There are many other tragic stories of parents like Lindsay Clancy who perpetrate horrific, out-of-character violence on their children — and who feel shattered after realizing what they did.
Jacob, you make so many good and valuable points here and handle this difficult subject with a tenderness, reflective of your intelligent mind, good heart and naturally compassionate nature. I admire your determination to waste and wear out your days in true Doctrine and Covenants Section 123 fashion and wish you the blessings of a passionately cheerful disposition, to both magnify and accompany, your other God given spiritual gifts. ☺️
As usual, Jacob, you provide a thoughtful, compassionate take on an exceedingly difficult situation.
A low dose SSRI & some intensive therapy (eventually spurred on by my mother's sudden death very early in my 2nd pregnancy) helped lift me out of the dark depression with which I had suffered for 2 years shortly after ceasing to nurse my oldest at 13 months.
I never wanted to harm my toddler, for which I am grateful. I never wanted to harm myself either, though there were many days I could barely get out of bed, wondered what the point of it all was, and despair was the emotion of the day. My joy and typical humor where missing, stolen by something- I didn't know what. There were no happy days.
Once I began to dig out of that hole- about 6 weeks after starting on 20 mg of Celexa, which I finally consented to try about 3 weeks after starting therapy, it took me 20 years to even ponder stopping it for fear of sinking back into the pitch.
My kind therapist was markedly more gentle at helping me to see the clinical depression I had not wanted to admit to for two years than was my first OB with pregnancy #2. She was a new doctor for me, & when I disclosed some of the feelings with which I had been plagued for 2 years, she was ready to whip out the prescription pad & write away- at my first visit no less! Whoa, Nellie!
After my therapist's coaxing, I did seek that prescription from the OB's nurse practitioner (who listened more than the dr), but very shortly thereafter I changed doctors. I needed one that was willing to take more time to know me that that- especially considering how fragile I was on the heels of my mother's death.
Around the same time as my girls were in pre-school, an acquaintance from church who had recently had twins...& if memory serves had a slightly older child, too- was struggling. A LOT. Bi-polar? Post-partum? No idea...but she still comes to mind every so often. I think she & her husband divorced & he took the kids....I really don't know what became of that situation, though I do recall the meds, the behaviors, the distress no one knew what to do with in the early 2000s.
There but for the grace of God, folks. If you've never seen the face of Hell inside your own head, you really should be more circumspect in casting stones. The woman, this mother, this child of God, will see justice on Earth- at least as good as we can mete out with our imperfect understanding. But most importantly, she will receive the justice after death that only God can give- and I have a feeling it will be much more merciful than any one of us could fathom. Aren't we happy that that applies to us all?
This sums it up so well, Darla - what I was trying to point out. Beautifully said: "If you've never seen the face of Hell inside your own head, you really should be more circumspect in casting stones."
Even if we grant Hess’s premise that this is about the meds, let’s do a little thought experiment. Option A) take pills that make you want to kill your kids or Option B) be sad and scared about going to work? Personally, I think someone ought to stop taking the pills.
She edited her own note the day before the killings that said “medication stole my motherhood and my life.” She only the heard the command voice telling her to kill her children the day of the act. She had already searched concerning things that tie directly to what she did. She identified the problem clearly and did nothing to remove herself or her children from the situation or, if Hess is correct, stop taking medication.
If the cause of dangerous impulses is external and removable, the obligation to act is greater, not less, than if the cause is inborn and permanent. For example, as a man, I have intrusive thoughts all the time when I’m nearby attractive women and sometimes even when I’m not. “Wow look at that body [eyes go straight to one of two areas] Hmm, no, better not do that, I have a wife and kids”. This is simply part of being a man. I’m not taking pills for this. If I could stop taking medication that makes me have these kinds of thoughts, I would simply do that. I can’t choose every thought that comes into my head, but I can choose how much I dwell on these thoughts. Clancy sat with these thoughts for days, had identified a problem, and then killed her kids.
