In Becoming Ms. Burton , Susan Burton describes her legal, mental, and emotional challenges. These challenges are mostly the direct and indirect results of clinical depression, which she suffers from several horrifying experiences in both her childhood and adult life. Depression is a mental condition that affects people who have undergone very gruesome and stressful events. It is a mood disorder characterized by irritability, restlessness, insomnia, sadness, emotional disconnection, social isolation, and denial of events and may ultimately lead to self-harm. Sadness, anger, and stress are the emotions that ultimately cause depression. Depressed people may hide this condition and try to cope through drug abuse, which easily leads to drug addiction. When tragic events happen to someone regularly or to people who cannot regulate their emotions well, such as children, the stress may develop into major depression when not treated, affects individuals' daily lives.
Susan's Depression and its Impact on her Life
Susan developed depression as a result of horrifying events she underwent in both her childhood and adult life. As she underwent through these tragic events, there was no one to protect her or counsel her. As a child, Susan was sexually abused by her aunt's boyfriend. She then became a sex worker for an older man, Mr. Burke, to provide for her family around 10 years. She was raped and got pregnant at 14 years of age, and afterward, before reaching adulthood (in her 16-18s), she found herself being pimped by an abusive man called James. When her father, whom she was close to, separated from her mother, she grew sad, distant, and learned to isolate herself from her other family members. With a broken family, a mother who resented her and her brothers who had nothing to do with her, she had lost the protection her father offered. Her mother knew what Mr. Burke was doing to her but let the molestation continue due to the money he gave Sue and the family. She grew into an emotionally disconnected teenager and isolated herself completely from her mother and brothers. Her disconnection is highlighted because she preferred to stay in juvenile court rather than home because she felt it was more peaceful than her own home's volatility. She is so isolated from any form of love, affection, and protection that when she and her friend are raped, she agrees to her friend's plea to keep quiet about it. After being raped, she becomes pregnant and grows so sad that she even thinks of committing suicide before her delivery. Later in her adulthood, upon a period of relative stability, her son Marque (K.K) is run over by a police officer who can get away with it. Such sends her crashing down into the spiral and dark abyss of her hidden depression, manifested by her self-inflicted pain, misery, and feelings of sense of worthlessness.
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The impact of her depression is isolation from all her family members, including her daughter Toni. As a child, she feels so incensed by how society treats her that she abandons schools, gets mixed in vices she learns on the streets, and ultimately escapes home. Such leads her into prostitution, and she develops an addiction to drugs such as alcohol, cocaine, and crack. She is also unable to form healthy relationships, and as a result, she constantly ends up in exploitive and abusive relationships. The biggest impact of her depression is drug addiction because this is what takes away over 15 years of her life spent in abusive relationships and jails. When her son dies, she says, “my rage was replaced by a depression so deep I felt hollow” and “I tried everything I could get my hands on to alleviate my pain.” Susan could not be a good mother to her daughter Toni and later onwards, her granddaughter Ellesse. She says she could not be a good mother when alcohol and crack were the only things that made her function.
Societal Response to Susan
Susan's predicaments are worsened by society and the nation that chooses to ignore her mental wellbeing. Her aunt Elizabeth and her mother shame and condemn her for the sexual abuse she felt instead of counseling her and taking her for therapy. After she started hanging out in the streets or being continually arrested, her mother should have talked to her. However, her mother chooses to let her be and even takes her to the juvenile court for her delinquency. Her mother resents her and upon her rape, takes her cherries and declares, “Eat all the cherries you can, cause you sure don’t have one anymore.” These are very harsh words for a mother to tell her child, especially a rape victim. No one at Memorial Booth, where she is sent to give birth, cares to ask her the circumstances of her pregnancy or give her guidance. She is treated differently from the rest of the girls, and her baby is not welcomed for adoption is another indication of the intolerance and unwantedness she faces. Apathy and unwantedness only increase the sadness and stress a depressed person feels, exactly what happens to Susan. The sympathy she received when she returned to school was the last straw for this broken girl. This harshness and cruelty by society ultimately drove her to abandon education, fall off the bandwagon, and she abandoned education got into drug abuse.
The justice system punished Susan severally without recognizing her depression and, therefore, not recommending appropriate remedies. Susan is sentenced to prison six times even when she cries to the judge, “My son was killed, I’m trying to numb the pain with alcohol and drugs. I’d like to get some help.” Susan's brushes with the law resulted from her drug addiction, which was caused by a bigger problem; her depression. She says her depression was right out there for anyone to see and states, “You’d think someone in the system might have gotten the bright idea that I needed drug treatment, that I needed therapy.” Had the judges and other correctional officers offered mental evaluation and therapy for most women in jail, they would have realized that some women like Susan are not criminals of their own making but circumstances. The book shows that the government's and court's reaction to people with mental problems was inadequate because there were no mechanisms of identifying such problems in the first place. The harshness and strictness offered as solutions to all crime were counterproductive to people suffering from depression. Such is because the strictness imposed on them without any professional care just served to add to their depression and challenges, ultimately leading them to break the rules and end back in jail. This harsh approach, devoid of human touch, creates a cyclic circle that is hard for people with depression-related crimes to break.
A few individuals offer Susan support, and these end up being pivotal in her reform. George, the lawyer whom she met while working for James, used to tell her to get out of the bad life and seek help and a good job, noting her strength in numerical work. 30 years later, he is there to drive her to the CLARE rehabilitation center. Her childhood friend Joe also recommends a rehabilitation center and tells her brother Melvin who volunteers to pay for the program. These three offer her support to fight her addiction and the depression that causes it. This leads her to meet people like Leslie and Diane. Lesley becomes her sponsor and guides her to change her life. She offers Susan support, kindness, and affection, which ultimately help her face her mental issues and overcome drug addiction.
The Impact of Susan’s story in my Life
I have learned never to judge an individual no matter how much I am tempted to think they are consciously wasting themselves. It is worth getting to know them before deciding whether their vices are of their own making. This book has taught me the need to be concerned for everyone (including colleagues/employees) and believe in them like George did all those years for Susan. Susan’s concern for the plight of incarcerated women is borne by the concern of the few people who showed concern for her. Another thing I have learned is to question policies and directives offered as solutions to problematic situations. America was swept by the craze of fighting tough against drugs. Most people never stopped to ask themselves if there were better alternatives and who would pay for this fight. As it turned out, black people were at the receiving end of the laws most celebrated as the way forward. Amid all the racial discrimination, the beneficiaries of lenient sentences ignored the voices of trauma by thousands and even millions of Susan(s), Michael(s), and Toni(s) of their world. Next time a solution seems to favor me or is consistent with my views, I owe such people a chance to think beyond myself, an opportunity to reflect; who else is being affected by this, and how are they being affected? I aim to be the kind of colleague or employer who tries to see the best in others, to concentrate on their strengths. George identified Susan's strengths, even when she was virtually lost. If I can analyze someone and know their strength, then their purpose becomes clear. Such opens a way for teamwork and support to achieve their objectives, and mine/the organization is just like Lesley did with Susan or Susan is doing for all those incarcerated women.
References
Burton, S. & Lynn, C. (2017). Becoming Ms. Burton . The New Press.
