Ann Batchelder was singing along with a favorite opera song while tomato sauce simmered on the stove. Hearing the back screen door bang shut, she stopped singing to check on her sixteen-year-old daughter, Olivia, whom she found in a disheveled state, in tears on the floor. “The past two days, I’ve thought about driving my car into a tree, and I almost did it today,” Olivia revealed. Moments later, Olivia would also confess to suffering from bulimia. This moment began Batchelder’s exhaustive search over five years to find help for her daughter. Batchelder’s debut memoir, Craving Spring, explores the difficulties her family faces as they navigate Olivia’s disordered eating and depression that eventually lead to heroin addiction. At the center of this struggle, Batchelder questions her role as a mother and retraces Olivia’s childhood struggles, searching for the cause.

In early chapters, Batchelder reflects on her Midwest upbringing where the prevailing notion was that “for a mother to be successful, it was up to the woman of the house to stay in control of her children,” that every mistake a child, teenager, or young adult makes can be traced back to the failure of the mother. What kind of pressure does that place on mothers? How much of Batchelder’s fear and worry is attached to those expectations? She writes, “When obsessive worrying becomes a daily habit, it’s easy for a mother to miss signals. Fear creates chaos in her mind until she becomes immobilized. To combat feeling overwhelmed, she focuses on staying in control rather than using her maternal instincts to clearly assess a situation. Add society’s emphasis on blaming and shaming mothers for not being perfect, and all she’s left with is her anxiety about being a failure.”

Batchelder segments her story with the Greek myth of Persephone and Demeter, a sophisticated approach that serves to highlight the tug-of-war many mothers and daughters face, along with the fear of letting our daughters fight their own battles. Batchelder explains, “I, too, became a furious, frantic mother obsessed with rescuing my daughter.” The author’s ability to capture the terror she feels is palpable, further revealed in the retelling of Demeter, whose only purpose became saving Persephone, imagining her daughter’s deep suffering and demise. As Olivia reveals the depths of her depression, Batchelder is panic-stricken: “My heart seemed to stop. . . . I felt the floor beneath us start to give way, exposing a dark pit below.”

Her vulnerable depiction of the long, arduous struggle was difficult for me to read as it mirrored in many ways the battle my husband and I fought to keep our oldest daughter from succumbing to depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and addiction. Batchelder’s emotive narrative reveals the feelings of suffocating nausea you endure after realizing that all you can do is still not enough to save your child, while at the same time blaming yourself for every mistake you’ve made.

Batchelder also writes about the tension between her and her husband, Henri. He relied on her to find the right doctors and course of action while she also managed the home. Henri, who lost his father to suicide, craved a stable family. She constantly researched because he wanted a concrete plan from experts. They were sometimes at odds as to what should be done and at odds in how they dealt with their emotions. Olivia’s brother, Austin, also seemed to handle things differently. He was worried about Olivia’s new friends from a rougher crowd and her struggles, but other than being there for her when she asked, what more could he do?

Batchelder vacillates between her instinct to control the situation and her desire to support her daughter’s independence. Like others who “realize their current behaviors or reactions . . . only heighten existing tensions,” Batchelder seeks therapy for herself and gains a mentor from Al-Anon. She dives into as much literature as she can find, sharing with her readers valuable resources like Pema Chödrön’s The Wisdom of No Escape, Dr. Anita Johnson’s Eating in the Light of the Moon, and Tommy Rosen’s Recovery 2.0: Move Beyond Addiction and Upgrade Your Life.

Batchelder writes vivid scenes depicting her journey to understanding that, like Demeter, she must let her daughter face “the fires of the underworld,” and wait patiently for her return. I recommend this book and encourage parents—especially mothers—who are struggling alongside teenage or young adult children with mental health, addiction, or eating disorders to read Batchelder’s informative and hopeful story. Those of us who travel this difficult path alongside the author are reminded to challenge our preconceived notions of who our children are and who we will become as they step into the world on their own.