Member-only story
Where’s Your Mom?
Growing up, it was pretty obvious my family wasn’t like other families, not only was a white-looking kid in a black household, but I was the only child I knew whose mother never showed her face to the public. It shaped who I was in ways I really didn’t think about until recently.
Her inability, or refusal (as I saw it then), to leave the house was the elephant in the room for most of my childhood and a good deal of my adult life. It was the unspoken thing we were aware of but dared not utter, as if acknowledging it would somehow make it real, or more real than it already was.
I didn’t have words for what she was experiencing back then. However, I know now that she was most likely suffering from Agoraphobia, an anxiety-based disorder defined, in part, by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, IV (DSM -5) as follows:
DSM-5 Criteria for AgoraphobiaMain Diagnostic Criteria:
1.Marked fear or anxiety about two (or more) of the following situations:
a.Using public transportation (e.g., automobiles, buses, trains, ships, planes)
b.Being in open spaces (e.g., parking lots, marketplaces, bridges)
c.Being in enclosed places (e.g., shops, theaters, cinemas)
