As a mother of a child with depression, our writer has lived with constant worry—but they’ve been able to dance some of the pain away with Joan Jett and Le Tigre.
My 21-year-old daughter Stevie pogoed down the auditorium aisle of the San Diego casino, shaking her head and waving her hands in the air; busting out her air guitar, fingers deftly working the invisible strings as she played along with Joan Jett. An ecstatic smile lit her face. I smiled too, mesmerized, as always, by my daughter’s complete lack of inhibition. By her ability to cut loose without worrying what anyone else might think, a way of being in the world that’s utterly foreign to me. Especially tonight, because this version of Stevie had been MIA for too long.
Two days earlier, I’d picked her up at a psychiatric hospital in Los Angeles. She landed there after swallowing a fistful of pills, something, she later told me, she’d contemplated doing almost every day for the past six months. My daughter’s no stranger to depression. Or thoughts of suicide. She was in kindergarten the first time she told me she wanted to die.
That same year, after increasingly escalating erratic behavior at home and at school, she was diagnosed with pediatric bipolar disorder. Although the illness runs in my family, I’m not certain she has it. But depression has always been a part of her life. When therapy twice a week didn’t provide the relief we’d hope for, we got a second opinion from a psychiatrist who diagnosed her with severe depression. Reluctantly, I agreed to put her on meds.
We’ve always been close. Partly because of her history of mental illness, partly because she’s my only child. But my own anxious temperament made it tough for me to know when my instinct to protect her was justified, and when it was doing her more harm than good. By high school, she believed it was the latter.
Her senior year, my marriage, which had been unraveling for years, finally ended, and I separated from her father. It scared me, sometimes, to feel her pulling away during this time, even though I knew her desire for independence was healthy. But one of the things that’s always kept us connected is our shared love of live music.
Our concert adventures began when Stevie was in middle school. She deemed The Rolling Stones—my favorite band—“okay for old guys,” but fell hard for the Violent Femmes. By then, she’d developed her own eclectic taste in music, stuff most of her peers weren’t into. The moody tunes of indie pop singer Marina and the Diamonds spoke to her in a way Taylor Swift couldn’t.
She was so different from me at that age—a girl so shy and timid, I was invisible. In high school, anxiety derailed me. Always a good student, I accepted Fs rather than endure the torture of stammering my way through an oral report or joining class discussions. Only in my bedroom, curtains drawn tight, could I briefly escape my prison. I blasted my collection of hard-driving rock albums—the Stones, Aerosmith, Heart, Bachman–Turner Overdrive, David Bowie, Lou Reed—on my stereo. I danced around my room, bellowing Bowie’s “Rebel, Rebel” at the top of my lungs, letting all the intense emotions I kept under lock and key—fear, pain, joy, lust, anger—bubble to the surface. For those four minutes and 34 seconds, I was that hot tramp in the torn dress. My face was a mess and I didn’t give a fuck.
Stevie had the opposite problem. She had a big, charismatic personality. But she was often criticized for being too much. Too loud. Too intense. Too weird. Especially in high school, where she constantly got the message that this wasn’t acceptable behavior for a girl if you wanted to fit in. Like me, she started to shut down in class. She became meek and quiet. She withdrew from her friends and holed up in her bedroom, seeking comfort in music just as I had.
She once told me that discovering Bikini Kill—the angry feminist punk band spawned by the Riot Grrrl movement of the early ’90s—when she was a senior saved her life. Barely. Lead singer Kathleen Hanna vocalized all the rage and anguish she’d stuffed inside:
That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood. I got news for you—she is!
“Who’s this?” I asked, the first time she blasted the frenetic “Rebel Girl” in my car.
“Bikini Kill.”
“I like it!”
Soon, I was adding their songs, and some from Hanna’s later band, Le Tigre, to my playlists. And Stevie was flaunting a tattoo of the turntable drawing from Bikini Kill’s The Singles album on her right bicep. She couldn’t wait to put high school in the rearview mirror. She planned to reinvent herself in Santa Barbara.
Though I was terrified to let her move from San Francisco, I knew she needed to strike out on her own. When life in Santa Barbara didn’t pan out the way she’d envisioned, I tried not to panic. She dropped out of college, lost two jobs and partied—self-medicated?—more than I liked. Raising a mentally ill child was tough. Watching her struggle as a fledgling adult from 300 miles away was tougher. Stevie was adamant about staying put in her new life. She insisted she could manage her depression.
