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On my darkest day with postpartum depression, I handed my infant to a babysitter who was there to help me, gave her a credit card and said, “Take care of my kids.”

I got in my car and drove up the Pacific Coast Highway for about
nine
hours.

I had no idea where I was going or why; I only knew that I wasn’t in any frame of mind to be of use to anyone, especially my own children. My heart was breaking into a million pieces, because I saw myself as a complete failure in all areas: as a mother, a wife, a businesswoman, and an entertainer. Even as a friend.

Every moment of depression feels like all of your thoughts and emotional reactions are the truth, the total reality, and it’s a struggle to convince yourself otherwise. For me, it was as if my eyes had sunk into the back of my head and I was viewing life from a dim and distant perspective. It’s hard to see the big picture or hope on the horizon because you feel so removed
from life. Depression turns your thoughts inward, which also makes it a seemingly selfish disease. You are consumed by the problems you are going through when you are depressed. People who care about you may be all around you; but you don’t see it that way. It feels like you are all alone. Normal thinking and reactions are altered to where everything seems like a reflection of your failure. Any little thing that isn’t going right suddenly seems to be your fault or a result of your own worthlessness. You don’t keep track of things well or even have the energy to invest in what you are trying to do anymore, down to the smallest task.

Because of the way I felt on that July evening—scared, desperate, wondering how I could come up with the energy to cope until tomorrow or to face going back to my family and work—I have an idea of the hopelessness that my son was feeling on that February night eleven years later. The difference is, my son in his eighteen years didn’t yet have the life experience to know that he wouldn’t always feel so bad. With age comes wisdom that pulls you through the worst times, knowing that you have been down before and somehow came back to see a glimmer of hope ahead. Even though I wished that I could lie down and never wake up again, it still registered with me, somewhere in my right brain, that I would eventually find the help I needed. I had thirty-nine years of life experience and could lean more on a mature faith that God had not abandoned me and that He would see me through somehow. Yet even with my faith, I was in desperate need of some reassurance that it would eventually be okay again.

It was a phone call from my mother that finally got through to me. When I couldn’t drive another mile, I checked into some no-tell motel halfway up the coast of California. My room was on the ground floor, with a sliding glass door that was jammed closed and towels that felt like cardboard boxes. Even the toilet had a paper strip covering the seat that claimed it was “sanitized.” I knew it probably wasn’t the safest place to be, but I didn’t really care, considering I was mostly concentrating on remembering to breathe in and out. When my mother finally reached me, she told me something I never knew about her: She had felt the same way following the birth of my younger brother, Jimmy. She had been exhausted and overweight and had to face the daily responsibility of nine children. She thought she would never feel joy again. As I lay exhausted on top of the faded bedspread, she told me that one day she handed Jimmy to my father and told him that she had to leave for a while. In a bleary state of deep postpartum depression, not that she had ever heard the term, my mother got in the car and drove up the coast of California the same way I had done!

Through my mother’s story, I felt comforted, and then I felt an increasing sense of hope. Over time, I started to accept my own experience. I knew that if my mother could overcome her depression, then I would be able to, as well.

It may be that the greatest gift you can give to a severely depressed person is your own story of battling depression so that they don’t feel so alone. When I later asked my mother why she had never told me about her experience with postpartum depression, she admitted that she was ashamed of her feelings
and thought she was being weak. It’s terrible that the misconception remains widespread today. Depression is a real disease, not a sign that someone is wallowing in self-pity. Think about it: What person would ever choose to feel that bad? Shaming or scolding a depressed person only adds fuel to their feelings of not ever being good enough or able to cope.

When Abigail and I read this next fun fact about mallards, we both laughed. There was no question about that similarity. My son was always up for a good meal. Along with absorbing all the sights and sounds of every culture, Mike loved to eat. In more than half of the photos that I have of Mike as a child, he is grinning over some type of culinary treat. At age eight, when most kids want a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party, Mike chose a sushi buffet. The other parents at the party loved it, but the classmates he invited waited to eat until the cake rolled out. Mike consumed his share of microwavable pizza bagels during his childhood, too, but if there was an option for something more ethnic with more distinctive flavors, he would almost always make that choice. The summer before he started college, the family spent a week in Mazatlán, Mexico. Mike wanted to try every local taco and burrito stand, and the hotter the salsa and jalapeños, the better. Even the locals were impressed with Mike’s ability to heap on the heat.

A few months after Michael passed away, I took the kids to
Mazatlán again, during their spring break, just to be together as a family. After a day of long talks and walks on the beach, we went to get burritos at Mike’s favorite restaurant. Brandon asked, “Which salsa would Mike get for his burrito?” I tried to warn him that it would be spicy, but Brandon poured it on in tribute to his older brother. About five minutes later, my blond-haired, blue-eyed boy was more like red, white, and blue!

In the same way that Mike loved all the culinary variety offered in this world, he also had a growing appetite for music. He listened to all types of music, including classical, world, jazz, reggae, and rap. He appreciated the true pioneers of any musical form and seemed to understand the composition of music much more naturally than most teenage boys. He could tell you what was great about both Frank Sinatra and Joss Stone. He loved Joni Mitchell and Bob Marley, but also wanted to listen to Mötley Crüe.

I could always tell when Michael was the last person in the car, because as soon as I would turn the key in the ignition some form of classic rock, like Jimi Hendrix or the Doors, would pound out of the dashboard speakers. My father, who also loved all types of music and instruments, decided to learn to play the ukulele at age eighty-nine, and Michael took up the same challenge for himself. Michael taught himself to play the ukulele, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, drums, and piano. He would compose orchestrated songs by recording each instrument separately and then mix his own music on his computer.

