I wanted to preface this by emphasizing that I'm not a medical professional and that none of this should be construed as medical advice. I just wanted to write about this topic in light of the conversations and debates that have surrounded the Lindsay Clancy case.
I don't have any comment on the trial in particular beyond the profound sadness I feel over what happened to those precious children and rage that any woman could do this to her kids. Despite my typically normal interest in high-profile criminal cases, I haven't followed this one too closely outside of the heated back-and-forths I've seen on X that largely seem to consist of people who are talking at cross purposes, and who are sometimes misconstruing each other's points because they're so eager to get their own across.
So what I'm about to write should not be taken as a statement one way or the other on the Lindsay Clancy defense strategy.
The subject of hormonal changes/fluctuations and their debilitating effect on women is something I've wanted to write about for a long time but, to be quite honest, this is a subject not a lot of women like to talk about - even to their doctors. I think part of it, for some women - most likely leftist women - has to do in part with the fact that they feel like it lends credence to the stereotype that women can be overly emotional and thus can't be trusted to make decisions on important things.
But in my view, most women don't like talking about it simply because they feel like the conversations aren't going to go anywhere, and that they will remain people who will be misunderstood during the time period when they go through the most changes as adults: their 40s and 50s.
I started going through the "change of life" around 2014, and lemme tell ya, the experience - which is called "perimenopause" - has been a REAL doozy of ups and downs. Every woman's situation is different, but in mine, I have suffered through all of it without taking any prescription meds like hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or sleeping pills, things that were usually highly recommended by the doctors I would talk to about my issues (which primarily were moodiness, irritability, inability to get a good night's rest, and brain fog).
I've taken vitamin supplements, and even an OTC product called Estroven on and off for several years, which has helped some. Other tricks have been to make some chamomile tea to help calm my nerves, and to take an apple cider vinegar mix to help with crushing mid-day sluggishness that was hampering my ability to have productive workdays.
But throughout it all, I've been in the "I feel perpetually misunderstood" camp. I haven't always been regular about getting a yearly checkup, and when I started noticeably going through the change, I told myself I'd eventually get around to getting back on the yearly checkup wagon. About five years into the change is when I picked back up with my regular doctor out of sheer frustration that I couldn't better control the roller coaster of emotions that I always seemed to be on, where there were days when all I wanted to do was lie down on the couch or in bed and cry. It was seriously impacting my quality of life to the point that there were many days when I didn't feel like myself at all.
When I explained my thought process to the doctor during that 2019 visit and asked her if I could get some bloodwork done to confirm, one way or the other, what I was going through, she said at the time that the test was unreliable, that it couldn't always be relied on as an accurate indicator because it could show one thing one day and one thing dramatically different the next. She recommended Estroven based on the symptoms I described to her.
The year after that visit was when COVID hit, and I put doctor visits on the back burner for the most part (outside of going to the Urgent Care when I was feeling sick), partly because I was scared to go to the doctor's office and partly because I was having to become increasingly involved in my dad's care, and then later, mom's care.
At a doctor's visit I had in 2023, I was finally able to get that test I requested done, and it found that I was not menopausal, which I thought was crazy because I KNEW I was post-meno at that point. But at the next visit the following year, the test had me as post-menopausal, which was the right diagnosis. When you know, you know.
But though I am post-meno, I still feel a lot like I did when I was in the peri part of the journey, which genuinely was the worst part. Yet when I told another female doctor this earlier this year, when I was dealing with what I felt was a related health issue, she told me that because I was post-meno, most of the worst symptoms of peri should have long since subsided, which I thought was bizarre since I very much know how I've felt.
The topic of postpartum psychosis, which is essentially the Clancy defense, has been the subject of intense debate throughout her trial, and it prompted a remark from conservative commentator Matt Walsh that rubbed men and women alike the wrong way:
A lot of people aren't going to want to hear this but much of the "depression" that parents (and not just moms) suffer after child birth is due not so much to hormones but to the fact that children, especially babies, are demanding and difficult and require us to subordinate our own needs and desires for their sake. The more selfish you are, the more of an adjustment it's going to be.
Women who've had babies and went through the hormonal fluctuations and depression didn't like his hot take and said so:
We can all agree Lindsay Clancy murdered her three kids in cold blood and belongs in prison for the rest of her life. She did it, and she should never see freedom again. But Matt Walsh’s take is still truly tone deaf and borderline offensive. Reducing postpartum struggles to “you’re just too selfish to handle demanding babies” completely dismisses what women actually go through. We carry those children for nine months. Our bodies are completely rearranged. Then the hormone crash hits like a freight train. Sleep deprivation, physical recovery, and yes, real biochemical changes that can make even the strongest women feel like they’re drowning. Acting like the only reason new parents struggle is because they’re selfish is a slap in the face to every mother who’s been through it and still managed not to harm her children. There’s a massive difference between “parenting is hard” and “your brain chemistry just got nuked.” Gross take.
I haven't experienced childbirth, so I can't speak to everything that mothers have gone through after they give birth. But what I can relate to is the absolute debilitating nature of hormonal changes, and the desperate need for women to be understood on this rather than to have everything generalized and boiled down to mere "selfishness"
