What drew me to Embrace – long before I was a member of the hub team – was the chance to find a community of mothers with whom I could share some of the hardest parts of this journey. In the throes of postpartum depression, struggling to adjust to my
As we listened to story after story, a maternal mantra of sorts emerged: mothers need support always, and perhaps now even more so. The question is – how do we get creative in supporting mothers during pregnancy, birth and post-partum without increasing their risk of contracting COVID? I think we’re going to have to get radical about creating a community for mothers – no mother left behind. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, but it starts with looking out for the mothers around us and asking them what they need. Lack of support for new mothers is not a corona-conundrum, but if it takes a global pandemic to get us seriously thinking up solutions, then perhaps not all has been lost to 2020 after all.
What does this mean for moms? In a sense, the work-life divide has always been a constructed one. No-one is ever just one thing at once. For so long, people – especially mothers – have had to pretend away at least 60% of whom we are for the sake of our professions and our job security. The gift of COVID-19 is that it has stripped away the props we rely on in this pretense: the office, the meetings, the work trips. Without these, we can no longer pretend away crucial parts of our identities.
I’m not the type of woman one would find in a tribe. Years of learning the hard way that girls are my competition, even the girls I love – has built an emotional dam around my fragile heart. I don’t allow people into my personal space – which may sound