Mothering a Mentally Ill Child

Oh the joys of motherhood, they light the world with love but for those who bore a mentally ill child, it is a different kind of joy, often a painful joy. The pain stems from the lost potential, the joy comes with the smallest accomplishments of a mentally ill child and always, there is relief when there is a month or two of normalcy.

When I gave birth, I was still considered a teenager, too young to have a baby but too close to my own mother, for her to dissuade or guide me in a wiser direction. How could I have known that my only emotional support, the woman I shared an apartment with, the woman who I loved more than life, my mother, would die only two months after I gave birth to a baby “out of wedlock.”

My daughter’s father was my first and only true love. He was from the other side of the tracks, rich, spoiled, and lived on the golf course in Country Club Oaks. He had been adopted into a glamorous, high society family, when he and his adopted brother were babies. Sadly, societal events constantly kept his parents from parenting and by the age of 17, he was a full blown alcoholic, having access to an empty house full of friends, an open bar and an endless bank account. As much as a young, impressionable girl can love a boy, I did, for years, until I became pregnant and decided, much to my credit, that I did not want to marry a man who drank like a sieve. In 1973 no one knew alcoholism was a disease, it was considered a lack of discipline. My mother was in full agreement that we would raise the baby ourselves and was over the…