The Lives They Lived

For the past 4 years I’ve made a point of buying the New York Times the Sunday before New Year’s Day.  That’s the day that the magazine pays tribute to those lives lost in the past 12 months with “The Lives They Lived” edition.  Most of the people featured are well-known names, but many are minor characters who have impacted our culture in some way or another.  I’ve become slightly obsessed with this particular magazine, reading each entry even if the person isn’t someone I care for.  Each essay is usually written by a colleague or someone who had come into contact with the deceased at some point in their lives giving the writing a more personal tone than a standard obituary.  The current issue came out today and features the lives of the game-show character Charles Nelson Riley (a favorite of mine); Lady Jeanne Campbell, a reporter and former wife of Norman Mailer; Liz Claiborne; Robert Adler, who invented the TV remote control; as well as Steven Gilliard, Jr., a political blogger who made quite an impact on political discourse through his blog.  Many others are profiled, including Marian Radke-Yarrow, a research psychologist who studied maternal depression. 

I had never heard of Radke-Yarrow, but she examined the impact of a mother’s depression on her children.  I actually got a bit freaked out reading this because she suggests that a mother’s mood can permeate the lives of those around her, namely her children.  This is the last thing a depressed mom wants to hear!  I can’t tell you how devastating such information would be on a mom struggling to keep it together suffering from postpartum depression…After reading the article I still need to do much more research on Radke-Yarrow’s work, but I was intrigued by her suggestion that nature (or heredity) doesn’t have to dictate a woman’s mental health.  Just because I had ppd, doesn’t necessarily mean Mogs will, too.  On the flip side, knowing “how a parent’s subtle, despairing glances can ripple outward for decades, leaving marks in that offspring’s life like rings you see in a tree” (Slater, NYT magazine, Dec 30, 07) can be impossible for a depressed mother to face while in the midst of crisis.  One benefit of her research could be increasing understanding by partners and doctors when dealing with a depressed mom.  While having a family history of depression doesn’t mean a pregnant mother needs to fear for the worst during her postpartum period, understanding how depression can be “nurtured” may be the impetus to help mom improve her mental health.  Not having read Radke-Yarrow’s research I don’t feel I can comment too definitively about her work, yet I am pleased that she was dedicated to helping moms–which is always, always a good thing.

One sentimental reason why I like this magazine hearkens back to the first issue of it I read.  One of the people profiled was Shirley Glass.  She, too, was a psychologist and, notably, the mother of Ira Glass who wrote the essay.  What drew her, a mother and wife, to the field of psychology was the day she sat at a restaurant with her family and saw a friend come in, a married man, with another woman.  The essay talked about her being so curious about how this could have happened to a supposedly happy marriage, that she devoted her career to finding the answers.  I read this 3 months before Tony and I got married and still find her research to provide good, solid advice to any committed couple.  The short of it is that even happy marriages can have infidelity, it’s ”(w)hen you entrust what you really think to someone outside the marriage, when your friend knows more about your marriage than your spouse knows about your friend, you’ve gone too far.”

Here’s a link to an article by Shirley Glass, “Seven Tips for Preventing Infidelity.”