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Well hello! I’m so glad you’re here. Write to me here, or via Instagram: @SusannaSchrobs. Subscribe to get a new edition of “It’s Not Just You” every Saturday.
Many of those who battle the most serious mental health issues have a small galaxy of loved ones who travel that road with them (as much as anyone can). This week’s essay is for those of you who might know a bit about that galaxy. This somewhat abbreviated newsletter is also also a call to action for this year’s World Mental Health Day in the wake of a pandemic that has had disastrous effects on the most vulnerable. Yours, Susanna
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On Loving Someone Who Battles Inner Demons
Every family has its own secret language of nicknames and worn jokes. Ours relied on toddler words from when my youngest sister, Rosemary, was little. There were clean bath talawals in the closet at Mom’s house, and we’d put on our babysuits for the beach long after we became adults and long after we lost Rosemary.
My siblings and I are shaped by her absence, just as we had been by her illness. She fought the most terrible depression. It was a bird of prey that swooped in at puberty and never left for long. And at 22, it finally took her.
When my children were young, they asked me about the girl with the light eyes in our family photos. They’d never met Rosemary, but there she was, framed on the shelf, at 10 months old in a white knit dress trimmed with embroidered roses, hair slicked into a spit curl at the top. Her cheeks were flushed and Dad had given her a fat red apple to match.
At 13, her face more chiseled, she stands with a calm smile in a blue checked shirt holding the reins of a caramel-colored horse. Still later, she’d float warily at the edges of holiday photos, clearly hating her dressy clothes. And then she wasn’t in the albums anymore.
I told my kids that Rosemary had been sick, and the doctors tried to fix what was happening in her brain, but the medicines didn’t work. I said it was a…
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