Dear Hollywood, My Postpartum Mood Disorder Is Not a Dramedy.
Like everyone, I saw the initial trainer for the newest “real life” comedy release - Diablo Cody’s “Tully” - and got super extra excited.
A movie about REAL LIFE!
And postpartum doulas!
And how hard the struggle is for new mothers!
Starring Charlize Theron - who looks (almost) like a real person! Great!
I even went so far as to highlight reel the trailer on my personal and business pages, convinced this was the change and awareness we needed to see in the spotlight for new and expectant mothers.
I put the date of the release on my calendar and went about my day, teaching, listening, helping and holding laboring clients’ hands.
Then the murmurs started.
PSST. DO NOT READ BELOW IF YOU DO NOT LIKE SPOILERS. YES - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
OK with spoilers? Great. Read on.
The postpartum doula? Yeah, she sleeps with the dad.
Ugh….I can’t even begin to tell you how disappointed I was. As a postpartum doula, and also as an educator on the sensitive, vulnerable postpartum period, I couldn’t be more frustrated with this portrayal. While it’s far down the list of things that I believe our clients worry about, it’s similar to the ‘we didn’t pick a nanny because she was hot’ thread that I see every once in awhile.
New moms are tired. They’re achy. They’re overwhelmed. They’re vulnerable. They don’t need to be concerned about whether or not the things that they don’t feel or feel or how they look or don’t look will be used against them by the person who is in their home to HELP them. And don’t even get me started on the whole ‘Dads need sex’ after baby. Yes. Everyone returns to their sexual wants and needs. But gently, and on each person’s consensual terms.
Still, I was willing to just answer the questions from friends and neighbors and clients when everyone saw the movie and had that ‘stereotype’ of a postpartum doula in their mind, and went on drinking my coffee.
Now more, and reputably sourced, reviews are out, and it turns out that postpartum doula? A figment of the title character’s postpartum psychosis. She wakes up, after having a hallucinatory break, in the hospital. And this is where the story ends.
No spotlight on a MAJOR health and mental health issue. No resolution. No dialogue on the nature of how mothers get here, the neglect that is paid to the treatment, diagnosis, awareness of postpartum mood disorders.
No ideas on how this will effect TONS of new moms, moms who may have had mood disorders, who strut out to the theater with their girlfriends and fellow moms for a night out, full of confidence to see themselves portrayed on the screen, only to shrink down in their seats, and experience - in the worst case - a triggering reliving of their own postpartum psychosis, and leave feeling more ashamed about their experience than ever.
Guess what, Hollywood?
I’m not buying it.
Literally, and figuratively.
My postpartum issues and mental health issues and, honestly, daily struggles as a mother who is trying to keep it all together, maintain a semblance of self and dignity while still looking like a sane person in the checkout line of the grocery store, running a business, giving myself to husband, children, clients, the PTO?
They’re not for sale.
They’re not some caricature up there on the screen that someone can put on for a moment, discard and go ‘that was some crazy shit, now who wants drinks?’
Postpartum is full of grace and mess and beauty, but there are dark, neglected corners that some women find themselves in, where no one wants to look, and no one wants to help and treat. And instead of seeing their feelings and struggles as normal, these women push it back, hide it, suffer and move on. Or? They don’t. They become a 5 minute slot on the news when their suffering pushes them to the breaking point.
So in a world where we can highlight the fact that Kate Middleton got to look like ::that:: after having her baby, where we can agree that mental health is an important conversation when we chat about other politically and socially relevant issues - let’s not shortchange the motherhood experience.
Give postpartum mood disorders their thorough dialogue, not the ‘welp, that’s it, the end’ that Tully explores, briefly.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope that there are beautiful moments within this film that every mother can relate to, and I’m sure there are a few!
But the biggest issues, the ones that I can MOST relate to, those I have no interest in seeing treated poorly.
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