How writing helped my mental health - Bronwen Wilson
/Content Warning: suicide and infant death
8 years ago, I was feeding my twins in the middle of the night. I’d managed to rig cushions and them so I could do this hands free and was scrolling on my phone. And there it was. A friend on facebook telling us all that our mutual mate Angela had killed herself after suffering from postpartum psychosis. She was actually being treated, she’d spent several months in a mother and baby unit and seemed to be recovering, but she wasn’t and she had hid it from everyone. I remember the air being sucked out of me. The shock, but also the familiarity.
So many of us have had dark and disturbing thoughts after having children. Even without a complex mental health history, the sleep deprivation, intensity, physical recovery from birth and the patchy support, or total lack of it are enough to stretch any of us. On the other hand I’ve had the example of my mother whose first baby died when he was 10 weeks old, my brother Brychan.
My Mum relished our childhood in a way I don’t think you can unless you realise how precious it is. And then there’s me. Externally I probably looked a lot of the time like a ‘natural’ mother. One of those annoying women who gave birth, breast fed and made it all look easy. Whilst all of those things did click into place for me, I still felt restless and frustrated. I almost thought I was doing it wrong because it wasn’t going wrong and I also felt that being ‘just’ a Mum wasn’t enough, for me at least. I remember going away for work at a festival and being told I was a bit of a Dad because I didn’t miss them at all. I felt guilt for not having guilt. How mucked up is that?
When Angela died it galvanised something in me. My Mum had been supported after her baby had died by her NCT teacher and I knew the power of peer support and early signposting so I trained to become an NCT antenatal practitioner, then eventually a perinatal yoga teacher. Supporting families through that period of their lives was an honour, I probably never got it totally right, but the one thing I aimed to do was at least start those conversations around mental health so that the groups I worked with could support each other. There are amazing professional services out there, but it’s patchy at best and often the voluntary/charitable sector have to fill the gaps, but by empowering families in their own communities we can do huge amounts of good. In my groups I would talk about intrusive thoughts, about how easy it is to hold a baby that bit too hard when they wont stop crying, that looking after our mental health is the single most important gift we can give our children.
Eventually, I moved on from birth work and gained a job in a youth mental health organisation in Bristol where I get to work with teenagers and young adults. The age range is different, but the needs are often very similar: to find your tribe, to feel seen, to be listened to without judgement.
One of the tribes I needed was the one the Mum Poem Press has created. A celebration of being a parent and being creative all at once. It’s an incredibly special thing, instead of this image that you can’t make art if you’re a mother, that the drudge somehow stops that urge. What rubbish! Also there is a recognisable benefit that comes from expressing our internal struggles through art, it actually helps our brains and bodies to process those enormous emotions and experiences and move beyond them.
The poem of mine that’s being published in the Mum Poem Press Anthology is one I wrote after the birth of my first child. She must have only been a couple of months old, it was this time of year, spring and we could start sitting for longer stretches outside. She was asleep and I was writing. I can still feel the notebook in my hands, my pen, the words coming out whole. I loved her so much, was full of it, made of it. But I was still me and writing helped hold on to that. I wouldn’t say it saved my life, more that it saved a ‘me’ to have a life with.
See more of Bronwen over at:
You can find Bronwen’s poem and a collection of poems from others mums, including one from Emma, Isabella and Us. in Songs of Love and Strength: An anthology of Poems on Motherhood.
This Maternal Menth Health Awareness week, the Mum Poem Press is delighted to publish Songs of Love and Strength, a unique collection of 100 contemporary poetic voices on the realities of motherhood.
Complied during the pandemic by a community of poetry-writing mums, this ground-breaking anthology features first-time writers alongside established poets – all mothers writing today about their personal experiences.
The collection features poems about the pain of infertility and miscarriage, the realities of giving birth, the shock of the fourth trimester, loss of identity, boredom, the smell of babies’ heads, tiny fingers, sleep deprivation, right through to children leaving home and becoming a grandparent. It is also the first anthologies to explore parenthood during the pandemic – with poems on giving birth in lockdown and home schooling.
The release of this book aims to raise awareness of the many different, and often overlooked, facets and complexities of motherhood, to provide comfort and camaraderie to other mums and to raise money for the maternal mental health charity PANDAS.
See more of The Mum Poem Press over at:
Order a copy of Songs of Love and Strength: An anthology of Poems on Motherhood here.
