Questioning narratives

After my mother had endured the death of her two young children and her beloved husband, she was understandably struggling with depression, grief, heartache, devastation.
The whole family traumatized and in shock, and she with very little resource to support anyone.

I still marvel to this day, that the narrative is ‘she became mentally ill.’

The drunk driver who killed our family members was fined something like $1,000 and sentenced to community service.

Just as we saw in the fire relief efforts here, the community (not government, not justice) rose up, however briefly, to help.

My elder siblings fondly recall a kind family who stepped in to mentor and support them in various ways.

Resourceful as she was, she had some community connections, but there was very little tangible support for an immigrant mother.

Sometimes I think I am such an advocate for mothers because her ‘undoing’ was my beginning in this life journey.

I exist, because as she recounted with her beautiful, big laugh,

“Mija, the doctor told me: Lupe, you’re depressed. You should get married or have a baby!”

“So I had you!”

While I’m grateful to exist, this is pretty shitty advice.

How about, “You’re depressed. And you have extremely good reason to be. How can we help?” (And then actually help with resources, compassion, support)

My mother was heartbreakingly facing the reality of the lie of the American Dream.

She did have me, and my eldest sister primarily cared for me as my mother recovered from her first ever c-section after 9 babies. And navigated the alcoholism that she was left to cope with, in between working hard and still providing for her family.

My mother loved babies. I love babies. But I would never say having a baby will solve problems.

Thankfully, my sister filled in the gaps, though she was also trying to navigate her own grief and her transition to adulthood in this new land.

But still, my mother descended in her unresolved, untended grief further into alcoholism and then psychosis. And I was along for the traumatic, complex ride.

My entire life I was told I was placed in foster care because my mother ‘became mentally ill.’

Now as an adult, as a mother, I can see that she lost her mind because she was uncared for in a toxic, disconnected, unsupportive society.

My curandera maestra told me recently she needed to have been “buried” in the earth and supported to face the part of her that wanted to die and be with her dead children. To reconcile with the intense grief of remaining alive.

THIS is rooted medicine.

Not the platitudes of a system thriving on our devastation and exploitation.

In many ways, this and my collective experience in foster care, as ward of the court, is why

although I have all of the training and hours as a therapist,

I practice as a spiritual counselor, rooted in the Earth and ancestral remembering.

Why I have never been able to use the words and labels of the colonial system.

Why I wrote a whole other post on deconstructing ‘experts.’

Why I skirt the edges of what is ‘expected,’ always.

The current narratives have been failing for a loooong time.

Thankfully I see the cracks.

And like my precious, fierce mother I laugh BIG and strong in the face of any narratives professing to know anything.

The ‘answers’ are always deeper.

*Gorgeous art by Anna Alvarado