Your Tears Don't Move Me

Having spent her life in a love/hate entanglement with her harsh, self-interested mother, DAPHNE MERKIN blames nurture as much as nature for her depression

ELLE Contributing Editor Daphne Merkin’s new memoir, This Close to Happy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), explores her life, recurrent depression, and treatment for the condition. She also deeply investigates her depression’s causes, weighing the impact of her genetic inheritance versus her family’s influence. Based on the relatively scant history of mental illness in her family, she concludes: “I was less, rather than more, fated to do battle with this illness, and…its origins lie with the cold and unnurturing atmosphere of my upbringing as much as anything else.” That declaration, in this biochemically besotted era, almost counts as radical (though, yes, we know what “your mum and dad” all too often do to you, even when they don’t mean to).