“We can opt for hatred of hatred…or instead we can take as a model for our social as well as psychological well-being the complex, often painful reality of motherhood.”
Jacqueline Rose.
There is a growing medicalisation of maternal mental health. Currently, many mothers who are evidently struggling beyond the two weeks post-partum ‘baby blues’ are all too easily given a diagnosis of a post-partum illness and left to it. This contributes to the repression and shaming of the shadow side of mothering and maintains the status quo that it is solely the mothers responsibility to make sure she is well.
The supermum myth is prevailing – the all giving and loving, instinctive, invincible mother, that society depends on, uses, and disregards. This collective process of ‘unseeing’ the Self in the Mother burdens women with a belief that to be a good mother, and therefore accepted by society, they must delete their own needs, and essentially delete their former selves.
@dark_side_of_the_mum is an Instagram community which aims to de-pathologise the shadow side of motherhood and contribute to the revolution of the institution of motherhood, so the mother’s battle for her child become’s a common human battle. (Adrienne Rich)
After all, the health of humanity depends on the health of the mother.
Annie Broadbent 