Depression. The DSM defines it. Mental health professionals treat it. And myriad memoirists attempt to describe its hold. But depression is not easy to define or treat. And capturing depression’s slippery essence on the page is — in a word — challenging.
Poet Rachel Tzvia Back has risen to that challenge, and the result is The Dark-Robed Mother, a moving memoir and important addition to both the literature of depression and the genre of memoir. Back’s narrative of depression is unlike many others. Although she’s lived with the illness for over thirty years, she’s never had that complete breakdown so common in depression stories. Hers is cyclical, high-functioning depression, which comes with its own trials: able to meet most of her responsibilities, Back’s pain is easier to dismiss. While The Dark-Robed Mother provides a much-needed glimpse into this lesser-known manifestation of depression — one Back has never encountered in other memoirs — this uniquely structured work offers readers a great deal in addition.
Back begins by summarizing Homer’s Hymn to Demeter: Demeter’s daughter Persephone is out picking flowers. When the earth suddenly opens beneath her, she is taken to the Underworld. No one, it seems, hears Persephone’s cries. By opening with the tale, Back grounds her memoir in powerful metaphor; the myth mirrors depression’s isolation and bleak, death-like darkness. Back’s own initial descent occurs after her first child is born. She is prescribed Prozac, and as the darkness begins to lift, she believes she will be well again — for good. But, just as Persephone repeatedly returns to the Underworld, Back’s depression recurs.
Family plays an important role in The Dark-Robed Mother. There’s depression’s genetic component. Back’s paternal grandmother, aunt, and cousin were diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And then there’s the basis of what Back calls her “depression’s Origin Story.” While Back was nursing her second child, her mother shared that she left their Buffalo home to care for her own dying mother in Philadelphia when Back was just a baby. “I now have a story that helps me start to understand why I am the way I am,” Back writes. This painful story ripples through generations: “In the deadness of depression, I leave my infant, as I was left.”
Centering the memoir is Back’s poignant exploration of grief at the loss of her dear sister Adina. Back acknowledges parallels between grief and depression and explores differences as well. In an especially moving section, “The Children Of,” Back interviews each of her adult children. Readers witness both the deep care and respect they have for each other and Back’s need to understand the repercussions her illness has had on those she loves. And while Persephone’s story thrums throughout the book, so does Back’s poet heart. She includes several of own poems and others by Dickinson and Hopkins. To Back, poetry is uniquely suited to express the experience of depression; she believes in poetry’s power to heal.
At the close, Back returns to myth. Persephone was not, it turns out, left alone in darkness. The goddess Hekate heard Persephone’s cries. In The Dark-Robed Mother, Back courageously gives voice to her own and others’ cries. We hear them. While shedding light on a dark, isolating illness, Back has written a memoir of great beauty and hope.
Diane Gottlieb is the editor of Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture & Heritage, Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness, and Grieving Hope. She is the Special Projects Editor for ELJ Editions and the Prose/Creative Nonfiction Editor of Emerge Literary Journal. Her writing appears in Brevity, River Teeth, Witness, Florida Review, The Rumpus, and Huffington Post, among many other lovely places.
