On the first day of each month, my lover and I greet each other first thing that morning with the words RABBIT RABBIT.
On the first day of March he said, which I always feel on that date too, ‘I should really have said HARE HARE…’
Times of the year hold such deeply rooted memories, don’t they?
This time two years ago we were living in Cornwall, and I was experiencing the scariest, loneliest time of my life. I had perinatal depression, and was mothering an extremely attached 11 month old who had never slept longer than 45 minutes in a sitting, and only slept at all if their entire body was in contact with mine. My wee one breastfed constantly, we had no support as a family whatsoever and I was on deadline to hand in my second book, which I was writing in small snatches of time when my partner drove our baby around Cornish coves, took him to socially distanced play groups in church halls, or walked the coastal path with him in a sling between feeds.
It was dark and scary, and—hard as this is to even think about now let alone write—I was convinced I had made a huge mistake in becoming a mother.
I loved him unspeakably, my beautiful, bright bábóg, but I had no guide; no map; no light by which to navigate that new world.
In my third trimester, when the PND began, I’d read a few pieces on Matrescence , the phrase coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in the mid-'70s to speak of the process of becoming a mother(and the title of Lucy Jones’ amazing book on this topic), and was utterly blown away by it.
Entranced.
Obsessed.
As a woman who has experienced deep rooted pain as the foundation of the relationships with
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to g l i m m e r s to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.