The article reflects on the long-term impact of a mother's postpartum mental illness on her child. The author recounts their struggles in understanding their mother's mental health issues, which manifested after their birth. Despite the mother's repeated hospitalizations, the author only recognized the link between her mental illness and their own experience years later. Only after engaging with relevant literature did the author begin to comprehend the profound effects of maternal mental illness on their relationship and personal healing journey. The narrative emphasizes that healing is possible, no matter how much time has passed.
I was never able to stop being afraid of my mother, and I was never really able to have a normal relationship with her or see her in any way.
Maternal mental illness as the true source of our problems had been occurring to me vaguely and intermittently for a long time as an adult.
Maternal mental illness didn't come into focus as a research topic till the early 1980s.
The thought of maternal mental illness... really sank in for the first time in 2014, when I read two articles in the New York Times.
Collection
[
|
...
]