Having Perspective When Our Child Gets a Difficult Diagnosis, by Naya Elle James

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Tears blur a clear view of the meeting screen. The psychiatrist is neatly but casually dressed in a black long sleeve crewneck. He’s sitting in his home office, which, I think, is probably also his bedroom. His mouth is moving and his words trail, a lip sync error, or my mind’s resistance to take it in. I watch his mouth stop moving and wait for the sound to catch up. 

“I’m not the kind of doctor who shies away from this just because the child is not eighteen. If they are prescribed according to an incorrect diagnosis, the meds can be harmful.” 

Thud. My heart to the floor. 

“I could be totally wrong. You should of course get another opinion.”

It’s weirdly quiet and still. Like someone just named the elephant in the room and the elephant looked up in shock that I would finally utter her name and look her in the eyes. I know, I see you.

A mental health diagnosis for a struggling teen is meant to name something that already exists. We have already been coping, and so have they, regardless of the effectiveness of the coping strategies. But it pulls away any veil of denial. Whether or not accurate, a diagnosis demands we face possibilities we would rather not consider. 

My daughter and I both took a deep sigh as we closed the laptop at the end of the call. There were no more words, just gentle tears and a hug. She retreated to her room. I started a bath. We have been here before, in the stillness of sadness. In the peace of surrender. 

I slid into the hot water and listened for movement or bigger tears behind my daughter’s closed door. What now? What now, what now, what now. I soaked and let my thoughts wander to the shock and fear I experienced over the last years in emergency rooms and therapists’ offices, in schools and court rooms. The day I told her she was going to a day program for treatment she mutilated her forearms and I cried hysterically in hopelessness and fear. 

A knock at the door jarred me back to the present. 

“Mom?” 

“Yes, honey?” 

“Can you take me to the gym?”

I smiled to myself.

“Of course.”

As I dried myself and dressed, I reflected on how far we have come. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how bad it was, and how much better it is now. I’m not running to her room to check that she’s still breathing in the middle of the night. I’m not waking with a cold gasp from another bad dream. 

Four years after my daughter recovered traumatic memories and spiraled into substance abuse, rounds of psychiatric hospitalization, brutal self harm, and attempted suicide, our lives are very different. How we think, how we communicate, how reliant we are on supportive relationships and teams of experts.  

So what’s one more diagnosis in a sea of diagnoses? More information. More material to digest while we move forward and through, seeking answers and finding better ways to live, one step at a time. 

Right now it’s a ride to the gym after a tough conversation, and a chai and a book at the coffee shop while I wait for my daughter to join me. 

It’s essential and challenging to return to the truth that what happened to her isn’t who she is. She was once, and still is, the daughter that giggled in my arms and shed tears when she got a boo boo on the playground. The baby that was born to me and laid upon my chest, dreamy and perfect, a bundle of newborn baby smell and joy. 

When a tree is struck by lightning, it continues to grow in other directions. While it shapes them, trauma doesn’t touch or break who they truly are. Before and beneath the pain, there is something untouched, unbroken, and supremely intelligent. We can choose to believe in our children’s ability to grow towards the light and be the roots that ground them. 

 

Naya Elle James is a writer who shares real life experiences through books, essays, and film. She believes that stories have the power to heal us, making what’s personal, communal, and returning us to hope. She is the author of Untouched and Untaken: A Woman’s Journey to Overcome Her Generational Legacy, a memoir about overcoming a legacy of abandonment to become the mother her daughter desperately needs. She is part of a small team of creatives at Samansara Media, where she co-writes novellas and screenplays about what it means to live our own versions of love, the nature of impossible choice, and how to evolve past the limitations of modern life. You can learn more about her and follow her work at nayaellejames.com.