“Mom, You Shouldn’t Have Children If It is too Hard for You”

In her compelling memoir Still Life, author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression. In this excerpt, Marchenko shares a funny but poignant moment as she deals with the challenges of battling depression and raising children:

One morning when Elaina was around three years old, she came into our bedroom and crawled up in between Sergei and me in bed.

“Mom, Zoya’s crying,” she said, placing her little hand on my cheek. Zoya had been fussing and making noise for the last fifteen…