The Night My Daughter Discovered Our Family’s Legacy of Depression

I always knew mental illness was hard-coded into our family’s DNA. But it really hit home the day my perfect eleven-year-old daughter told me she wanted to kill herself.

Illustrations by Haejin Park

“Do you have a plan on how you are going to kill yourself?” I calmly ask my beautiful, seemingly healthy, blond-haired, blue-eyed, freckle-nosed eleven-year-old daughter.

“Yes. I’m going to take one of those sharp knives from the kitchen and go up to my bedroom and cut off my hand and start bleeding until I die,” Leah says.

I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. Her answer is equal parts absurd and terrifying. In what seems like an eternity but in actuality is only a few seconds, I fight back my own hysteria and respond.

“That’s not going to happen,” I say as I struggle to pull her long-limbed, sobbing body from my husband’s lap to my own. “You’re not going to die. Knobbe girls are strong. You’re going to be okay. Go get in my bed. You can sleep with me tonight, and you’ll feel all better in the morning. I promise.”

It’s not really a promise. It’s more like a prayer. I repeat it to myself as I lay my daughter down in my bed. She quiets a little. I’ve given her…