In honour of World Mental Health Day, writer and mom Odette Parfitt opens up about the quiet pressures of motherhood and the often-overlooked forms of anxiety that many carry in silence. In this honest reflection, she reminds us that every struggle, big or small, is valid, and that caring for our mental health shouldn’t be a last resort.
I was really excited when I noticed my deadline for October landed in the same week as World Mental Health Day (10 October). Then, as the deadline came closer, I became more and more unsure about the topic I wanted to use around mental health. See, I didn’t really want to do an academic article on mental health and motherhood; to start a proper open conversation, I wanted this to be more personal.
And that’s where I was stuck. I did not suffer from postpartum depression when I became a mom. I am not medicated and I have never been physically unable to get out of bed in the morning because of the weight I’m carrying. What I do have is high-functioning anxiety – which I mostly manage with some occasional wobbles – and a pretty massive case of imposter syndrome about my own mental health journey. I worried that anything I wrote about my personal experience on the mental health front would ultimately be tone-deaf towards people with real problems.
Then it occurred to me: I am surely not the only person, and definitely not the only mother, who thinks like this. From the moment our child is born, as moms we face this pressure – coming from society, social media, friends and family, and probably most ourselves – to be perfect, to remember everything, to give up everything, and to be everything all at once, for everyone except ourselves.
This is absolutely exhausting. You work like you don’t have a family, you parent like you don’t have a job, you manage your house and anticipate needs left and right, and often you’re not even last in the queue for care – you’re locked out of the building and the shutters are closing. Oh, and if you do anything remotely resembling self-care, you feel guilty for it.
Maybe this isn’t everyone’s experience, but I believe some of you are nodding. OK, are you ready for the big-finish point I’m trying to make? It’s this: we carry it all ourselves and we think we have to wait until we buckle and fall before we can ask for help. I’m talking professional help, like therapy or counselling.
Mental health is not a binary; it’s not healthy or Hunters Craig, and there’s a lot of struggle happening across the spectrum before we face a meltdown. (I’ve had one, it’s not fun.) Why is it that we compare our struggle with others and then decide our problem is not big enough to warrant help, to deserve help?
In all my thinking around mental health and my efforts to make others feel safe to get help, I have never been able to give myself the same grace. So let’s change the conversation, let’s challenge our own stigmas, and let’s think of therapy as maintenance. Mental health is health. You take your kids for checkups at the doctor and (if you’re a better adult than me) you go to regular dentist check-ups. Why should our brain – literally the thing powering our bodies and our lives – not get the same level of care and attention?
Anyway. Long rant, bottom line: get help, and not as a last resort. Let’s stop waiting to fall apart before we admit something is wrong. There’s no shame in stumbling, and there are hands to catch you if you fall.
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