Out of the Darkness

There was a night, a year and a half ago, when I let my eldest daughter walk out the door not knowing when, or if she’d walk back through it again.

I knew I had to let her go. She was 25 and for a big part of those 25 years I’d been fighting for her life.

And I couldn’t do it for her any more.

She had to fight for herself. She had to find herself and her will to live, to see the beauty all around, to love herself like no other.

I knew I had to trust the universe. To accept whatever happened next as what happened next. I knew I had to trust she would find the courage to take the actions, take the steps that would lead her back from the precipice.

Before I let her go I’d asked if she had any plans to make her threats of ‘ending it all’ concrete.

She said No. She was going to go and check herself into Emergency at the hospital a few blocks down the street.

I had to trust her. I had to believe her. I had to let her do it herself. To make the choices that said, “I can do this. Choose life. Choose to let go of the darkness. Choose to see I am loved, wanted, needed in this world.”

I had run out of options. I had run out of things to say or do. Ways to be. I had run out of words.

My daughter, Alexis, shares the story (here and here) of the night she called the Distress Centre and the woman on the end of the line didn’t hang up on her nor tell her she was crazy. She listened. Said a few things. Gave her some suggestions and Alexis heard her.

And everything shifted.

And has continued to shift, day by day, as Alexis has grappled with healing from an eating disorder that had almost cost her life, and a belief system that said within her, “I have no worth.”

I never wanted that belief to be hers. Never wanted her to hold onto darkness.

I wanted only light for her. Just as I wanted only light for her sister.

I remember the first time she threatened to take her own life. She was mad at her father and me for some transgression. She stood at the top of the stairs, outside the door to her bedroom, her tiny fists balled up against her hips, legs spread apart. “I am so sorry I chose you as my parents,” she said. “I’m going back to heaven.”

I tried not to smile as I asked. “How do you plan on getting there honey?”

“I’m going to go in the kitchen, get a knife and stab myself. Then you’ll be sorry.”

She was five-years-old.

I didn’t want to smile after that. I wanted to race up the stairs and grab her and hold her and shake her and soothe her and tell her I loved her and that she could never, ever say something like that again. Calmly, I asked her to take a time out. To come down the stairs and sit beside me. We needed to talk.

I wouldn’t realize for many years just how deeply the thought of ‘going back to heaven’ was embedded in her psyche. At first, I thought it was just her vivid imagination — I had always thanked her for choosing us as her parents — in her wild imaginings, I just thought she had taken that choice to mean she could choose differently when she was mad or disappointed. “You’re needed in this world,” I’d tell her and then I’d remind her of all the reasons why I loved her, of all the reasons why her presence was so vital to this world. And she would cry and tell me I was wrong. And I would talk her out of the thoughts that seemed to cloud her vision of her beauty and wonder. I thought in my spending the hours I did showing her the path out of the darkness I could make it all right.

It was, and is, one of the hardest things I ever learned as a mother.

Sometimes, we can’t make it all right. Sometimes, we don’t have the words, or actions, or even the power to make it all right for our children.

I am grateful today that at 26, Alexis has found the words and actions and power to make it all right for herself. I am grateful she is choosing to see the light, and to step away from the cloyingly sweet tendrils of the darkness calling her to give into the seductive deceit of its promise of release.

Alexis and I have agreed to write about these events because we both believe that in our willingness to be open, vulnerable and truthful we might help someone else struggling as we did — She with her fascination of the darkness and me with my desire to help her into the light. We want to reach anyone who is blinded to their beauty and worth in the darkness of depression see, there is a way through. There is hope.

My daughter is amazing and I am blessed to have her and her sister in my life. I am so glad both my daughters chose me as their mother.

21 thoughts on “Out of the Darkness”

What a brave and difficult post this must have been to write – for both of you. I have a dear friend who struggled with her eldest daughter over many years. It was different issues than your situation, but still in the end in her daughter’s early twenties she had to say to her “I cannot do this anymore”. At the time she confided and leaned on me, and I know the pain and agony she went through. They were estranged for about a year after that but her daughter eventually returned to the family and now they have a loving relationship and the boundaries and much better and healthier. (And incidentally both mother and daughter have been pillars of strength for me in my darkest hours this past 15 months).

Sometimes as parents “not doing” is actually doing the best for our child. You are a wonderful mother and so kind and loving. I am so glad that you and she are now able to travel together towards the light.

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21 thoughts on “Out of the Darkness”

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