A Reflection on Mental Illness and My Family Story

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By Jasmyn Davis

Last year, when Lauren invited me to be a guest on her podcast, I immediately knew I wanted to talk about the intersection of Blackness, womanhood, and mental illness. But as I began preparing my notes leading up to the show, I realized there was much more to my story that I needed to tell. Details I couldn’t consciously leave out.

I couldn’t tell my personal story about mental illness without talking about how I became mentally ill. This meant I needed to talk about my family.

I don’t come from a good family.

Since before I was born, my parents have been in an abusive relationship with one another. Up until rather recently, I described my family dynamic with euphemistic terms like “complicated” or “dramatic.” I even hid close friends from the reality of what my family life was like. I kept my story vague and short, so they wouldn’t ask prying questions about why I didn’t often talk about my family or see them on holidays.

My two sisters and I grew up in an abusive household. I’ve come to learn that is the truth. But even now, I feel like it’s wrong for me to use that word—abuse. But what else do I call it? I’ve seen my parents yell and hit and manipulate one another (and us) too many times to continue calling it by another name.

The first time I tried to write about my family was during my sophomore year of college in a creative nonfiction course. One week, our assignment was to draw a sketch of where we grew up, and write a story inspired by our drawing. I chose to write about various home improvement projects my mom took on over the years, and how my mother’s pursuit of unconventional DIY home projects was in some ways a manifestation of the underlying mental health issues she had battled for decades. I even gave the piece a clever title, “home improvement,” an ironic reference to the fact that my mother’s home betterment projects never actually improved our house—she ripped up carpet without reinstalling it, threw out sofas in good condition and replaced them with plastic folding chairs, and drew large crucifixes in black marker on the walls.

The essay I wrote mortified my classmates. I saw the uneasiness on their faces as they waited for their turn to share feedback on my piece. No one else had chosen to share such a chaotic family story. Their families had their problems too—one classmate wrote about a father’s struggle with alcoholism—but they weren’t crazy people.

As my classmates went around the room critiquing my piece, I immediately felt that all too common burning feeling—shame. I shouldn’t have shared this with them. They wouldn’t understand. Worse, they would feel pity for me—the only Black student in the class, the student with the fucked up family. I just confirmed their assumption about what people from my background are like. Because of what my family is like.

Even though my parents never read the essay, I obsessed over what they would think if they knew I had used my family story as creative material. Did I betray them? Did I reduce them to two-dimensional caricatures? After class, I met with my creative writing professor during office hours. I asked her, how do I write about my family when they never gave me the permission to do so?

This question followed me throughout college and afterwards. When I felt compelled to talk honestly about my family, whether through writing or conversations with friends, I thought how dare you? Who gave you permission?

In a different creative nonfiction class, one I took four years after my first one in college, a classmate wrote a story about how her drug-addicted mother once stabbed her in the head (accidentally) when she was a child and blamed the incident on her father so he would get arrested.

How could I possibly compare my experience to hers? I have no physical scars to bare. Only psychological and emotional ones. I grew up in the suburbs. I come from a two-parent household. I was an honors student. I attended a top liberal arts college. As my Dad said, “I turned out okay” and that’s what many people think about me.

But I didn’t turn out okay. Like many victims of family violence, I have been scarred by what has happened to me.

I developed maladaptive coping mechanisms. I developed low self-esteem. I developed insomnia. I developed trust issues. I developed anxiety. I developed depression.

My sisters and I have all been prescribed psychiatric medications to cope with our mental illnesses. And though there are many factors that can cause mental illness (the fact that mental illness runs in my family probably doesn’t help), I can’t pretend that what happened to me as a child and as an adolescent didn’t contribute to the mental health crises I found myself in as an adult.

I can understand the complex situations that cause my parents to act the way they do, and have sympathy for the ways that they too have been hurt. I love my parents. I know they love me, in their own way. But I will not excuse their abusive behavior.

I have been going to therapy for about four years consistently. I have been on antidepressants for three years. I do “the work” as they say in therapy. I find healthy ways to manage my depression. I keep a routine. I practice self-compassion and self-care. I try to give myself grace. But there are many days when I don’t want to do the work. I’m working so hard to be a better version of myself. And still, I’ve committed more to my healing in the past four years than my parents have in over 30 years of their marriage. I’m angry that they don’t want to change. I’m angry that I’m the one who is supposed to make amends. I’m angry that they will likely never apologize for the many things that they have done. There are many days that I think they don’t deserve to have such a forgiving daughter.

But I’ve also learned what I deserve. I deserve to be loved, and cared for, without restrictions. I deserve safety. I deserve comfort. And I deserve peace.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned through therapy is that I likely won’t receive that from my parents. In many ways, I’m still that little girl who wants her parents to stop fighting and just get along. But my parents’ story, my family story, has no happy ending or reconciliation. As I’ve gotten older and moved away from where my parents live, I thought things would be better. I’ve started to bitterly accept that, at best, they will likely remain the same. I can’t control my parents or their actions. If I want to be in a relationship with them, I need to have firm boundaries with them, and accept that our relationship will never mirror that of my friends’ families. For my own mental health, I must put myself first.

I came to this realization only recently, after I did my podcast episode. The days before I spoke with Lauren, I deliberated over whether I should even talk about my family, afraid I could be making a mistake. I didn’t want to share every awful detail about what my parents have put me through. I didn’t want to exploit my story. The audience this time wasn’t a small writing group, but hundreds of listeners I didn’t know. Who gave me the permission to air my family business to hundreds of strangers?

That’s when I realized—it was my business. This was my story. Not my parents’ story. Not my sisters’ story. My story. They were all a part of it, but I needed to speak truth to my experience. In Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness, one of my favorite books, she says, “I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act” (xviii). I felt called upon to share my story, despite how ugly so much of it is. I knew that telling my story, honestly, could provide the healing that I needed. And I was tired of keeping a secret—abuse thrives on secrecy.

After the podcast was released, friends reached out to me to share their support, and some even told me they resonated with my story because they also have abusive family members. Those comments helped me feel a little less ashamed of sharing my story. I didn’t tell my parents about the episode. There are some parts of my life that I do not feel comfortable with giving them access. (And honestly, I don’t even think my mom knows what a podcast is.)

More importantly, I didn’t do the podcast for them. They weren’t my audience. I’ve moved past trying to tell my story to those who aren’t receptive to listening. I needed to tell my story for me—to validate the person I have worked so hard to become, and for my inner child who needed to hear that she no longer needed to be ashamed.

You can follow Jasmyn on Instagram at @JasMichelle07.