The last chapter ended with Chana getting her stomach pumped, and me alone in the emergency room, terrified and wondering what my husband and children must be thinking. Then I turned around and saw my husband walking in.
Having him there made Shabbos manageable and less lonely. While Chana slept, we sat by her bedside and talked about what had happened. We were both stunned and deeply saddened at the turn of events. We kept asking the same questions, quietly, without answers. How could this have happened? Was this a cry for help? A serious attempt followed by immediate regret? What had she been thinking?
And then the questions turned inward. What had I been thinking, letting her sit alone in her room all day? I knew she wasn’t doing well. I felt it. But she was eighteen – legally an adult – and I no longer had the same right to information or access that I once did. I felt like I had to wait for her to come to me.
At the time, I still believed that if I sat with her long enough, in the right way, she would open up. That I just hadn’t found the right approach yet. I know now that this was wishful thinking. Even if I had sat beside her all day, she wouldn’t have shared anything she didn’t want to share. I couldn’t have pulled it out of her.
That belief – that there was something I could still do if I did it better – only made things harder. I had to face the reality that I had no control. Chana was her own person. I couldn’t watch her every minute of the day, and even I could have, doing so wouldn’t have been healthy for either of us, or for our relationship. I also had other children. I had a husband. I couldn’t disappear into this crisis without consequences.
Still, on some level, I believed her illness was a reflection of my parenting. If I had been a better mother. If I had loved her the right way. Or loved her enough. If I had validated her more, created more room – or maybe I had created too much room?
Friends who knew what was happening told me it wasn’t my fault. That I had done my best. That Chana was her own person. But every week, I sat in my own therapy, unpacking my relationship with my mother. How much pain it had caused me. How mismatched we were. My sensitivity and self-doubt had never stood a chance against her rigidity and emotional distance. I had vowed to do better with my own children.
So how could both things be true? How could I be told that my mother was responsible for so much of my pain, while being told that none of what Chana did had anything to do with me?
When Chana was in therapy, what was she being told? That I was the source of her pain? Or that she was responsible for her own choices? I would look at the scars on her arms, legs, and stomach and feel deeply confused. These marks didn’t feel like a language I understood. I just couldn’t read them.
I still struggle with the centrality of parents’ role in their children’s health and resilience. Perhaps our society also struggles with this question. During shidduchim, people will point to well-adjusted children and say that they clearly come from a strong home. But when a child comes from a broken family (for example) and turns out well, the narrative flips: “Look how strong he/she is. She’s not a reflection of her parents.”
Which one is it?
Back in the emergency room that Friday night, theory didn’t matter. I sat and watched Chana sleep. My husband went out and got Shabbos food. He made Kiddush. We washed and ate lukewarm food. He sang zemiros. He even managed to get Chana to wake up and eat a little.
A psychiatrist came in and asked to speak to Chana alone. Since she was eighteen, we were asked to leave. He wanted to hear what had led her to this decision.
I was angry. I understood her right to privacy, but this felt different. We were expected to take her to therapy, to psychiatry appointments, to rearrange our lives and finances, to keep her safe. I had slept in her bed when she was on suicide watch. I had run out of the house in the middle of the night, frightening my other children. Yet we were not entitled to any information without her explicit permission!
Other medical issues didn’t work this way. The ER doctors had no problem explaining blood levels, toxicity, and the effects of pumping her stomach. Why was her mental health treated differently? The expectation was total support – with no access to the information that we needed to support her. To this day, I struggle with that. It doesn’t feel fair.
The decision was made to admit Chana to a regular medical ward. This wasn’t a psychiatric admission. They needed to monitor her physically – to make sure she was medically stable after the overdose, that there were no delayed effects, and that her blood levels remained safe. There was an awareness of the suicide attempt, but this was not a psych unit or suicide watch in the way I had imagined.
We stayed with her the entire Shabbos. We talked, but nothing deep. None of us had the strength for that.
After Shabbos, my husband went home to be with the kids. I went to get clothes and toiletries, planning to stay with Chana. It was a strange hospital stay. We had averted a catastrophe, but we weren’t safe. Still, Chana slipped easily back into the role she knew well – the version of herself that reassured everyone else.
When I returned, she was hungry. She had called her brother, who was learning nearby, and he came running. The three of us got burgers and went shopping in the hospital mall. They bought matching sweatshirts. I bought a sweater. We joked. We laughed.
It was… fun.
I let myself believe she was okay.
The next day, we finally met with a psychiatrist and social worker to discuss next steps. I had chosen this hospital specifically because it had a psychiatric ward, assuming she would be admitted once medically discharged. But we were told that because she was less than seventy-two hours post-attempt, she had to be transferred to the regional psychiatric hospital.
We were reassured that this was standard procedure.
We were taken by van to the adult psych ward – the same hospital where Chana had once been treated as a teenager. We waited for hours in their emergency room. It was quiet. Too quiet. We were left alone with our thoughts.
Chana was taken in for intake. Again, I wasn’t invited. Again, I felt shut out. When they finally called me in, they explained that Chana had assured them she was no longer a danger to herself. She felt safe. They accepted this and told us to return to the original hospital so she could be readmitted there.
But when we got back, we were told they couldn’t readmit her because she had already been discharged. Later, I would learn that she should never have been discharged in the first place.
Chana was in crisis – but she didn’t look like it. This was where she was always most convincing. She had learned how to look okay. How to sound okay. How to reassure the people around her that everything was fine, even when it wasn’t. She had always been a good actress, and in that moment, it worked in her favor.
The only thing I noticed was how she dug her nails into the backs of her hands. Over and over. She didn’t seem aware she was doing it. Watching it made me unbearably sad. This was the first time I had seen her self-harm in real time.
Since no hospital would take her, we had no choice but to bring her home.
As we drove along dark, winding roads, I couldn’t help but feel that this was a perfect enactment of what we were living through. Even when we reached the lit streets near our house, I didn’t feel like we were coming home. I didn’t feel safety or comfort waiting for us there.
I felt like the light was still very far away.
The author has started a website and online support for parents who are going on similar journeys, she can be reached at parentsbyachad@gmail.com.