The Application
“Dear Ms. Menken, we read your daughter’s application. She indicated yes to these questions, and we need more information.
HAVE YOU EVER WITHDRAWN FROM SCHOOL FOR MEDICAL REASONS?
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN REFERRED TO COUNSELING, FAMILY THERAPY, PSYCHIATRIC CARE?”
Dear Prestigious Arts Camp Admissions Officer,
How do I explain, in just a few sentences, our family’s journey into the dark pit of mental illness in a way that you could understand and still believe in my seventeen-year-old daughter’s strength?
I almost want to laugh at your questions. Yeah, we’re familiar with the world of mental health clinicians. Since her breakdown eighteen months ago, my daughter Ellie has worked with a rotating cast of six individual outpatient therapists, two family therapists, three nutritionists, and three psychiatrists, many within a treatment center. In those moments when she first spit out the words “ending my life,” I felt the tug of depression myself underneath the panicked adrenaline that drove me to do whatever I could to stabilize my daughter. By God’s grace, her suicidal ideation dissipated within months, but those months felt like decades for me.
In early recovery, Ellie slept on a thin mattress on our bedroom floor with her stuffed white dog and favorite blue quilt. My husband tried not to trip over her when he stumbled towards the bathroom before dawn. You might think that would be hard for our marriage, but there was no space for our couple anyway; Ellie’s needs invaded our conversations, became my default focus, and took up all my energy. In daylight, I kept Ellie with me, watching her out of the corner of my eye like a new puppy who, unattended, might tear up the furniture. My husband and I had “dates” in the sunroom while watching Ellie, glued to her Chromebook, through a heavy glass door. I’m not sure how much we looked at each other.
Back to your questions. Until seven months ago, you could have lumped me in with the therapists under something called Family Based Treatment. I monitored every meal my daughter consumed, according to a nutritionist-mandated food plan in which a therapist trains the parents how to re-feed their eating disordered child. And let’s not forget the post-meal supervision outside the bathroom door, listening to Ellie count as she peed to prevent her from sticking her finger down her throat. Teaching my teenager to eat again felt a bit like a reprise of my role when she was a toddler, except it was immeasurably easier when she was eighteen months old, when we battled over flying peas and staying in her booster seat, applesauce smeared all over her eyebrows. Trying to re-feed a teenager hell-bent on food refusal is like trying to bathe a traumatized cat: your ears hurt from the screams and your body aches from trying so hard to convince her to do what she is terrified of. At the end of most dinners that first month, I collapsed on the couch, awash in the shame of a half-eaten plate. I felt even more defeated as the combination of her deceit and my naivete came into focus: the empty laxative package that she picked up when she was taking “walks,” the truth that she was purging into garbage bags in her bedroom, finding food she’d hidden when I was distracted. No matter what I did, it seemed that the eating disorder could outsmart me. At least the realization pushed me to work harder for Ellie’s healing, to partner more closely with her therapists, rather than giving up entirely.
If it takes a village to raise a child, it must take a city to heal a child with mental illness. My husband and I are so deeply grateful that after more than half a year in a treatment center and another half year of working with a team of clinicians, Ellie has stabilized. Her cheeks are pink, her eyes sparkle, and she has learned to dress herself fashionably in a healthier, bigger body. This fall, she transferred to a new school, learned to manage the anxiety that drove her to vending machines and bathrooms, found friendships that left me snapping photos of painted, dressy girls on Homecoming night, and kissed her first boyfriend. I am so proud that sometimes my cheeks hurt from smiling. Simple behaviors like sleeping through the night, being invited to a sleepover, and packing a lunch, which the average mom would expect for their teen, are a cause for celebration in our home.
The truth, though, is that I still haven’t fully relaxed. I can’t quite let go of the constant drumbeat of anxiety about Ellie relapsing, regardless of whether that anxiety is based on real data or not. I still use a magnetic key, marketed to protect toddlers from opening a cabinet of toxic chemicals, to access the corrugated knife to cut fresh bread and to grab slender blue capsules when I have a headache. Even though Ellie tells me that her self-harm urges are low, I’m still on alert, a year after a therapist told us to lock it all up, after I witnessed neat red rows on my daughter’s arm carved like wooden steps up a steep hike. How do you move on and trust your daughter when her illness makes her untrustworthy?
I know what you’re probably thinking. Why are we even applying? Shouldn’t a kid like Ellie stay home, where life is predictable? How could a kid who has telehealth therapy three times a week and carries a small pharmacy of narcotics and amphetamines to manage her depression and ADHD consider a three-week camp? You might tell me that you’re not a halfway house and you aren’t up for accepting this type of liability.
To be honest, I get it. There’s nowhere on this application for me to admit that I’m terrified to send her to your camp. In some moments, I agree that this is a crazy proposition, and we should all forget it immediately. Maybe I would breathe better if we did.
But I suspect that we’re limiting Ellie by deciding that her disabilities are too great to meet this challenge. While it’s illegal to discriminate against someone because of mental illness (and almost impossible to prove), it’s also missing the full picture of who Ellie is and what she is capable of.
If you only ask about the ugliness of school withdrawals and psychiatric care, you’d miss the beauty that I witness daily: how my daughter confides in me when she worries about friend drama, rather than burrowing under sweaty bedcovers for days. Ellie chatting with cousins, shoving chunks of steak in her mouth, a day after she quizzed the tour guide at her dream college. You’d still see the periodic panic attacks and how she checks her body size in dusty windows, but you’d also see how she moves through it like a swimmer pushing water aside in breaststroke.
There’s a deeper question that doesn’t concern you. How will I help her launch into adulthood if I don’t untether myself from her now? At seventeen, she’s rarely ventured away from home, except for that treatment center with its therapy skills classes and tightly controlled phone calls. We need a place where she can try out her wings so that we can learn from the moments when she crashes as well as those when she glides into the sky. We need something like your sleepaway camp to prepare for college, just as much as Ellie needs to study for the ACT. I need a place where Ellie cannot run to me when she wonders if she’s choosing the right portion of mashed potatoes, where she learns to rely on herself and her support network, where she becomes more adept at navigating unfamiliar spaces without holding my hand.
Ellie and I debated as we filled out your application. She almost gave up. She hated that you asked me to provide my perspective on her health.
“I want to be the one to tell my story!” Ellie said, her face reddening. “What if they just reject me right away when they hear about my ED?” She buried her head in her hands.
“You don’t need to be ashamed, Ellie,” I replied, moving closer to her.
Ellie shook her head as her breathing sped up, holding her body stiffly.
I rubbed her back as the panic attack crested.
“Can I show you what I wrote?” I asked, after another half hour of wrestling and crying.
“You only wrote two sentences? It sounds so positive!” She frowned. “I don’t get it.”
“Because your story is positive, Ellie. You’ve come so far. The fact that you want to go to camp shows your progress.”
Gradually, Ellie’s shoulders relaxed, her breathing slowed, and she sighed. “Okay, Mom.”
When we hit send together, Ellie’s eyes shone. I thought, maybe she believes it’s true. Maybe I do, too.
Sincerely,
Ellie’s mom
Cover photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
About the Author
Serena Menken is a senior leader in a nonprofit, where she leads a gifted team and serves as editor of a company website. She is the mother of three teenagers plus a rambunctious dog. Connect with her at serenamenken.substack.com and serenamenken.com.
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