<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Andrea-Yates1.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1072 alignleft" title="Andrea Yates" src="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Andrea-Yates1-204x300.jpg" alt="" width="135" height="199" /></a>Ten years ago, on June 20, 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five children in the bathtub, then laid them side by side on the bed.  She had been suffering for a long time from severe postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis.  Her conviction of capital murder and sentence to life in prison was overturned on appeal in 2006 by a jury that found her not guilty by reason of insanity.</span>

<span style="font-size: small;">Is what she did wrong?  Yes.  Is what she had wrong?  No.  No one chooses to have severe depression, and I’m not here to argue the validity of “not guilty by reason of insanity”.  But I know what it feels like to go under in pain and despair.  I remember days when I was so depleted and burned out from living all day with three pre-schoolers that I wished I didn’t have them, wanted to leave, was dying for relief I couldn’t find.</span>

<span style="font-size: small;">Even in those times, I couldn’t imagine killing my children, but sometimes when depression swallowed me alive I wished I could give them back to God.  In that way, I have sympathy for  </span>

Andrea Yates, June 20, 2001

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She was the first one to drown,

married alive in a tub of tears,

buried by babies that dominoed

in a row laid out on the bed.

It was said postpartum depression was to blame –

another name for sleep deprivation

while driving drunk on endless screams

for more of something sapped from her

without a break from giving

until the well was empty,

the tub was full of children

that needed her no more.

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And I understand

she got what she wanted –

the sweet little blessings

that she adored,

the husband, the house

and the home-school room

where she learned the limits

of never enough

for a good-mom-wannabe

trying to fill the bottomless cup

with sweat and blood.

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No one had taught her

that having it all

means kisses and cat puke,

measles times three.

She felt betrayed

by loving and loathing,

felt her sanity drain away

until the day she did

what I've dreamed

and gave her children

back to God in a literal way

that stopped her serving

family and home

as she started serving

time.

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