Serena Senteshi

Depression doesn’t appear overnight. It builds slowly, over years and decades. Its roots usually reach all the way back to childhood — especially into your relationship with your mum and dad.

If your mother saw you as “bad” because, in her eyes, you were the source of the problem—because you triggered and reflected her past trauma and pain—there is nothing in the world that can change that.   It’s one in a billion that a mother is truly able to love her child if there was such a deep breaking point after giving birth. She cannot love the part of herself she rejects, so she cannot love her child. The shadow projection is too strong; she cannot reverse that separation because she...

I tried to become somebody else for my mum — someone who was never angry, always strong, and didn’t need her love. I did it to comfort her, to carry the weight of her incapability and responsibility for her, just so I wouldn’t lose her… so I could still feel I belonged to her. She could slap me in the face and I swallowed my anger and fear. Over time, that’s how post-traumatic stress disorder and long-term anxiety took root in my body — by denying my anger and fear again and again.   I tried...