Depression

Charlotte Dawson: she died of a broken heart

Anne Lastman

Contents - Apr 2014 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Ukraine: blessed are the peacemakers - Peter Westmore Cardinal Pell appointed to senior Vatican post - Peter Westmore News: The Church Around the World Russia: the rebirth of religious belief - Peter Westmore Ukraine: Bishop Peter Stasiuk: Ukrainian people want peace and justice - Bishop Peter Stasiuk Marriage: Don't trust media reporting of Synod on marriage - Philip F. Lawler Vocations: Australia's flourishing seminaries 2014 - Br Barry Coldrey Communicating the Faith with C.S. Lewis - Fr. D. Longenecker Depression: Charlotte Dawson: she died of a broken heart - Anne Lastman Radicalism in Islam: the Christian response - Father Samir Khalil Samir SJ Conversion and confession - Cedric Wright Letters: Asylum seeker statement - Richard Congram Letters: Appreciation for Anne Lastman - Errol Duke Letters: Private Revelations - John Young Passover: Jesus last words: 'It is finished' - Anne Lastman Books: Pope Francis, Our Brother, Our Friend, by Alejandro Bermudez (Editor) - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Books: Jorge Mario Bergoglio: Francis, Pope of a New World, by Andrea Tornielli - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Books: WHEN HITLER TOOK AUSTRIA: Memoir by the Chancellor's Son, Kurt von Schuschnigg - Br Barry Coldrey (reviewer) Events: Holy Week 2014 - Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (1962 Missal) Books: Order books from www.freedompublishing.com.au Reflection: Lent: our preparation for Easter - Bishop Anthony Fisher OP

The recent death of former model and TV personality, Charlotte Dawson, by suicide was much reported by the media.

Family and friends of the beautiful Charlotte were stunned and much pained at the unexpected loss. All interviewed expressed great sadness.

However, having watched her battle her demons (depression) in public and the online harassment she experienced, I felt no shock at the end result. Tragic yes. Sad yes. Unexpected no.

In her very frank autobiography Air Kiss & Tell (2012) Charlotte speaks openly about her private life including her marriage to the much younger and much loved husband Scott Miller, and their decision to abort their child because it would interfere with his gold medal quest at the 2000 Summer Olympics. This left her feeling bereft.

"I was in total turmoil I wanted the baby" (p. 78). He apparently accompanied her to the abortion facility and left her alone to undergo the procedure by herself because he couldn't cope with the atmosphere there.

In her book she speaks about his need for "positivity".

"I was trying to train myself to think of my baby as an inconvenience" (p. 79) and then reconciling to her own personal responsibility for the termination (self-blame).

Then Charlotte goes on to say that it was a "gut-wrenching time. When I got home, I felt that something had changed. I felt a shift. Maybe it was hormonal, but I felt the early tinges of what I can now identify as my first experience with depression" (p. 80).

She was obviously thrilled with her pregnancy but her husband appeared not so.

"I could sense some hesitation in Scott," she says. "My due date would clash with the 2000 Olympic Games and this was very concerning. Everything Scott had done was leading up to this moment and nothing could stand in his way, so it was decided that we would terminate the child and try again later. Who needed a developing foetus when a gold medal was on offer, eh?"

"Something had changed forever" : these words are the words of pathos. Words I have heard thousands of times: "Something changed forever. I haven't been the same, Anne."

But Dawson could not reconcile the decision to abort with her inner self. She knew that somehow she was not being true to herself as a woman and mother who was carrying a new life within her.

"Inside I was in total turmoil. I wanted the baby. How long would we have to wait? Were there even any guarantees that I would fall pregnant again? Of course, I accepted without question that the Olympics were Scott's number-one priority �- I had been told that by him and a number of other interested and invested parties."

Abortion for Dawson was not the liberating self-fulfilling, empowering experience that abortion advocates say it will be.

Having lost her baby to abortion, she tried to focus on what she still had.

"It was a horrible, sad time for me, but I had to keep reminding myself of what I had. I had a husband, and we were building a life and a home together," she rationalised.

"I wanted our baby, but I felt greedy, like I already had too much, that the termination was a compromise I should make," she wrote (p. 80).

It was not until Dawson returned home from the abortion clinic that the gravity of what she had just done came crashing down on her.

"I should have bought a couch especially for the depression bogeyman right then and there. If I had known he was going to visit so often, I would have at least have had somewhere for him to sit, the bastard," she wrote.

Dawson's sacrifice of what turns out to have been her only child, for the sake of her husband's Olympic career aspirations did not pay off. Scandal emerged of Miller being involved with another swimmer and talk of drug use also emerged.

The ultimate tragedy and irony is that he eventually did not even make the Australian team for the Sydney Olympics. And the news of her husband's betrayal added even more devastation to the already shattered Charlotte Dawson.

"If I'd started to feel pangs of depression after the termination, the shock of receiving this news barely six months into my marriage was too much to bear. Something inside me completely broke that Sunday, something that is beyond repair, something that has never come back," she wrote.

"I was a broken mess. I had to pretend that nothing was wrong at work and at social functions while people were whispering behind my back ... It was around this time that I learned the gentle art of drowning sorrow with bucket loads of wine" (p. 82).

Here was an example of the increased risk of alcohol use and over-use and relationship breakdown following an abortion, even within marriage and with both parties seemingly agreeing.

In her book Charlotte also speaks about the sexual abuse when she was seven years old, by a neighbour who was reputedly "religious" and which left her having difficulties with the idea of "God" who is supposed to be looking out for "us" all the time.

So between sexual abuse trauma (undealt with) and abortion, it was not strange that she would develop depression and it would increase with each new crisis leaving her more and more vulnerable with the passing of time.

What has angered me mostly about this story is that she need not have died. I wish I could have had time with her. I know I could have helped her with both issues and the other thing which angers me so much is the media's reporting of her death.

It is easier to speak about cyber bullying because this is a really politically correct topic. Charlotte's fighting of this cause because of her own experience of being cyber bullied had made her depression a public issue. The media ignored the abortion issue which she clearly states in her book was the genesis of her depression.

Charlotte recognised it as the moment she experienced depression.

And yet we know that abortion increases the risks of anxiety disorder by 34%; of greater risk of depression 37%; abortion is also linked to a 155% greater risk of attempting suicide and in this case completed. It showed a 110% greater risk of alcohol abuse (seen here); 22% of substance use/abuse (e.g., marijuana) (Coleman Study 2011).

For Charlotte Dawson, sexual abuse as a child and not having dealt with it, and then an abortion of a wanted child, together with other life and career wounds and disappointments left her vulnerable.

Depression is a crisis of meaning, a sense of deep meaninglessness, a black hole bidding one to enter therein.

Emphasis on the need for grace for healing and restoration of psychological damage of sexual abuse and abortion is important and for Charlotte this was missing.

Healing really comes with the person being touched with the reality of the abortion. What it exactly was/is and the power that such acts have had.

Facing the reality, as awful as it is, accepting the reality that abortion and sexual abuse are evil, and being gentle with oneself, are the beginning of recovery.

Any crisis in life will lead to a questioning of higher meaning and for Charlotte Dawson even that was absent because someone had robbed her of her inclination towards Him, especially when in pain.

Indeed abortion did claim another victim and another victory, for she died of a broken heart.

RIP Charlotte.

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 27 No 3 (April 2014), p. 11