All That We Ask of You Is To Always Be Happy | CavanKerry Press; Feb. 4
If social media and the advertising industry are to be believed, new motherhood is a site of self-actualization—one brimming with nourishing moments; sunnily swaying the baby in a neutral-colored Scandavian wrap, a few sleepless nights, perhaps, and some slapstick events involving dirty diapers.
Thank god for literature complicating that narrative. In a new collection of poems about maternal mental health, All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy, Durham poet Bridget Bell does just that. Bell, who teaches composition and literature at Durham Technical Community College, defines postpartum depression in one poem as “a window painted shut / a cornered mouse frantic along the floorboards / wheels on black ice — / spinning, spinning, spinning.”
The impossible ask in Bell’s title feels truer than ever, especially of women suffering from postpartum depression—a condition that affects, as the introduction notes, 15 to 20 percent of mothers. Across thirty-three poems, the forces of postpartum “spinning” show up in sleep deprivation, psychosis, loneliness, and intrusive thoughts. Some poems are a fairly brutal read; all are raw, lyrical, and inventive.
People who are parents may find it a relief to see these experiences articulated honestly; people who are not parents will find it riveting and educational. Ahead of the book’s release—with a launch celebration at Ponysaurus on February 8 and a reading at Mettlesome Theater on March 22—Bell sat down with the INDY to talk about the collection.
INDY: How long have you been working on these poems? Did they start during your first pregnancy?
Bridget Bell: I first started writing about the topic a month after I had my daughter—I have two children. I can remember the first poem that I wrote, and it’s not actually in the collection, and the poems kind of started as a way of processing what I was going through after I had her because I struggled with postpartum depression.
Initially, I wasn’t imagining it as a book, because I couldn’t imagine anything in the future—everything was so debilitating. But the further away I got from being sick, and the further I got along on my healing process, I started to think about how powerful it could be to have a collection that would potentially help other women. So I really wrote it over the course of six years. Some of the poems were very acute and in response to things I experienced, and then some are in response to other stories I’ve heard or research I’ve done.
Was it hard to sit in the material that long, or cathartic to have a mechanism to think through things? Or both?
It was cathartic. It was definitely hard, too, but I have an amazing community of writers who helped me workshop the poems and so I always felt very safe in the content. I feel very passionate about talking about maternal mental health, so even if the content was difficult for me, I felt driven by the idea that talking about it and having the poems out in the world could help combat some of the stigma.
Can you talk a bit about the collection title—which is great!
Thank you! I had a couple of different working titles as I was putting together the manuscript, and none of them ever felt quite right. For a long time, the manuscript was called Normal because I wanted to emphasize how common perinatal mood disorders are, but that didn’t capture everything that I wanted.
When I thought of All That We Ask of You Is To Always Be Happy—it sounds cheesy, but it was kind of one of those “click into place” moments. As someone who uses dark humor to cope with things, the snarkiness of the title felt like it hit on the different notes that I wanted the collection to hit on. It’s in direct conversation with this message that moms get—and not just new moms, but parents in general—to, you know, ‘cherish every moment and, oh, this time goes by so fast.’ But it’s really super, super hard, and the moments that are cherishable are few and far between. There’s a lot of struggle and boredom and resentment.
I don’t think the title is unique to motherhood, either. I think it’s applicable to a lot of expectations that we put on women. I really liked that plural first person, that there’s this ominous we. It’s not even necessarily like one person is giving a direct message; it’s just this amorphous pressure that you feel from every angle. That first-person plural felt important.
Did you have poetry or literature to look to for writing about maternal mental health—what’s out there?
My daughter is 10, so it’s been a decade since this started. I think a lot has changed and there’s probably more literature out there. But I can remember how hungry I was for poems about maternal mental health specifically. And I can remember Googling, “maternal, postpartum depression, poetry” and I couldn’t find a whole lot.
I don’t think the subject is sentimental. I think it’s wrought with anger and angst and complex emotions.”
I read a lot of other women’s writing while I was working on this, but they weren’t necessarily postpartum depression poems—they were more poems about similar things that the collection explores: having people dismiss you, or the shame of not fulfilling societal expectations.
I think there are a lot of stories about postpartum depression, like memoirs. Postpartum Support International is a great resource, and they have a blog and a section called “Stories of Hope” that I would read a lot.
I do feel like there’s a gap in poetry specifically, and maybe that’s people’s hesitancy because there’s this, there’s this pushback in the poetry world to not be overly sentimental—I always got that message in grad school. So I don’t know if people are reluctant to write about it because they don’t want to seem overly sentimental—but I don’t think the subject is sentimental. I think it’s wrought with anger and angst and complex emotions.
The book has a forward by a doctor and there’s a lot of medical language.
CavanKerry is the publisher—they have a series that they publish that’s called Laurel Books, and it’s a series dedicated specifically to books about living with any illness, whether that’s physical or mental. All of their Laurel Books have a medical forward to couch the collection in the scientific realm. Through pure luck, I guess, I have a very good friend who is best friends with Dr. Riah Patterson, who is the director of UNC’s Perinatal Mood Disorders clinic. So I already knew Riah, and she was just the perfect person to have written the medical forward. She’s a mother, too. That felt really, really lucky.
I also really wanted to weave the academic language throughout, because people do sometimes dismiss perinatal mood disorders, as you know women, women overreacting or like, ‘it’s just the baby blues.’ It was important to me to get the scientific language in there to emphasize that these are researched medical problems with a rich body of academic research behind them and that they aren’t women being overly emotional, or women being sad because they’re tired.
For the people you’ve given this to, maybe women that have had pregnancies, or struggled with maternal mental health—what’s the reaction been?
I’ve cried in response to basically everything people have said to me. People have been so generous in their reception of the book, and said such kind things to me, like—‘you really are just giving voice to some of the darker things that I experienced and wasn’t able to say.’
What kinds of resources are out there for people experiencing perinatal mood disorders? What was helpful to you?
The biggest thing I want people to know is that these are super-treatable medical conditions. And if you think that something is wrong, stick to your guns with that. You might get messaging—‘Oh, you’re just tired,’ or, ‘It’s normal to cry after your baby is born.’ But you know if something is wrong. If you can’t advocate for yourself because it’s too debilitating, telling someone that you trust that you need help and asking them to help you get that help, I think, is huge.
I went to a support group through UNC. It’s now defunct, but even if you can’t physically get to a support group, there are a lot of online support groups. And [going to that] for me was huge because I knew I was going to be in a space with other women who weren’t going to judge me. It was also super helpful to see other women who were a little bit farther along in their recovery process. I remember a woman saying that she woke up one day and remembered that when she felt bad it was the worst she’d ever felt, but she couldn’t actually remember how bad it felt to feel that bad, because she was healing. That really stuck with me.
Also, if it works for you—don’t be afraid to take the medicine. Because I was and I think that many people are hesitant to take medicine. I was afraid to get on antidepressants because I was nursing and was afraid I was going to harm the baby. I would have gotten better eventually, but I feel like the medication saved me in the acute moment. I know everyone has different feelings about medication—but use all of the resources available to you.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Bluesky or email sedwards@indyweek.com.