Yesterday was my daughter Alix’s baby shower.

She stood beside her husband Ben, glowing, her hands resting on Charlie Mae growing inside her. Belle, now eleven, spun around the room in excitement.

Alix looked radiant, happy in a way that felt both brand-new and achingly familiar.

For a moment she was my little girl again, the one with the big smile and the shy tilt of her head when too many eyes were on her.

Now she is a mother herself, and I am a Nana. Those are our roles, our names of honour.

But as I watched her unwrap tiny clothes and baby blankets, memories pressed hard against the edges of my mind.

I remembered the nights of unrest, the panic attacks, the hollow days when I wasted away in bed.

I remembered Alix’s eyes on me as I unravelled, and her worried voice outside the bathroom door as I lay in a bath far too hot and far too long:

“Mama, are you okay?” she would ask outside the door.

I made the word suicidal real for her, just as my father once made addiction normal for me.

When Miguel worked nights, she was there to watch me, even though she should not have had to.

She breathed with me through panic, hunted for the objects my OCD mind hid, and lived among art that was gruesome and crude. She learned to watch for the public triggers that might set me off. She helped her brother while I stumbled through treatments.

It was a heavy childhood for a little girl who deserved lightness.

Before I knew your name, illness, I knew something was wrong.

I tried to get help, yes, but not hard enough.

I should have begged, grovelled and screamed to be heard ….

Instead, I tried to be the mother she needed, burning bake-sale treats and hiding the mistakes with icing, showing up for every school event, taking too many meds to get by or not enough to stay manic and keep myself functioning.

But once I finally learned your name, illness, I understood my job.

I had to fight every single day to get well, because my children deserved more than a mother lost to shadows.

I fought every single day so that little girl wouldn’t have to look at me with worry.

And now, here we are.

We still bicker.

I’m still a lot for her some days.

But she knows I went through hell and back, took every appointment, every treatment to reach this moment, standing beside her as she becomes a mother again.

And I would do it all over again…anything for them.

I watch her with Belle, preparing for Charlie Mae.

She is an amazing mom.

She has cared for them, but I also know the years she cared for me.

Remembering that balance of roles, I feel an ache I am still learning to forgive, because I couldn’t fully show up as their mother.

But I have learned that the only way to forgive, the only way to fill the darkness of regret, is to show up now with light.

So I am making up for it as a grandmother, and as the mother they need today.

Last night, our family, the one we fought for and the one that fought for me, gathered to celebrate another chapter.

We forgave. We learned. We accepted.

And most of all, we loved one another fiercely.

As I stood there in that room of second chances, sharing in her happiness, I felt the lineage change, from a father’s addiction, to my illness, to her steady strength.

I cut that cord and changed what mental illness has to mean in our family.

The fight that nearly broke me, and nearly broke us, is the same fight that allows us to share in this joy with all our hearts.

Here’s to beautiful new beginnings.

Love always,

Wellness