She’d found her people in Santa Barbara. That was huge for someone who often felt like a misfit. Like Stevie, her new friends were all queer. Several had also battled serious mental illness. They’d been at her side since her suicide attempt, visiting her in the hospital and calling her on a regular basis.
I drove down to L.A. from San Francisco the day after she was admitted, arriving just before visiting hours ended.
“I’m bored on the ward, Dorth,” Stevie cracked, her sense of humor intact in spite of being heavily sedated. “When are you busting me out of this joint?”
She groaned when I said a nurse told me she’d be there for at least a week. We found a quiet corner in a hallway that reeked of stale disinfectant and settled on the dull gray linoleum floor. The youngest person on the psych ward, Stevie filled me in on the other “inmates” she’d befriended: Another young woman. A middle-aged mom. A sweet old man who’d been there forever but never had visitors.
Suicide had always been a third wheel in our relationship. But I’d convinced myself that years of therapy, special schools, meds, and frank talks about her feelings would keep it at bay. Keep her out of a place like this. I reached for one of her tiny hands, stroking the delicate fingers I knew so well, and wondered if I could have done more.
When a nurse poked her head around the corner to tell us visiting hours were over, I hugged Stevie goodbye and made the five-minute drive to my hotel. It was a place we both loved, where we’d stayed in happier times. Those memories trailed me as I entered the elegant Art Deco building, along with a cloud of guilt and sadness. She should be here with me now, not in a mental institution.
“So, what brings you to L.A.?” asked the friendly guy who checked me in. I tried to imagine his reaction if I were to answer honestly. Well, my daughter tried to kill herself and now she’s in a nuthouse right down the road… I forced a half-smile instead and babbled something about a weekend getaway.
Once Stevie was released, we drove to San Diego to visit my mom and siblings, a vacation we’d planned long before her suicide attempt. I did my best to pretend this was just another road trip. But I kept sneaking glances at her, scanning her blank face for signs of trouble. Suddenly, she pointed to a sign looming above the side of the freeway.
“Look—Joan Jett!”
I glanced up to see Jett’s signature kohl-rimmed eyes staring down at us and the info about her upcoming show; we’d be in town the night she was playing.
For me, that billboard wasn’t just a random ad. It was a beacon of hope.
I’d always liked the ’80s Queen of Rock. Stevie became a fan after learning Jett had produced Bikini Kill’s first album, the same one whose cover design she now sported on her arm. Maybe hearing Jett rip on the guitar and that big, loud music would silence the voices in her head that tell her she’s worthless and things will never get better. At least for a few hours.
“We should get tickets,” I said.
“Yeah—we should.”
“I love rock ‘n’ roll, so put another dime in the jukebox, baby…,” Jett bellowed from the stage of that casino.
Bathed in a sea of swirling green and blue laser beams, the crowd sang with her. But no one belted out the familiar lyrics louder, or with more gusto, than my girl. She even looked like a younger version of Jett with her spikey black shag, heavy eyeliner, and denim bustier. Nose and eyebrow piercings, along with a growing collection of tattoos, completed her cool rocker-chick look.
I hoped this Stevie was back for good.
One night in our San Diego hotel room, we watched a documentary about Hanna together, “The Punk Singer.” We talked about how amazing it would be to see her in concert. But Bikini Kill broke up in 1997 after Lyme Disease left Hanna too weak and depressed to perform. More than two decades later, they reunited for a handful of shows in 2019. Then the pandemic hit. I wondered if we’d missed our chance. I tried not to think about whether Stevie would still be around when, and if, she toured again.
I was reluctant to leave Stevie back in Santa Barbara, even though she promised to check-in with me and her friends every day, take her meds, and attend weekly individual therapy and a support group I’d found for her. I wanted to bring her home with me, lock her up in my apartment, and watch over her 24/7.
“Are you sure you don’t want to hang out in San Francisco for a few weeks?” I asked as we sipped coffee at a café before I hit the road.
“No!” she snapped. “There’s nothing for me there. My life is here. I’m okay.”
Three weeks later, my phone rang early one morning. It was Stevie. “I’m back in the hospital,” she mumbled. “Don’t worry—I didn’t try to kill myself.”
The night before, she’d barricaded herself in her apartment bathroom. Her friend, Clover, pounded on the door until Stevie finally opened it. Clover was greeted with a scene straight out of a horror flick: my daughter, white as a ghost, blood oozing from dozens of cuts she’d sliced into her arms, legs, and torso with a razor.
