My mother is proud of me

One of my favorite slam poems is a short piece by Kait Rokowski titled, "A Good Day." The poem describes what a good day is like for someone with depression, how the overwhelming pain can show how simply getting out of bed is an accomplishment in and of itself. The fight with depression, anxiety, and mental illness is very real, and it is a fight that is so often unseen and unrecognized.
One of my favorite lines is both funny and very truthful. 

My mother is proud of me.
It is not the kind of pride she brags about at the golf course.
She doesn’t combat topics like, ”My daughter got into Yale”
with, ”Oh yeah, my daughter remembered to buy eggs”
But she is proud.

Living in recovery or remission from depression and mental illness means you must celebrate the little victories. And the external validation, the kind that comes from big awards and presentations, is replaced with casual recognition of your perseverance and offhand compliments about how well you are doing.

In certain parts of the Jewish community, and in general for any tight-knit community and group, life becomes a show of some sort. You want to display a life to be envied. In the age of social media and instagram, our existence becomes marketable. Our struggles and our truths are filtered to present us in the best light. There is a great sense of anxiety and pain that comes with living in a world of capturing moments rather than living them.

It was a big leap for me to tell my story of mental illness, of misdiagnosis, and of recovery. I told my story for the first time in a small workshop group of poets (shoutout to Talia Young and Looking for Home!) and again during a Yom Kippur service at the Kitchen (a synagogue in San Francisco). Both these venues were small and unknown. I was opening myself up and my vulnerabilities were being seen, but I did not have much at stake. 

Eventually I did move on to my own synagogue, my own community, my college friends, and the Internet at large. I have written my story and I have told my truths in a way that is honest to me, and that is for me. I do not write this for pity, or for applause. I write this for me, and if I can reach someone else in the process, that's a beautiful thing.

My mother is proud of me. I see it in the way she compliments my knitting, a unique hobby and one that is not particularly lucrative (and is in fact a drain on my wallet), but a hobby that brings me joy and one that I have stuck with for years. I see it in the way she forwards my blog posts to her friends, how she asks me what I'm reading, how classes are going.

My father is proud of me. I forgot my laptop charger at my grandparents, and he drove probably an hour to Claremont to drop it off. While there, he saw me in my natural habitat, working at the local Starbucks, appreciating my education and making the most of my final semester. I saw it in his smile when he waved goodbye, knowing he was leaving his daughter as a stable and independent college student, confident and strong. 

My sister is proud of me. It's a strange relationship we have, because although she is younger than me, she is so much wiser and more mature. She spent years watching her big sister in pain, and yet, she holds no resentment for the unconditional support she provided before she could understand the term "chronic". Maybe she looks up to me again. I hope she does. I hope she can see how much her positivity has shaped my life.

My grandparents are proud of me. The way my Poppy listens intently to my plans for graduate school and changing the world, plans I describe in the same sentence. My Nonny points out every little offhand compliment she hears, the way Poppy said I was "just terrific" as I got ready for bed at their new place. The way my Zaydie chuckles at my terrible puns and tries to stump me with his brain teasers. The way my Bubbi hugs me every time I see her, so tight and long it is as though we will never let go.

And my friends, my extended family, I can see it too. They are there for me, supporting me and commenting on all my posts, providing love and praise for the writing I have come to love.  

And I am proud of myself. I love myself. I love the woman I have become, because I fought to become her.

From strength to strength, 

Rivi