I can’t remove my hormonal and biological profile. She could remove the pills (I realize she had PPD which is certainly hormonal, but even granting that PPD is hormonal, the medications were still an added external variable she could remove). Sure her doctor told her to keep taking them, but people famously ignore their doctors’ advice all the time. Why not when you think it’s making you crazy? And yet Hess wants to grant her less responsibility than we give every man walking around with impulses he never chose and can never eliminate. I think the evidence is clear that there’s a biological reason men commit 90% or more of homicides. Is a man killing someone a mitigating factor in comparison to a woman? You can argue that God has the whole story and can judge perfectly, but the state doesn’t have that. We simply have a woman who we know strangled her kids one by one while they likely screamed “mommy” and we know that she’s claiming she randomly doesn’t know right from wrong and doesn’t know when she descends into that state wherein she strangled her own children—at best!
The “that wasn’t the real me” thing is a cope for people who do things they regret and wish to push the blame onto something or someone else. Everything that we do is a part of us and telling yourself that it wasn’t you is a hindrance to the repentance process.
To me this was the most heinous part of the article:
“I foresee a day in the eternal future when Lindsay embraces all of her children tenderly. That’s when her full healing will come.”
If she’s going to ever embrace her kids again she’s going to have to repent for chasing them down, wrapping those exercise bands around their necks while they scream “mommy” and “daddy”, and squeezing until they stop making noise and stop moving. What she has done though is try to offset and mitigate her responsibility for what she did—none of that sounds like repentance to me.
Of course, Giuseppe, what happened is pure horror. And, of course, Lindsay will agonize over what she did for every hour of every day for the rest of her life. Also, we agree that facing that horror will be part of her change process.
But help me understand - how is it not a comfort - rather than a despicable possibility - to believe in a day when she can, ultimately, embrace her children tenderly and say "I'm sorry! You know I really always did love you!"
Is this not simply amplifying the most beautiful verse in the Bible, "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away" (Rev 21:4)
One thing you're missing is that this was a 5 month long process - with so many meds swirling around during that time and over that time that this wasn't simply a "1 day I heard the voice." None of us knows for sure what happened. I'm asking how are people so quick to condemn and dismiss these severe influences known to impair judgment in other cases?
Yeah, it was a months long process of her recognizing her decline (editing her note the day before she killed her kids), and then one day and one day only she hears a commanding voice telling her to kill her children (this isn't disputed btw). Which brings me back to my thought experiment (granting your premise that the meds had a lot to do with what happened): Option A) take pills that make you want to kill your kids or Option B) be sad and scared about going to work? If someone continues to take option A over the course of 5 months, at what point can we consider this person not be a very good person? Even if she truly didn't have agency on that day, she certainly made a lot of choices that put her in a position to not have that agency.
There's also a very specific scripture wherein Jesus says something about a millstone being hung around the necks of those who harm his little ones. I am not one to put limits on the atonement of Jesus Christ, but there's a certain type of person who seems to get off on the emotional pornography of imagining themselves as a righteous judge on par with God capable of seeing the nuance of the most heinous things imaginable while feigning ignorance as to why some people might think murdering their children one by one is evil and why one would expect the state to punish such people. I, for one, take no pleasure in punishing people, but I just can't get over the fact that we're supposed to send this lady to a mental institution for treatment when she's supposedly okay now.
You've just overfit your mental model on a very specific type of nuance. Like I said previously--there's a lot of evidence that men are just more biologically disposed to murder people in comparison to women. Should this be a mitigating factor? I don't think so. We kinda just write off people who are 99th percentile in disagreeableness as bad people when that characteristic is heavily influenced by genetics. Should that be taken into account here? How much of Lindsay being a "good mother" before this isn't out of her own fruition and is subject to her nature and the way she was raised? Should we take into account that the perpetrators of 9/11 genuinely believed they were doing something heroic and good? There were a lot of people around the world who celebrated the events that happened on 9/11. Is being raised in an ideology like this from the time you are born to the day you die more or less intoxicating than choosing to take a concoction of psychoactive drugs for several months? Anyways, I find all of this to be really complicated. You have your variable that you deem really important and have taken into consideration (psychoactive drugs--which is something that she chose to take and continue to take despite recognizing their poor effect on her) while not really considering all of the others (of which many are significantly influenced by genetics--and which none of us will ever fully know). I think most of us are physically capable of similarly heinous acts, and if pushed to extremes even mentally capable, I think the job of the state is to ensure that people who have gone through with these heinous acts are punished.