In my solo touring show,
A Little Bit Country…and a Whole Lot More
, I always sing “Over the Rainbow.” As a
child, I strongly identified with what I knew of Judy Garland as a young girl. She always seemed to look how I felt: alone in a crowd. From my earliest memories, my older brothers were already TV sensations on the
Andy Williams Show
, and they soon became a pop group whom young girls adored. Being the only female in this clan often left me feeling like an outsider. Plus, my brothers were so much prettier than me! They had thick, wavy hair; my hair was stick straight and stringy, with greasy bangs that matted to my forehead. They had eyelashes that went on for days; I guess God knew I could just buy mine and glue them on! There was something about the song “Over the Rainbow” that gave me hope and courage as a child of nine or ten. The lyrics “Why, oh, why can’t I?” reminded me that if I applied myself, I could have a career as a singer, too. Michael also loved the song. Being the middle child, like my brother Merrill, who was the middle man in our family, I’m certain he often felt overlooked or like a small boat in a big sea of siblings. The best Mother’s Day gift I’ve ever been given was presented to me on the last Mother’s Day I was to celebrate with my son. Michael and Rachael learned “Over the Rainbow” on ukulele and guitar and played and sang it to me together. I wish I had videotaped that, but the memory is still with me, always.

Writing and playing music fed my son’s creative soul in his early teenage years. It was a way for him to express himself creatively while staying out of the spotlight, as he preferred.

As a mother, I want my kids to experience the best that life and culture have to offer, which is why I try to limit what kinds
of music my kids listen to and the video games they play. They don’t like it; but I know too much now about the effect of negative music and violent games. I have a number of dear friends whose children became troubled, pessimistic, angry young adults who eventually turned to some form of mind-altering drugs or alcohol. In every case, the parents can point to a correlation between when their child started having emotional troubles and when they started listening to dark music or playing overly violent video games, filled with negative language or rage. Even the children who are now adults and in recovery have told me that the hours they spent listening to dark music went hand in hand with their subsequent problems.

One young man, the son of one of the engineers at the studio where I record, went through a number of rehab programs and would be okay for a couple of months and then give in to his addictions, eventually getting arrested and serving time in prison. Finally, he saw a therapist who told him that he had to completely avoid any music he listened to from the time he started having problems. The therapist explained that the music was emotionally transporting him back to a place of depression and addiction and that it could even create a biological reaction in his body, making it extremely difficult to resist a relapse. He has been able to stay drug-free since making the decision to follow this therapist’s advice.

Michael’s own issues with drug abuse coincided with listening to music with dark or violent lyrics: what he called “gangsta rap.” I’m not talking about the poetic-type rap of artists like Will Smith, Usher, or Lauryn Hill; I’m referring to rap that
glorifies thug behavior and that became very popular when Mike was starting high school, even where kids had no concept of an urban lifestyle. At the same time, he began attending parties in the homes of his friends. Most of them were innocent enough, but I should have looked deeper and asked more direct questions regarding the who, what, and where. I didn’t want my teenagers to feel that I didn’t trust them. Now I know better. Peer pressure can cause teenagers, especially sensitive or shy ones like my son, to go against what they know is “right” for the sake of being accepted into a group. I later discovered that some of these gatherings were what are called “pharm parties,” to which kids brought whatever miscellaneous drugs they could find in their parents’ medicine cabinets, such as leftover prescription painkillers. One night, Rachael shook me awake and said Michael seemed to be having a seizure and he was throwing up. It was terrifying, especially since I didn’t know what he had taken and he didn’t know what he had taken, either. He recovered after more vomiting and told me that he wouldn’t attend one of those parties again.

About three months went by. One weekend night, I had a strong intuitive feeling that I needed to get in my car and go find Michael, even though it was only about nine thirty and he wasn’t due home until eleven. I remember being asked why I was finding the car keys and getting ready to leave to look for Mike before his curfew. I said: “I’m not going to ignore my mother’s intuition. I feel like Mike is in trouble.” I drove to a park where the teenagers from his school liked to go and peered out my car window as I drove slowly past, searching for my
son. I knew that Mike would probably find it really embarrassing if I showed up and he and his friends were just “hanging out,” yet somehow I could sense that something was not right. Then I saw him walking aimlessly across the grass, alone. I opened the window and called to him, but he didn’t even turn around to look at me. I got out of the car and crossed the lawn to where he was. When I got a few feet away, I could tell he was very drugged up and in trouble. His arms seemed to be bluish purple from the elbow down, and when I turned him to look at me, his eyes were vacant. He had no idea who I was. Terrified, I hooked my arm in his and half-dragged him toward the car, laid him across the backseat, and drove like a NASCAR driver to the nearest emergency room.

I knew this night was going to be one of the worst of my life, but I was also grateful that I had listened to my intuition and found my son. In the emergency room, Michael became very angry and tried to leave. He was shouting but unable to form any words. It took three male nurses to hold him down on the bed, and they finally had to put restraints on his wrists to keep him from pulling out the IVs. I stayed by his side as they drew blood and then administered charcoal tablets and water to absorb the drugs. After about thirty minutes, his arms returned to normal, and the attending doctor told me he was no longer in danger of dying but that he might have sustained kidney damage. There was nothing I could do except stay next to my son and pray.

After about two hours, Mike was able to recognize me and that he was in a hospital, but he was still belligerent and mostly
incoherent. In my purse, I happened to have a small video camera I had used to tape my daughter’s dance class earlier in the day. I decided to record this experience with Mike, because I wanted him to see, after he had recovered, what he had done to his mind and body. I got out the camera and started asking him simple questions like, “What are the names of your sisters?” and “What’s your address?” He couldn’t answer any of them. I began to panic that my son had permanently damaged his brain, but the doctor assured me that it was probably temporary until the drugs wore off completely.