This week we're celebrating the publication of the first ever Mothership Writers anthology, Dispatches from New Motherhood. I truly believe this book is a revelation. It gathers together the voices of 50 new mothers, all writing in the maelstrom of experience: these aren't narratives crafted at a distance, they've been set down with a pen in one hand and a baby in the other – often literally. And they’re evidence of the richly rewarding relationship between creativity and maternity.
Before Mothership Writers, many of the women in our crew hadn't written for years; 'I used to enjoy writing at school but I lost the habit' was a frequently recurring sentiment at the start of the course. There's something about giving birth - perhaps the most creative act of all - that awakens a desire to express oneself; the sense, in those early weeks and months of motherhood, that something remarkable is being experienced – an intensity of feeling that demands capture. Mothership Writers gives women the space, and the confidence, to do just that.
While the book itself is super limited edition, over the year to come each piece will be posted to this Journal on a weekly basis, so that as wide an audience as possible can connect with our writers and their work: an online library of what it really means to be a new mother. From the end of May a fortnightly Mothership newsletter will celebrate the pieces too – while bringing extra creative inspiration and writing tips. I hope that lots of women will find the emotions articulated in Dispatches from New Motherhood liberating, for our writers don't shy from documenting the complexities of their experience – they speak of the darkness as well as the light. In their company we're taken into the most intimate and varied of spaces: a consultation with a mental health nurse, a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a showgirl's dressing room, a spot on the landing in the middle of the night, the moment when a mother throws her placenta into the sea. There are 50 pieces of prose and poetry in Dispatches from New Motherhood and every single one has something important to say about the diverse experience of mothering.
In Thicker than Blood, Abi Lancaster offers a poignant reflection on her role as a foster mother:
'I walk your neighbourhood. Your baby hearing the noises and smelling the scents of her time in your womb. I play a game of would-I-rather: would I rather bump into you in the street, or at the courtroom?'
In The Pendulum, Asli Tatliadim shares with us the rhythms of bedtime and explores the contradictions of her emotions:
'As I wait for you to fall asleep, the pendulum swings between the extremities of my motherhood. Your infinite need of me defines both ends. I feel suffocated and satisfied. I feel pained and peaceful. I feel alone and alive.'
In her poem Darkness and Light, Jenny Fisken writes of the natural world and its connection to her state of mind:
'Sea-salted skin from the vastness of oceans
Provokes anxiety to rise all the more readily in my body,
Like the electric feel of the air before a storm.'
In Alarm Bells Sound, T. Wills documents the challenges and uncertainties of undergoing IVF on her own:
'I'm a single parent who is, to be frank, lost on the planet, anchorless, lonely as an anchorite and yearning for something to pour foundations into; a grown-up person to be building something with, a house to call home or a nation where I am sure I belong.'
In her poem When I Gave Birth, Imogen Schäfer offers a heart-wrenching account of her daughter’s birth:
'How can I have given birth to someone
when I was barely alive?
Heart in shutdown,
lungs collapsing.
Hurried talk of hysterectomy
and how to save my life
while all I could do was lie bleeding
and wonder,
where has it gone wrong?'
In Sweet Serafael, Sarafina Finch writes of navigating single motherhood and drawing inspiration from her son:
’A space in the bed once saved for your father
Has now become the space saved for you,
Sweet Serafael.'
In Flowers, Hannah Simpson affectingly describes a visit from a perinatal mental health nurse:
'I've been Googling hostels, in Bristol and further afield. Wondering if I could turn up somewhere and not be me anymore. Considering which doorsteps I could arrive on. A lone stork, empty handed.'
In Anxious, Overwhelmed, Lonely and Lost, Kimberley Dean writes of the struggle of completing her piece for the anthology – and her eventual triumph:
'I've lost all my confidence. Since having Ralph, this has become my new normal. No longer knowing who I am or even who I used to be. But I get the words down anyway. Because if becoming a mother has taught me anything, it's that I do deserve to be heard.'
I couldn't be more proud of the book we’ve made – or more proud of the women inside its pages. I hope that many new mothers will find the work of the Mothership Writers inspiring and feel empowered to 'get the words down', as Kimberley Dean says. Get the words down and be heard.