Jacob, you make so many good and valuable points here and handle this difficult subject with a tenderness, reflective of your intelligent mind, good heart and naturally compassionate nature. I admire your determination to waste and wear out your days in true Doctrine and Covenants Section 123 fashion and wish you the blessings of a passionately cheerful disposition, to both magnify and accompany, your other God given spiritual gifts. ☺️
As usual, Jacob, you provide a thoughtful, compassionate take on an exceedingly difficult situation.
A low dose SSRI & some intensive therapy (eventually spurred on by my mother's sudden death very early in my 2nd pregnancy) helped lift me out of the dark depression with which I had suffered for 2 years shortly after ceasing to nurse my oldest at 13 months.
I never wanted to harm my toddler, for which I am grateful. I never wanted to harm myself either, though there were many days I could barely get out of bed, wondered what the point of it all was, and despair was the emotion of the day. My joy and typical humor where missing, stolen by something- I didn't know what. There were no happy days.
Once I began to dig out of that hole- about 6 weeks after starting on 20 mg of Celexa, which I finally consented to try about 3 weeks after starting therapy, it took me 20 years to even ponder stopping it for fear of sinking back into the pitch.
My kind therapist was markedly more gentle at helping me to see the clinical depression I had not wanted to admit to for two years than was my first OB with pregnancy #2. She was a new doctor for me, & when I disclosed some of the feelings with which I had been plagued for 2 years, she was ready to whip out the prescription pad & write away- at my first visit no less! Whoa, Nellie!
After my therapist's coaxing, I did seek that prescription from the OB's nurse practitioner (who listened more than the dr), but very shortly thereafter I changed doctors. I needed one that was willing to take more time to know me that that- especially considering how fragile I was on the heels of my mother's death.
Around the same time as my girls were in pre-school, an acquaintance from church who had recently had twins...& if memory serves had a slightly older child, too- was struggling. A LOT. Bi-polar? Post-partum? No idea...but she still comes to mind every so often. I think she & her husband divorced & he took the kids....I really don't know what became of that situation, though I do recall the meds, the behaviors, the distress no one knew what to do with in the early 2000s.
There but for the grace of God, folks. If you've never seen the face of Hell inside your own head, you really should be more circumspect in casting stones. The woman, this mother, this child of God, will see justice on Earth- at least as good as we can mete out with our imperfect understanding. But most importantly, she will receive the justice after death that only God can give- and I have a feeling it will be much more merciful than any one of us could fathom. Aren't we happy that that applies to us all?
This sums it up so well, Darla - what I was trying to point out. Beautifully said: "If you've never seen the face of Hell inside your own head, you really should be more circumspect in casting stones."
Even if we grant Hess’s premise that this is about the meds, let’s do a little thought experiment. Option A) take pills that make you want to kill your kids or Option B) be sad and scared about going to work? Personally, I think someone ought to stop taking the pills.
She edited her own note the day before the killings that said “medication stole my motherhood and my life.” She only the heard the command voice telling her to kill her children the day of the act. She had already searched concerning things that tie directly to what she did. She identified the problem clearly and did nothing to remove herself or her children from the situation or, if Hess is correct, stop taking medication.
If the cause of dangerous impulses is external and removable, the obligation to act is greater, not less, than if the cause is inborn and permanent. For example, as a man, I have intrusive thoughts all the time when I’m nearby attractive women and sometimes even when I’m not. “Wow look at that body [eyes go straight to one of two areas] Hmm, no, better not do that, I have a wife and kids”. This is simply part of being a man. I’m not taking pills for this. If I could stop taking medication that makes me have these kinds of thoughts, I would simply do that. I can’t choose every thought that comes into my head, but I can choose how much I dwell on these thoughts. Clancy sat with these thoughts for days, had identified a problem, and then killed her kids.
