never will.  

The book has given me another mission:  to work with parents, relatives, friends, neighbors and teachers to get kids the help and support they need. Thankfully we’ve grown in leaps and bounds in terms of learning about mental illness since I was growing up, but I think everyone agrees that we must find better ways to get to the kids caught in the crossroads

Despite years of therapy and self-examination, I couldn’t have predicted the anxiety and acid-like pain of unearthing things still buried inside of me.  Tears kept falling. Feelings of loneliness, vulnerability, the feeling of abandonment came to the surface. There I was again, fully realizing why the child in this situation doesn’t say anything the feeling of being stigmatized.  There were moments that I worried that, once again, people wouldn’t “get it” and that I was making a mistake to trust people with my feelings.  

Like so many women I’ve spoken to, wished I had been angrier about what happened.   I realized the anger was beaten out of me, even though the footprints were still on my back.

Much of the book was a complete shock to him. It was quite painful for him to experience the true depth of what happened to me as a child.  And he was left with the feeling that he should have been more determined to ask me about it when we first met. The truth is that I’m not sure that I wanted him, or anyone for that matter, to know me that well.  I don’t blame him in the least: most people don’t want to pull things out of you—particularly unhappy ones.

It became evident to him that the piercing emotional suffering I had endured as a child was sure to leave extremely painful exit wounds as an adult. He expressed deep sympathy for this little girl who could not protect herself from her mother, and now fully understood why I was predestined to be taken advantage of-- and manipulated--as I grew into young adulthood.

No. I understand people wanting me to find that silver lining in the cloud, but it’s just not the case. In many ways, as Bob Seger would say, I’m “like a rock,” but that also means that I spent much of my adult life enduring things that others would simply have walked away from—or avoided entirely. 

While in my late 30s. I began exploring the self-hatred, self-doubt, and anxiety that was installed inside of me via therapy. I began to realize that I was angrier at my father (who I absolutely adored) than I had imagined. To be perfectly honest, many therapists were far better at trying to get me to understand my mother’s illness than helping me to deal with the how it was still dramatically affected my own life.  My current therapist of xx years has done a terrific job at helping me to better find realizations and solutions given my wiring. 

The honest answer is yes and no. Intellectually, there’s now a terrific amount of information out there about the causes and effects of schizophrenia. Clinically, it’s easy to see that the mother who showed no signs of love and affection towards me was a very different person than the one who gave birth to me.  

Emotionally it’s a different story. “It wasn’t you; it was her” is cold comfort. And I’m sure that this bumper sticker adage would go nowhere with a kid who was experiencing mental and physical abuse. 

When I had my first child at 20, I found myself wanting to help my dad care for my mother.  While I’m glad to have done it, I can’t honestly say that it gave me a dramatically different perspective about our relationship, especially at that age. 

I’ve heard all the theories as to why I was her target (e.g., I was the oldest, I was the one most like her, I was her potential replacement) and none of them really hold any weight for me—or give me any comfort or solace 

As a child, I often felt like they wanted to get rid of, meant that I was part of the problem. As an adult, it has made me a bit of a loner.  I must accept that my younger sister is better able to distance herself from Evelyn’s mental illness and that my brother, by and large, believes that it didn’t happen.  A few years back, my sister thanked me for taking care of her while we were growing up.  It meant the world to me.  

Looking back, the smallest things made a huge difference. The little girl over the hill who invited me over to play with her unknowingly made a huge difference.  Being invited over to other people’s houses where there was a routine and a sense of calm. Watching families who functioned gave me hope and optimism that things could be better.

Looking back, I realize that my mother’s love of food and cooking did provide moments of calm and camaraderie amidst all the drama. 

Everyone I’ve spoken to has said the same thing: though society has grown in leaps and bounds in terms of understanding and accepting mental illness, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the kids most affected by it are not able to reach out and get help and support. 

When I speak to teachers, they’re quick to admit that they’re still better equipped to identify trouble at home when a kid is causing trouble in school.  Given that I was the quiet kid who retreated in school, I hope that everyone begins to see the kid who is hiding might be crying for help.  

One of the things concerns me is that people might overreach in terms of reaching out to these kids. I grew up in a very different world, but I still worry that kids won’t open up if they get the feeling that they’re being interrogated—or that the adult who is trying to help them will immediately going to their parents. 

“Are you scared?” is the sort of question that I would love for someone to have asked me.  It’s just the sort of open-ended question that a kid might not answer the first time but will eventually see as an invitation just to talk to someone. 

Don’t shun the person with schizophrenia.  I could see people running the other way. When they look at the children in that home, know how hard it is for them and the trauma and betrayal they are feeling. The confusion, shame and isolation they’re feeling which leads to stress and anxiety.