Composing Myself: A Journey through Postpartum Depression Book

In the tradition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic The Yellow Wall-Paper and Emily Holmes Coleman's novel The Shutter of Snow, Fiona Shaw's Composing Myself describes her contemporary experience with postpartum depression, a condition that, according to Harvard Medical School's Mental Health Newsletter, affects 10 to 20 percent of all new mothers. Shaw's story is no less harrowing than the 19th-century accounts of treatment, which most notably included the strict imprisonment called the "bed-rest cure." Shaw's confinements, like those of the protagonist in Gilman's story, were both physical and psychological. The act of writing this book helped Shaw to survive hospitalization, drugs, electric shock therapy, anorexia, and a poignant yearlong struggle to regain her former life and reconcile buried memories from her childhood.Read More