I can’t remove my hormonal and biological profile. She could remove the pills (I realize she had PPD which is certainly hormonal, but even granting that PPD is hormonal, the medications were still an added external variable she could remove). Sure her doctor told her to keep taking them, but people famously ignore their doctors’ advice all the time. Why not when you think it’s making you crazy? And yet Hess wants to grant her less responsibility than we give every man walking around with impulses he never chose and can never eliminate. I think the evidence is clear that there’s a biological reason men commit 90% or more of homicides. Is a man killing someone a mitigating factor in comparison to a woman? You can argue that God has the whole story and can judge perfectly, but the state doesn’t have that. We simply have a woman who we know strangled her kids one by one while they likely screamed “mommy” and we know that she’s claiming she randomly doesn’t know right from wrong and doesn’t know when she descends into that state wherein she strangled her own children—at best!
The “that wasn’t the real me” thing is a cope for people who do things they regret and wish to push the blame onto something or someone else. Everything that we do is a part of us and telling yourself that it wasn’t you is a hindrance to the repentance process.
To me this was the most heinous part of the article:
“I foresee a day in the eternal future when Lindsay embraces all of her children tenderly. That’s when her full healing will come.”
If she’s going to ever embrace her kids again she’s going to have to repent for chasing them down, wrapping those exercise bands around their necks while they scream “mommy” and “daddy”, and squeezing until they stop making noise and stop moving. What she has done though is try to offset and mitigate her responsibility for what she did—none of that sounds like repentance to me.
Of course, Giuseppe, what happened is pure horror. And, of course, Lindsay will agonize over what she did for every hour of every day for the rest of her life. Also, we agree that facing that horror will be part of her change process.
But help me understand - how is it not a comfort - rather than a despicable possibility - to believe in a day when she can, ultimately, embrace her children tenderly and say "I'm sorry! You know I really always did love you!"
Is this not simply amplifying the most beautiful verse in the Bible, "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away" (Rev 21:4)
One thing you're missing is that this was a 5 month long process - with so many meds swirling around during that time and over that time that this wasn't simply a "1 day I heard the voice." None of us knows for sure what happened. I'm asking how are people so quick to condemn and dismiss these severe influences known to impair judgment in other cases?
Yeah, it was a months long process of her recognizing her decline (editing her note the day before she killed her kids), and then one day and one day only she hears a commanding voice telling her to kill her children (this isn't disputed btw). Which brings me back to my thought experiment (granting your premise that the meds had a lot to do with what happened): Option A) take pills that make you want to kill your kids or Option B) be sad and scared about going to work? If someone continues to take option A over the course of 5 months, at what point can we consider this person not be a very good person? Even if she truly didn't have agency on that day, she certainly made a lot of choices that put her in a position to not have that agency.
There's also a very specific scripture wherein Jesus says something about a millstone being hung around the necks of those who harm his little ones. I am not one to put limits on the atonement of Jesus Christ, but there's a certain type of person who seems to get off on the emotional pornography of imagining themselves as a righteous judge on par with God capable of seeing the nuance of the most heinous things imaginable while feigning ignorance as to why some people might think murdering their children one by one is evil and why one would expect the state to punish such people. I, for one, take no pleasure in punishing people, but I just can't get over the fact that we're supposed to send this lady to a mental institution for treatment when she's supposedly okay now.
You've just overfit your mental model on a very specific type of nuance. Like I said previously--there's a lot of evidence that men are just more biologically disposed to murder people in comparison to women. Should this be a mitigating factor? I don't think so. We kinda just write off people who are 99th percentile in disagreeableness as bad people when that characteristic is heavily influenced by genetics. Should that be taken into account here? How much of Lindsay being a "good mother" before this isn't out of her own fruition and is subject to her nature and the way she was raised? Should we take into account that the perpetrators of 9/11 genuinely believed they were doing something heroic and good? There were a lot of people around the world who celebrated the events that happened on 9/11. Is being raised in an ideology like this from the time you are born to the day you die more or less intoxicating than choosing to take a concoction of psychoactive drugs for several months? Anyways, I find all of this to be really complicated. You have your variable that you deem really important and have taken into consideration (psychoactive drugs--which is something that she chose to take and continue to take despite recognizing their poor effect on her) while not really considering all of the others (of which many are significantly influenced by genetics--and which none of us will ever fully know). I think most of us are physically capable of similarly heinous acts, and if pushed to extremes even mentally capable, I think the job of the state is to ensure that people who have gone through with these heinous acts are punished.