This week it's Mental Health Awareness Week, so the first piece we'd like to share from Dispatches from New Motherhood is Flowers by Hannah Simpson: a deeply affecting account of a visit from a mental health nurse.
About her piece, Hannah says 'I expected to write something a little lighter. But when I sat down with pen and paper, the words that rose to the surface and asked to be let out were from a dark place. Reliving those early newborn days, when I struggled severely with my mental health, was difficult. Ultimately though, the writing process brought me a better understanding of my own experience.'
The theme for this year's Mental Health Awareness Week is kindness – and Hannah's piece speaks directly to this: kindness from others, and learning to show kindness to oneself. We're incredibly proud to share it here.
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FLOWERS
Hannah Simpson
The nurse from the perinatal team walks in with the sun. Perches next to me. My eyes are wide, tracing the pale, worn patterns on the sofa cushions. I know they're flowers. But today, in the wrong light, they look like stains. I am rocking, while in another room my partner cuddles the baby.
I tell her that I’m living in a nightmare and I need to wake up. I just want to escape and leave it all behind. Just – as if it’s just a sip, just a nibble, just a quick look, nothing too difficult. The tiny, mewling one and the one I loved first are better off without me. They’re the perfect pair dragging a dead weight.
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 her calm, measured, mildly blunt way, the nurse says, ‘That’s just not realistic though, is it?’
I want to tell all my keyworkers: I was once coiled as a spring with life. But that was an achingly long time ago. Now I’m an octogenarian crowing from a threadbare chair: lady, you should have seen me in my heyday. I would dance till the end of the night: beyond, sometimes.
She's right to say that escape is not an option. Breastfeeding holds me hostage. I'm in pain when I do feed, more pain if I don't. I picture myself staggering in a toilet cubicle on the train, gripping a urine-soaked rail and a pump to my breast. Imagine emerging to a grumbling queue, weeping, wide-eyed, leaking. No, I come with far, far too much baggage. And I would still be a mother at the end of the line.
The nurse doles out her dose of words and my sobs subside to sniffles. She takes her leave and in the coming days I take steps to make this new world my home. I buy jeans two sizes bigger than I used to. I practise saying ‘mummy’ when no one’s around. I count things to ground myself, like she tells me to:
I see flowers, blankets, rattles, books
A bar of sunlight slanting in.
I hear heavy sighs of traffic outside
Squawks, squeals and the sucking of a thumb.
I feel the grip of tiny hands
Soft skin, wriggling limbs.
Breathe the scent of my daughter's head
Cotton just out of the tumble dryer.
I reach for the taste
Of that last cup of tea.
The nurse comes weekly, her kindness sinking in gradually, a grace I begin to learn to show myself. I lounge on the sofa with my child in my arms and the flowers become flowers once more. I'd been berating myself for my weakness, when I should have been praising myself for my strength. I'd said I wanted to leave but deep down I just wanted to be able to stay.
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Flowers by Hannah Simpson appears in the Mothership Writers anthology Dispatches from New Motherhood. All 50 pieces from the book will be published here over the year to come, creating an online library of what it really means – right here, right now – to be a new mother.