The tweet froze me in place. Three children were dead, allegedly killed by their mother in the minutes it took the father to run two quick errands. I watched my toddler happily play in the backyard as I refreshed my feed for more information until mounting anxiety made me put my phone down. Lindsay Clancy’s smiling family photos were all I could think about. One of her sons was a little older than my daughter; they could’ve been in the same class.
Three years later, Clancy is currently on trial for first-degree murder. Her lawyers are arguing that she repeatedly sought mental health help in the months leading up to the murders but received inadequate care and was prescribed too many medications. The prosecution says the killings were premeditated. Clancy’s ex-husband claims the medical system failed her in a myriad of ways. He filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against her providers earlier this year.
Clancy, who is young and white, lived in an affluent Massachusetts neighborhood at the time of the deaths. She was a dedicated nurse who doted on her kids, according to the people around her. It’s a stunning contrast to the horrific picture painted in court documents. The frenzied media coverage isn’t surprising, given the shocking details of the case. But I saw a piece of myself in Clancy’s story for a different reason.
A few days after I gave birth to my daughter, I had an epiphany: My husband was dangerous. The man I’d loved for nine years had eagerly doted on our baby girl since I gave birth. Now, I realized it was a ruse. I told him that I no longer trusted him, bracing for his anger. Instead, he met me with gentle worry. I hadn’t slept in days because I felt too wired to lie down. My mood was unpredictable, and I’d become extremely irritable. Something was clearly off, and the sharp pivot toward paranoia was a troubling turn. My husband asked my mother to help watch the baby. No one knew what was happening, but he discerned that I shouldn’t be alone with my daughter. He called my psychiatrist’s cell phone and filled her in. She told him that I might need crisis services if I worsened.
The next day, I started to hear clear messages from heaven. I sat up in bed and said I needed to rewrite the Bible. Once the revelations started coming, it was impossible to keep track of them. My family members wanted to kill my daughter. I was the most famous person in the world. I shouted out the prophecies as they came to me before grabbing a notebook to record it all. I couldn’t stop talking, even though I had a feeling no one was really understanding me. My husband took me to a suburban emergency room recommended by my psychiatrist, and doctors transferred me to the hospital’s psychiatric unit.
My medical records show that my providers worked constantly to find a solution and introduced medications in the hopes I’d improve. When I kept insisting that I was a special messenger, they went back to the drawing board and tried again. The answer came in a mix of drugs, including a high dose of antipsychotics that broke the delusions and left me stable enough to be released nearly three weeks after I arrived. Parts of the hospital stay are hazy, but I can recall other moments vividly. I had a persistent belief during the hospitalization that my daughter was a figment of my imagination. When we reunited, I felt emotional if I looked at her for too long. The mental break turned my life upside down, but she was real. That gave me the motivation I needed to focus on getting better.
