Lydia Part 4: The Silent Struggle

“So you’re willing to consider anything?” Yes, anything except a history of severe mental health issues.

We had considered our parameters carefully. We wanted a baby and were really open to whatever they could throw at us, except that. Having no experience in it, and doubting we had the ability to support a child like that, we thought we were doing us all a favor.

But there was something we hadn’t heard of: comorbidity. If anyone had said that word to me at that time, I would have had no idea what they were talking about. These are occurrences/conditions that happen alongside mental health issues. They include anywhere from drug and alcohol addiction to other more commonly addressed disabilities. They are things that happen in addition to any primary diagnosis.

So while we would never consider severe mental health issues, we were open to other genetically-predisposed mental conditions, such as anxiety, depression, and ADHD. We were also willing to consider babies who were exposed to drugs and alcohol while in utero. What we hadn’t realized at the time is that these “would consider” conditions were often indicative of bigger, possibly unidentified mental health issues.

Rough Beginnings

When we first heard about Lydia and made the decision to take her home, we could not have imagined the road we would have to walk with her. The social workers gave us some background.

She had been exposed to meth and hard alcohol every day in utero. Her birth mother went into labor while she was incarcerated for petty theft, and Lydia was set to be her 10th child to enter the social system, born with a meth-created disability: her shoulders were stiff and her feet and legs turned inward. “She might need braces sometime in the future to correct that.”

We thought we knew what we were getting ourselves into. Braces, check. Possible learning disability, check, check. Good thing we were both teachers!

The Silent Struggle

Bringing her home with an air of confidence, we became parents for the first time. Over the next few months, Lydia’s feet and legs naturally corrected. She seemed to struggle with math but was a whiz at language, always blowing those milestones out of the water. Reading and writing were second nature to her. I was a proud mama.

Because she attended the school where we taught, we were able to make sure she had the accommodations she needed. Her teachers worked with us and her. We never needed an SST or 504 plan for support.

When she was promoted from Galileo Academy and headed off to junior high, we made sure she attended a private school, hoping they’d have the same level of support and concern for her there. Instead, things began to unravel.

Lydia later shared with me that this is when she started cutting. Confronted by her teachers and classmates alike, she hid her struggle. It was a sin. But no matter how much she wanted to stop, she couldn’t. And so she carried on under the radar, feeling like she had no one to turn to for help. Ashamed.

I felt like I had failed her. There for everyone else, I did not have the time or energy to see how she was falling further and further into this addiction. It was not until I was slapped upside the head with this reality three years later that I truly saw her. Trying our best to be “normal” we had been living oblivious to the burden our daughter was forced to carry, alone.