I’ve been having a tough time with my mental health lately. Anxiety and low mood have been compounded by my son’s repeated night wakings, and after settling him I have been lying wide awake, heart racing with adrenaline. Averaging three hours of sleep a night, it was inevitable that I would burn out with exhaustion eventually, requiring time off work.
Just typing these words, and the thought of you reading them, makes me feel shame. Shame that I haven’t coped better, shame at the burden it has placed on others, and shame that I’m feeling this way, when, considering the pain and trauma others are facing, I am lucky. That feeling of shame always creates in me an impulse to write. When I first started this series, mere weeks after giving birth, a female journalist I have known for years suggested that I was too vulnerable to be doing so. Yet if we never create work from a place of vulnerability, I am not sure what writing is for.
