A mother on watching her daughter suffer and wondering about the role she's played in her disorder
Photo: H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images It is relatively early on a summer evening, just after sunset. From my bed, I notice a shadow of a spindly branch dancing across the corner of the bedroom wall. I get up and close the curtains tightly to make it disappear, careful not to step on my daughter, who’s camped on my bedroom floor, lying stiffly under the weighted anxiety blanket I’d made her. I don’t mind the shadow, but I know it will make it impossible for her to fall asleep.
It’s possible my daughter’s condition is unavoidable — that she was born with a fear of death imprinted on her genes. There is plenty of precedent in my family, with an unbroken line of anxiety-ridden women stretching back to my great-great grandmother, who made a harrowing journey from Ireland to the United States.
My daughter hasn’t heard horrific stories, but she’s been affected by death without knowing it. When she was an infant, I lost two young friends, both within a year of each other, and these tragedies sent me into my own anxiety spiral: For years, I did not sleep through the night, so afraid was I that one of my children might die in their sleep.
I have no conscious memory of my mother battling anxiety while I was a child. What I do remember was how often she hid away in her room, and how she would go for long stretches without seeing friends or family. Similarly, my daughter has no conscious memory of the years I spent walking the halls at night to peek in on my children, double- and triple -checking that they were still alive.
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