Family: How can we express our vulnerability when we were never taught the way?

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

– Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse

Last night I found out that my mum had post-natal depression with me and my brother. She has never talked about this before, not for lack of certainty or support, as both she and my dad were definite that she had been experiencing post-natal depression after each of our births, to varying extents. They mentioned factors such as not knowing what to do and being doubtful of their abilities as parents, moving house soon after my brother’s birth, and not having the support of a network of family or friends, as everyone they knew lived in the north of England and they have moved to the south.

I have become far more willing to discuss mental health around my parents, if it comes up in the news, because of having dealt with certain issues myself and to varying extents taking a supportive role while at university when I and many of my friends were dealing with their own issues, ranging from self-harm to eating disorders to anxiety disorders to depression to suicidal thoughts. Having come into contact with mental health facilities myself, and having a good working knowledge of the effects of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medication, and various forms of therapy from my friends, I feel relatively confident in my views about how social stigma surrounding mental health needs to change, and how far better support needs to be provided, and how education needs to develop and improve (to some extent even exist) in order for mental health issues to be better understood and treated.

I think this kind of open discussion with my parents makes them feel more comfortable about talking about their own experiences. Certainly my mum seems to have more issues that she is still trying to deal with than I would ever have guessed. Along with the post-natal depression, which she has only just told me about, or talked to anyone about in any kind of detail, she opened up to me about how my maternal grandfather was jealous, possessive and controlling around my grandmother to the extent that she accepted it was an abusive relationship, and that they should have divorced, but that in those days it just wasn’t something that was done.

It’s been more than ten years since my grandma died, and my mum is only just now starting to talk about it. She said that when she was younger her parents wouldn’t talk to each other for months at a time, and she would have to take messages backwards and forwards between them. When she was ten her mum was confiding in her about how she wished she had never had children and all she wanted to do was leave the family. In her own words, her parents had ‘screwed her up’, and although I knew she had always had a strained relationship with her mother, and had wanted to leave home and live as far away as possible as quickly as possible, I had no idea it was such a dysfunctional relationship.

For me, the worst part is that my mum still wouldn’t consider talking any of this out, she just laughs it off about ‘being strong’ and ‘getting on with things’, and it breaks my heart to think that all of the things she’s been through that I will never know about, because she will never tell me about them, which have meant she’s inadvertently raised me to be the same as her, and there’s this unspoken gulf of sadness between us that we can’t cross. It is frightening that the words she uses to deny the significance of the things she has gone through, and dismiss any need for intervention or the benefits she could get from communication, are exactly those that I used to tell myself and anyone else, if I ever faced them at all.

Before going to sleep last night, I couldn’t help but think about the relationship between my mum and me. I remember when I was very young that I was always quite frightened of her. She was rarely around, and I was left with a child-minder because she was always working, and I remember thinking that she must love my brother more than me because she took him to work with her (I now realise this was because they had a crèche for very young children at her workplace, which did not exist when I was that age). Whenever she was at home, she was always exhausted and stressed, because of the long hours she worked (only to provide for the family, of course), and she wasn’t a particularly tactile or physically affectionate person, so I can’t remember hugs or other affectionate behaviour from her. Even now I feel very uncomfortable about kisses in a non-romantic atmosphere, because I have never experienced them.

It has only been in the last five years or so that our relationship has entirely changed, because of her experience of breast cancer. It brought us closer together than I could have ever thought possible, and I would now consider her my best friend. I know that I am so lucky to have grown up in a much better environment than she did, but I think there are still things that I missed out on, notably a secure sense of self-worth and being loved – a lot of the things I struggle with come from a profound sense of emotional deprivation, which is difficult to admit because things have changed so dramatically since I was a little child.

I think what I can come away from this knowing is that it takes someone to be honest and express their belief that people struggling with mental health deserve support, patience and compassion, in order for those still fighting their own personal demons to feel secure enough to begin expressing their vulnerabilities. It takes communicating your own vulnerabilities in some way for others to become more confident in expressing theirs. I had to make myself vulnerable in order for my mum to allow herself to be. As me and some of my friends have talked about before, we share a deep sense of gratitude and relief to have come to terms with how we feel by the age of twenty-one or twenty-two, in order that we might make a positive difference in the lives of our own children, so that they can avoid the pitfalls we have had to negotiate our way out of.

There is a chasm of pain in the generations that have passed before ours. My grandmother suffered through what would now be completely accepted as an abusive marriage, and she couldn’t do anything about it because she had no chance of financial independence and had six children who relied on her, so she tainted the relationship with her eldest daughter, my mother, because she had no one else to talk to about how she was feeling. Divorce was out of the question, and I doubt if depression or mental breakdown were even concepts that were acknowledged or even speakable in the north-east at that time. My mum remains fiercely independent and emotionally distant, and has instilled that in me, but she is trying to open up, just as I am. It is a process that happens in parallel lines, and though my grandmother and her daughter couldn’t reconcile their relationship, my mother and I have, and I hope that I never have to with my own daughter.

This is healing.