In my family, the eldest girl in the family gets a specific middle name to pass to her eldest girl. The name went from my mom to me to my daughter. She’ll pass it to her oldest daughter. With any luck, it’s only the heritage of that name that’ll be passed directly because, thus far, OCD has been passed with it.

My daughter being diagnosed with OCD was an emotional time. First, I had to “out” myself. I’d been hiding my OCD since childhood because I felt like it was a dark side of me. I didn’...