There are three precious children at the center of a current NATIONAL NEWS story who should still be here. There are mothers everywhere, right now, caring for children while silently suffering from postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum psychosis, or other serious mental health struggles. They need help. They do not need shame, ridicule, or strangers reducing complicated and serious mental illness to words like “evil” or “monster.” They need people willing to recognize that something is wrong and help them get appropriate care.

WHY? Well, I am so glad you care to ask! When we help a suffering mother, we ARE helping her children. We ARE helping her husband or partner. We ARE helping an entire family. If you say you care about protecting children, then you have to be willing to care about the mental health of the people raising them. We cannot wait until something horrific happens and then suddenly become concerned about the children. We have to care before the tragedy. We have to care when a mother says, “Something is wrong and I need help.” We have to care when she is afraid of her own thoughts, when she hasn’t slept, when she is behaving differently, or when the people who know and love her are saying, “This isn’t her.” We have to care enough to listen, intervene, advocate, treat, support, and keep showing up.

If you have never experienced serious mental illness during pregnancy or after giving birth, I am genuinely grateful that you haven’t. But your healthy postpartum experience does not qualify you to judge another woman’s mental illness. Please don’t pat yourself on the back because you made it through motherhood without experiencing something another woman could not control. Be grateful. Listen. Learn. You do not have to understand how someone’s mind could become that sick to accept that serious mental illness exists and deserves serious treatment.

Honestly what concerns me most about some of the ugliness surrounding the Lindsay Clancy case is that somewhere there may be another mother reading these comments who is already terrified by what is happening inside her own mind. She may already be wondering, What will people think of me if I tell them? Will they think I’m a terrible mother? Will they call me a monster? Will they take my children? That woman needs to speak up, and our words should make it safer for her to do that, not more frightening.

If you are that woman, if your thoughts scare you, you don’t feel like yourself, you are ashamed of what is happening in your mind, or you are afraid someone will judge you if you tell the truth, please tell someone. There are women who will stand beside you. I am one of them. Asking for help takes tremendous courage, but getting help is possible. We need to create communities where a mother can say, “I am not okay. Something is happening to me. I need help,” and have people take her seriously long before her family reaches a breaking point.

That is part of what makes the Clancy case so unbearable to me. Three precious children are gone. A father has endured unimaginable loss (innocent until guilty for the conspiracy or data collection neighbors). A mother and an entire extended family are living a nightmare with consequences that cannot be undone (she was not contesting her innocence so stop already). I can grieve those children fiercely, ache for their father, have compassion for a profoundly ill mother, and still want evidence, truth, and accountability to matter. Those things are not mutually exclusive. We do not need to create false dichotomies!

Compassion is not the absence of accountability, and acknowledging serious mental illness does not diminish the horror of what happened to those children. But if the only thing we learn from a tragedy like this is how to hate the person at the center of it, then we have learned nothing that might protect the next family.

That is where I want my anger directed, NOT toward tearing another human being apart, but toward making sure we do better for the next mother, the next husband, and the next child. Help the mother and you help her children. Help the mother and you help her spouse. Help the mother and you give the entire family a better chance.

We have to care before there is a headline. Because if we truly care about protecting children, then we also have to care about the mothers they depend on, and make sure that when one of those mothers is drowning, she knows she is allowed to yell for help and that someone will actually come.

PLEASE SAVE THESE NUMBERS. You may never need them but another mother might.

ABILENE & THE BIG COUNTRY: Betty Hardwick Center has a 24-hour mental health crisis line at 1-800-758-3344. Their crisis services provide screening, assessment, intervention, information, and referrals.

TEXAS & NATIONWIDE: Call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. It is available 24/7 for someone experiencing a mental health, suicide, or substance-use crisis. You do not have to wait until someone is actively suicidal to reach out for crisis support.

MATERNAL MENTAL HEALTH NATIONWIDE: Pregnant women, postpartum mothers, new parents, and their families can call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262). It is free, confidential, and available 24/7. Trained counselors can listen, provide immediate support, and connect families with local resources and additional care.

If a mother appears to be in immediate danger of hurting herself, her baby, or someone else, or is experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.

Please don’t just share opinions about maternal mental health. Share the help, too. Someone reading your words may need it.

-Love Your Crazy Momma Friend
Stephanie Ellison, M.Ed.