When "Functioning" Becomes the Thing That Fails Us

CONTENT NOTE: this post touches on child loss, suicide, and postpartum psychosis. Please take care of yourself as you read, and skip it if today isn't the day for it.

I have been watching reports on the Lindsay Clancy trial over the last few weeks and I want to say this first, before anything else: Cora. Dawson. Callan. Three children lost. That is the tragedy at the centre of this story, and nothing I write here is meant to take away from that or excuse what happened to them. 

But I've been watching the trial the way I think a lot of women and mothers have. Her defence says she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis. Reports say she'd sought help from multiple providers, that she'd even been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, that she'd told her husband she was having intrusive thoughts about harming her children. And still, somehow, she fell through.

Her ability to function is being discussed as evidence as to how mentally ill she could or couldn’t have been. But functioning only tells us what someone was able to do. It doesn't tell us what it cost them to do it.

That’s the part I keep coming back to and I think is being recognised in women and mothers all over the world. I heard someone describe it as weaponized competence.

Being capable and being in crisis were never contradictions. 

Getting everything done and being overwhelmed were never contradictions. 

Looking like you were handling it and desperately needing help were never contradictions. 

A woman's competence can tell you what she accomplished. It can never tell you what it cost her to accomplish it. So when we use how "together" a woman looks to decide whether her struggle is real, we're not measuring her mental health at all. We're measuring her performance. And the moment we use that performance as proof she couldn't have been suffering, we've taken one of her greatest strengths and turned it into evidence against her.

There's this quiet rule most of us have absorbed without ever being told it out loud: if you're still standing, you must be fine. If the kids are fed and the appointments are kept and the house is clean, whatever you're feeling underneath doesn't count yet. You haven't earned the help. You're not "bad enough."

Women keep functioning right up until the moment they can't. And by then, it's often too late to just quietly get support, it's a crisis.

I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not here to tell you what should happen in that courtroom. But I don't think this is really a story about one woman anymore. It's become a mirror. And a lot of us are looking into it and remembering our own version of being dismissed, minimised, or simply never asked the right question.

I wanted to share my own small version of this. Years ago, not long after my first son was born, I went to a mom and baby group. My family was in another country. My mum was calling every day just to make sure I'd left the house. I'd had a traumatic birth and I was struggling more than I let on to almost anyone, even myself I think. 

The woman running the group asked the room, "Is anyone finding this really hard right now? Is anyone feeling lonely?"

I put my hand up. I was the only one.

And in that moment, I told myself. “This is on you. Everyone else is managing so you must be the problem.”

I didn't share how I was really doing again for a long time after that. What I was going through never reached the level of postpartum depression on paper, I wasn't diagnosed with depression until years later, and not with anything postpartum-specific. But that mom and baby group was the first time I remember feeling something was genuinely wrong, and learning, in the same breath, to go quiet about it.

I think about that woman putting her hand down. I think about how many of us have.

This isn't only a postpartum story. I'm in perimenopause now, and I'm watching the same pattern play out from a different angle. The lack of funding for women’s health, the lack of research, the lack of understanding, the "well, that's just what happens to women at your age" shrug. Different life stage, same underlying message: your suffering isn't quite serious enough to warrant real attention, as long as you're still getting through the day.

Self-abandonment doesn't start the moment a woman decides to override herself. It starts every time she's shown, that overriding herself was the only acceptable option on the table.

What I actually want from this conversation is not outrage for the sake of outrage. Not a debate about guilt or innocence because that's not mine to weigh in on. What I want is for this to be a moment where we stop asking "how was she still functioning?" and start asking "why does functioning have to be the bar before we take a woman's pain seriously?"

Because somewhere, right now, there's a mother who is still doing the school run, still making dinner, still showing up, and still quietly drowning. And I don't want her to have to fall completely apart before someone finally asks her the right question.

If that's you, please don't wait for permission to say something's wrong. You don't have to be in crisis for your struggle to count.

If you're in that season where you're functioning on the outside but feel like you've lost touch with yourself on the inside, please reach out to someone for help or hit reply, I am here for you.

Mel x

This post discusses postpartum mental illness, intrusive thoughts, and child loss. If you are struggling with your mental health after having a baby, please reach out to a healthcare provider, or call one of the following numbers. You are not alone, and you deserve support before things reach a crisis point.

Internationally the Postpartum Support International (PSI) Helpline at 1-800-944-4773. 

In the US, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA.

In Canada, the Canada Suicide Prevention Service is available 24/7 at 988.