East Peoria Community High School librarian Brooke Nelson recently penned Birthmarks: True Stories from Real Mothers. It's a book inspired by her own struggles with postpartum depression.
Tim Shelley recently spoke with Nelson.
BROOKE NELSON: I had been struggling with postpartum depression after my second child was born. And I was talking to my mom about why I felt so completely alone. Like, I couldn't find anybody that would admit to also struggling after having a child. And she kind of laughed and said, you know, Oh, honey, they're all lying.
So, that kind of led me to ask a bunch of people like, what what were your experiences? And the more I asked, the more I realized, like, no one is really talking about what, you know, parenthood and motherhood is really like. And so I just wanted to create a place where those stories could be featured, so that if somebody like me was struggling, they would have a place to go to find some community and some truth that isn't readily available.
TIM SHELLEY: And when we talk about, people don't want to talk about the struggles of parenthood or motherhood. What do you think that is? I mean, what's the reluctance there?
BROOKE NELSON: I think social media has a lot to do with it. You know, we have a really curated society at this time. We can really create our own realities.
And there's a problem with that, because then, you know, people can't really connect to what's going on. And so I think that has a lot to do with it. You know, we post all these pictures of the good stuff, and no one talks about the bad stuff. And if they do, it's very private. So this is a very public forum. I mean, it's out there for anybody to read. So I think, from my experiences with people responding to this book, so far, it's been a lot of, yeah, I totally felt like that, too. And I just assumed that I was alone.
TIM SHELLEY: So you've collected a number of stories from a number of people in this book. Tell me a little bit about those stories.
BROOKE NELSON: The stories kind of run the gamut. And I tried to, I mean, you know, I got the stories by just asking women and of course, these are from my pool of women that I know, because that's, that's what we can get. And so I kind of knew a lot of their stories, and I just asked them to submit it.
And so I have a lot of people struggling with fertility and struggling with pregnancy, there's child loss, and issues with high risk pregnancies, postpartum depression, breastfeeding issues, kind of anything that you would experience if you either want children or can't have them. I think this kind of fulfills a lot of those issues.
TIM SHELLEY: For a woman, a mother, or maybe an expectant mother, or somebody picking up this book to read it, what do you hope to take away from it or get from it?
BROOKE NELSON: I think the goal would be to give a new mother or a pregnant mother, just a bigger picture of what possibly they could expect. And that can be from simple joys, to terrible tragedies. And it just really, I think it would be eye opening for somebody to read this, that maybe doesn't really have an idea or somebody who's just had a baby to feel that connection and not feel alone. A lot of the women that were going through these things just repeatedly said to me, or wrote in their essays, 'I just felt so alone.' And of course, they're not. There's millions of women going through the same things all the time. You know, they just don't know about [them].
TIM SHELLEY: Would you hope that maybe a woman reading this might say, it's okay for me to share my story, as well as make them more comfortable doing that themselves and help make these conversations easier?
BROOKE NELSON: Oh my gosh, yes, that is the ultimate goal. But the whole goal of this was to create the space for women to be honest and create the notion that that honesty is not only really cathartic, but also extremely important not just for, you know ourselves going through it but you know, our future children and and future mothers to know that this is important to be talked about because suffering alone is terrible for everybody involved, including your children.
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