Shattered Motherhood

For a mother, the death of a child under any circumstances is unbearable. When the child is severed from the mother’s life by his or her own hand, the cleaving is particularly brutal. It is a bereavement with no equivalence in human experience. If you are a mother today, you are mothering in patriarchy. What that means, and how it might impact a mother grieving the loss of her child to suicide, is a subject Donna Johnson explores in this profound book. Johnson, in her counselling role in a police service, worked closely with mothers who lost a child to suicide, supporting them through those first traumatic days, weeks and months as the impact of suicide reverberated throughout their lives. What struck her was the absence of specific supports for mothers and the prevalence of a type of paralysis in the mothers. The burden of overwhelming guilt, shame and a huge sense of failure – emotions not shared by the fathers of the children – impeded the possibility of mothers recovering from their child’s suicide. In Shattered Motherhood, Donna Johnson argues for specific supports for mothers in these circumstances; supports that meet their unique needs, recognise the depth of their suffering and provide them with proper care. Through a feminist lens, she considers the institutions of marriage, motherhood and the family as well as the suffering of mothers who have lost a child to suicide. Johnson articulates her belief in the power of women coming together to name their own experiences, feel their own pain and search for their own solutions.