Everyone Failed Lindsay Clancy.

If you haven’t read my work for a long time, allow me to tell you a little thing about myself: I’m a birthmother. I gave up rights to my daughter and am in an open adoption with her two handpicked dads.

I was aware that I was not parent material. I loved my daughter enough to realize that it was best that I love her from afar. At the time, my life situation was absolutely dangerous and would likely have caused her to live a life that wouldn’t have been worth living.

I knew I made the right choice.

I also know the doctors around me knew I chose wisely.

Do you know why?

Because I got up shortly after giving birth (paralyzed legs be damned), hobbled over butt-naked to a doctor, suckerpunched him, then screamed that I needed to eat someone’s blood. I also asked if I could decapitate my daughter and eat her entrails.

They tackled me, put a bite prevention device on me, and strapped me to a wheelchair until I appeared calm enough to leave. I left six hours later, AMA, and got into a fight with a cop.

Well, let’s start with the basics.

• Lindsay had two kids before, with prior diagnoses of Post Partum Depression. Her past DX’s were handled through meditation and light medication.

• Her third child caused her hormones to go even worse. She started hearing voices, getting bad insomnia, and getting a little hyper.

• She had attempted to get help. She was in-patient for five days before being sent home against her wishes. She tried over a dozen medications to treat her symptoms but to no avail.

• Lindsay was totally “coherent sounding” the day before, but she still strangled her three kids to death with exercise bands. She then tried to kill herself by jumping out of the window.

When her husband returned home from picking up her meds, he found her bloody in the bushes after a suicide attempt. 911 was called and all three children succumbed to strangulation.

Much like with Lindsay, the birth wasn’t when the problems stopped for me. The first three months, I was trying to figure out how to kill doctors in my area. People were afraid to go near me. I drove a steak knife deep into a table for someone just approaching me too quick.

Long story short, after constantly talking to myself, hearing voices in my head telling me to eat my daughter, and having other serious issues, I sought help. More specifically, I sought help while also seeking sterilization.

I got sedated with enough tranquilizers to knock out a horse, got driven to a gynecologist, and was diagnosed with Post Partum Psychosis as well as some type of disordered extreme estrogen production.

Unlike Lindsay, I actually had ONE (out of like fucking 12) doctor actually listen to me and do as I said. The doctor realized another pregnancy would kill me, so I also got surgically sterilized. I am happy about this.

I had to have about 10 Depo-Provera shots in a single week before I could actually act normally. Truth be told, it was closer to 14. I had four shots, then the rest of my treatment was in the very rare pill form.

It was terrifying to be that way. And I thank the gods every day that I had enough self-control to go through with the adoption, keep my distance, and reach out for help rather than give into the dark thoughts I had.

Truly, Lindsay didn’t have that road available to her.

My birth was one of the most horrifically traumatizing moments of my life.

Aside from being the most absolutely dysphoric thing to happen to a genderless person, what made it truly traumatizing was realizing that doctors don’t care about you as a woman. No one, literally no one, listened to me.

I will never forgive or forget that level of betrayal, dehumanization or rape. It’s why I will be taking my daughter to get sterilized, the moment she turns 18. I never want her to experience the American “motherhood-womanhood” medical experience.

She’s already said she doesn’t want a child and unlike everyone around me at that age, I’ll believe her. I was inches away from mass murder and eating my child’s corpse. The only thing that prevented that was people around me believing me.

Lindsay was not that lucky.

She was ignored by everyone, including the father of her kids.

You know, it’s weird how often society and doctors will see a woman going through mental illness, ask for help, tell them in no uncertain terms that she needs XYZ, and still shrug and do nothing. It’s only when legality, a man, or insurance gets angry that they stiffen up and listen.

Doctors didn’t care about my reproductive choices because they decided it’s in my best interest to have a baby. It’s only when they realized that I might murder the baby and them and also die and become a legal liability that I got fixed.

Doctors let me leave the Maternity Ward after watching me fight orderlies, crawl naked out a hallway, and bite someone. But, you know, I probably was “okay” as a mother. Maybe they think adoption was a bit of an “overkill” option.

Cool, I’m sure they’d have said, “No one could have prevented this,” if they saw me gnawing on newborn bones. After all, it’s not like there weren’t warning signs and cries for help, right?

Lindsay Clancy had repeatedly sought help for her Post Partum Psychosis. She even went in-patient asking for help, only for doctors to just smile and push her ass out the door after only five days.

And here’s the thing: like many women she had to keep herself together. Women get punished by society when we’re falling apart at the seams. She was so used to that pressure, she kept herself together until she literally burst at the seams.

She tried to cry out in a socially-accepted manner. No one cared, no one listened, because it didn’t seem dire enough.

These kinds of killings are proof of that. Happy parents, be they male or female, do not kill their kids. Men are starting to annihilate their families at growing rates. Women are starting to commit filicide at growing rates.

We need doctors to listen to women when they say they are not okay. We need doctors to not wave women off as “hysterical” when they say they’re not safe around their kids. We need them to listen when women warn them about their husbands.

My heart breaks for her husband, but at the same time, I have to wonder why he didn’t argue on her behalf? I’ve personally seen the way doctors react when a man brings up his property’s (erm, wife’s) health.

Moreover, we need doctors to pay attention for warning signs of Post-Partum Psychosis. Unlike Post-Partum Depression, this illness tends to get worse the more pregnancies a woman has. It also happens to women who have hormone disorders that cause mood swings.

Clancy did something awful, yes. But she tried so hard to find help. She was ignored.

America tends to deeply shame women who do not look like they enjoy every shit-wiping second of motherhood. Women are told, repeatedly, their feelings no longer matter “now that the baby’s here,” and that they come in second place.

The end result is that most women start to internalize it. They do this pretend, glued-on fake-happy face so that they don’t get the retaliation of others. They don’t want to feel like a failure as a mom for not smiling while scrubbing shit-filled diapers next to an infant squalling with colic.

You’d be surprised at how hard women can fight to hide their pain. I call it doing the “stiff upper lip mommy maneuver,” and it’s a way to try to wait until things are calm enough for someone to listen to her complaint without calling her nutters.

In a lot of cases, that maneuver can work. However, this was one time she should have either kicked, screamed, or packed up her shit and left since no one was going to listen to her. She didn’t. She, like so many other isolated moms, didn’t know what to do.

Her only downfall was that she was so used to doing the “stiff upper lip mommy” thing society expects us all to do that she hid her pain too well. Everyone just assumed she was doing fine because she only complained a little or something.

And for the record? I do believe she did love her kids. I absolutely believe it. However, it’s hard to believe that fact unless you’ve actually been in her mind — and having experienced Post Partum Psychosis, I can say I have.

When you wake up from that hormonal haze, it’s like waking up from a bad dream. I was shaking when I realized I almost tried to eat my own kid and tried to stab another family member to death. It took months for me to feel okay about myself.

I love my daughter. I felt horrible when I realized what had been going through my mind. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to only wake up from the haze after realizing I killed my own daughter.

I’d have wanted to die, too. Hell, I’d likely have taken my own life that same day.

America is not kind to mothers. It’s especially unkind to women who break after being ground up into crumbs through its bloody system. In America, the worst sin of all is showing the ugly reality of what motherhood could be to both mother and daughter.

I hate to say it, but I think that the prejudice people have against moms who break will end up making this woman spend her life behind bars. Is it fair? No. But I know all too well that in America, the cruelty is the point.