She tried to downplay the self-harm incident to Clover, just as she had to me. And it’s true—for people like her, hurting themselves isn’t about trying to end their lives. It’s a survival mechanism. For a fleeting moment, the pain of cutting into flesh, or smashing her head into a wall hard enough to leave a hole, overrides her deeper suffering. Given the brutality of this particular attack and her recent suicide attempt, there was no way I was brushing if off. Thankfully, neither did Clover. They rushed her to the ER.
A week later, I drove her to an in-patient treatment center in Pasadena. I wish I could take credit for making this happen. Instead, it was her friends who delivered the ultimatum she couldn’t ignore. We love you, they told her. But if you don’t get real help, we can’t be around you anymore.
She was quiet for most of the slog down I-5, feet propped on the dashboard, listening to music with her ear buds. With no make-up and wearing a baby-blue crocheted cap with cat ears and knit braids that dangled over her shoulders, she looked 14 instead of 21. Since check-in was the next morning, we spent the night at a nearby hotel. By bedtime, fears about what awaited her caught up with Stevie.
“I’m scared,” she whimpered as we snuggled in bed together.
“I know, honey,” I said, pulling her close. “That’s totally understandable. But I think this place will be good for you.”
I was scared too. Not about the treatment facility. At the very least, it would be her safety net for the next six weeks. I worried about what came next. Would this place really give her a fresh start? Would she leave equipped to fend off the intrusive thoughts that always lurked in the background of her mind?
She was in better spirits when I dropped her off. Housed in a cozy bungalow in a pleasant residential neighborhood, the center felt more like an Airbnb than a bootcamp for people clawing their way back from a mental breakdown. There were just seven other patients, all women. Her days at the center were filled with group and individual therapy sessions, AA meetings, psychiatric assessments, outings for coffee, Target runs, and impromptu dance parties.
One afternoon while she was there, I Googled “Bikini Kill and Le Tigre concerts.” This had become an obsession ever since pandemic restrictions began to ease and more bands were hitting the road again. I might have let out a little scream when I saw that Le Tigre was playing in L.A. soon after Stevie’s release date. I texted her the news.
“Get tickets!” she responded.
“Already did.”
The last traces of a brilliant pink and orange sunset were fading when we arrived at The Greek Theatre a month later. This was our first time at the stunning outdoor venue. It was a perfect, balmy summer Southern California evening. As the sky turned dark, Hanna and bandmates Johanna Fateman and JD Samson took the stage in complementary color-block outfits. Behind them, equally colorful pop art designs bounced across huge screens, as well as the lyrics to each song they played.
We joined the rest of the stadium in a cathartic 90-minute singalong. Much of Le Tigre’s music rages against the repression women and other marginalized groups face in our society. But they deliver their messages—as relevant that night as they were 20 years ago—with cheeky lyrics and an infectious, electronic beat.
As I gazed around the crowd of singing strangers, it felt like we were all connected, each of us releasing whatever flavor of bottled-up pain we’d brought with us that night. At one point, I looked up at Hanna’s face on the jumbotron and watched a tear slide down her cheek. I wiped away my own tears and glanced at Stevie.
She’d been dancing nonstop since the concert started. I aimed my phone at her to snap a photo. She paused, planting her legs slightly apart like a boxer ready to go another round. The hint of a defiant smile flickered in her brown eyes as she flexed the arm bearing her Bikini Kill tattoo so I could get a picture of it with Hanna in the background.
I didn’t know if we’d ever make it to a Bikini Kill show. Or if Stevie would try to kill herself again. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever stop picturing the worst case scenario when she didn’t respond to a text for a day or two. Stevie insisted she didn’t want to die. I needed to believe her—the thought of being in the world without her was unbearable.
For their encore, Le Tigre broke into “Deceptacon,” a high-energy bop Stevie and I both love. By then, we’d both worked up a sweat dancing. But now Stevie kicked into overdrive. She ripped off her sneakers, tied them together, raised them over her head and twirled them around and around like a cheerleader’s baton, dancing barefoot and singing at the top of her lungs:
“…I’m outta time, I’m outta fucking time…”
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I wanted to sear this image of my wild girl, joyful and free, into my brain. I wanted to keep dancing and singing under the star-speckled sky, as if our lives depended on it, forever.
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