361
viewsNancy Rappaport
By Boston Skirt, Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 1 comments
Nancy Rappaport has experienced the unimaginable. At just four years old, her mother committed suicide leaving behind six children, broken relationships and a lifetime's worth of unanswered questions. As a mother and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Rappaport set forth on a journey to discover the life, legacy and loss of her mother. "In Her Wake" is her emotionally powerful book that addresses the grief and anguish that correlates with suicide, but also the ability to heal herself and piece together memories of the mother she never knew.
WHAT FINALLY MADE YOU INVESTIGATE YOUR MOTHER'S SUICIDE? WHY WRITE A BOOK ABOUT IT? "In Her Wake" didn't start out as a book. When I was 30, and my first daughter was born, I remember writing letters into the darkness, asking my mother for advice. When you become a parent yourself, you tend to go back to your own childhood and question what you went through. Then my mother's best friend presented me with a trunk full of letters my mom had written, pictures of her and myself and siblings and a novel called "The End of Freedom", that she had been writing before her death in which the protagonist ultimately kills herself. Within the journey of the book was the journey of finding my mother.
HOW DID BEING A PSYCHIATRIST AFFECT WHAT YOU LEARNED ABOUT HER? I found that as a psychiatrist I had a power to help others and that people were moved by my healing and my story. I learned a lot of different things about tolerance and my own therapy was going through the trunk of her things even though it was absolutely heart-breaking. I tried to understand how my mother could love us so much but then take herself away from us forever. There are so many contradictions with suicide and I looked at her life as recognizing the impulsivities of mental illness. Leaving my father, having an affair and getting remarried were all impulsive decisions she made, and we have to learn how to push the pause button and slow down to reflect on our problems.
WHAT WAS THE MOST SURPRISING THING YOU LEARNED ABOUT YOUR MOTHER? That she was a math major at Duke. Huge surprise about her novel and that was big because I didn't know she wanted to be a writer, and to write a 400 page novel is amazing. The thing that surprised me the most was feeling like a little kid again and being curious, asking questions and just learning. My mom's best friend is really wonderful and I stay in touch with her which makes me happy. I really feel my mother's presence now and I hope she's proud of me.
HOW HAS YOUR FAMILY LIFE BEEN AFFECTED BY YOUR WRITING A BOOK ABOUT YOUR MOTHER? You're not exactly going to be winning popularity contests in your family when you write about something like this. We grew up not talking about it, and now I've learned that different family members hold different feelings. Some of my siblings were really angry, and others were just exasperated by it. My oldest sister was just days away from celebrating her birthday when my mother died, and even though we're complete opposites, I now understand the way she is and have enormous compassion for her. Part of my process was to go back and ask them about our mother's suicide and hear about what they went through. It wasn't very "Leave it to Beaver" and 1 out of 5 of my siblings didn't completely agree with my decision to write about this, but it's my best effort to show my personal truth.
HOW DID LEARNING ABOUT HER AFFECT YOU AS A MOTHER? WHAT DID YOU OWN CHILDREN SAY ABOUT IT? I put a lot of work into this book for 18 years and in writing about a journey as painful as this, you'd have to step back from it every so often and come up for air. My own kids would ask me "would you ever kill yourself?" because with experiences like suicide, you have a genetic vulnerability to it. Like anything you're vulnerable to you have to be wary of it, just like if you had a family history of heart disease, you wouldn't carry around an extra 60 pounds. There's also sometimes a silent grief that goes along with suicide, but I discussed it with my children and I hope they're proud of me.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO SOMEONE WHO HAS LOST A LOVED ONE TO SUICIDE? One, is that we all grieve differently, and we need to let every member of our families grieve the way they need to. Don't torture yourself with the "what ifs", and recognize that some people like to be private about this and others find solace in talking to others who've been through the same thing. It's hard to anticipate how long it will take to heal in the beginning, and people shouldn't feel like there's a certain time frame. There's no prescription for dealing with something like this.
DO YOU FEEL MORE AT PEACE WITH HER LIFE AND DEATH NOW? I have put her to rest now, absolutely. I spent a lot of energy on this and put so much time and effort into it that there comes a time when you can look back on the past, but you need to focus more on the future. I've found that love lasts longer than death, and is stronger.
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Great interview!
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