MAYA CLAIR LINDEN
MAYA CLAIR LINDEN
100% of profits from the sale of this book go to PANDA - Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia.
Not keeping mum
2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist
"Heartfelt, at times confronting and occasionally funny, this collection gives insight into how women navigate the profound changes that occur in their bodies, relationships and lives when they become a parent, and how they find the light at the end of the tunnel."
— Anne Buist, perinatal psychiatrist, professor of women's mental health and author of the Natalie King trilogy and The Long Shadow
A couple nervously anticipating the arrival of their first child find themselves in a café where time seems to stand still. A depressed and vengeful single mother posts her former partner a surprise gift. An anxious new mum sets out to find the mythical ‘mum tribe’, but discovers something different and more useful. A first-time mums’ group confront the ultimate first-time mum fear: dropping the baby!
Perinatal mental health conditions, including anxiety and depression, are common illnesses affecting mothers and fathers during pregnancy and the first years following a birth. But they’re rarely spoken about openly, honestly and in depth. This unflinching collection of writing reveals these silenced parts of parenting, exploring the intense and sometimes contradictory emotions experienced during the process of bringing a child into the world.
Whether you are a mother or father (or have one), whether you are someone who has experienced mental illness or simply known the madness of a deep and complex love, you are sure to find something of yourself in these essays, poems and stories.
Mothers & Others
Just Between Us
'When are you having children?'
'Why didn't you have another child?'
'Well, I guess that's your choice, but...'
They are questions asked of women all the time. Beneath them is the assumption that all women want to have children, and the judgement that if they don't, they'll be somehow incomplete. And that's only the beginning ... With parenthood taking centre stage in today's moral and consumer culture - and yummy-mummies and domestic goddesses the stars of the show - being a mother, or not being a mother, has never been so complicated. It seems the list of rights and wrongs gets longer daily, with guilt-ridden mothers everywhere struggling to keep on top of it all, and non-mothers struggling in a culture that defines women by their wombs.
In this collection of fiction and non-fiction stories, Australia's best women writers reflect on motherhood. Their stories tackle everything from the decision not to have children to the so-called battle between working and stay-at-home mums. From infertility and IVF, to step-parenting and adoption, to miscarriage and breastfeeding, child meltdowns and marriage breakdowns, the stories explore and celebrate the full gamut of the motherhood experience, and give a much needed voice to those who won't ever be called 'Mum'.
Empathetic, supportive and respectful …Or competitive, manipulative and downright bitchy? Or somewhere in between?
In Just Between Us, a host of Australia’s best-loved female writers bare all on this age-old quandary: Are female friendships all-natural and nurturing? Or are some more damaging than delightful? And most of all, what happens when female relationships go off the rails? And who is to blame?
While falling in and out of romantic love is a well-documented experience, losing a friend rarely gets discussed. Which doesn’t mean the pain is less – quite the opposite, as we discover in this extraordinary collection of heartfelt fiction and non-fiction works that put female friendship under the microscope.
Poignant, bittersweet, and often hysterically funny, this collection cracks open the taboo topic of why we don’t always like each other all of the time, and helps us see that it’s occasionally okay to retire as a best friend.