All My Worldly Joy : A Memoir of Motherhood and Mental Health – 9781806770137

An intimate and compelling memoir of how a traumatic journey into motherhood led one woman to revisit the myriad mental-health assessments she had received growing up, until she discovered that she’d been autistic all along. Laura Richmond had no idea that childbirth could result in post-traumatic stress until she experienced it for herself. After a harrowing labour, she was admitted to a psychiatric mother and baby unit together with her six-week-old son. Having been funnelled into mental health services almost twenty years earlier, Laura had tried every medication going and everyone had different views on what her problem was. She’d found that sometimes no one – however qualified they are or however deeply they care – really knows what to say or how to help. She was increasingly desperate, until the birth of her son sparked a sequence of events that would change everything. Laura retraces her steps through all of this. In doing so, she reflects on the tensions and absurdities within modern mental health care, the ways in which trauma shapes us and directs us, and how we can learn to trust ourselves as parents and as people. All My Worldly Joy is a story of self-discovery and profound love. It is a story of how one woman’s life has been transformed, and of the thousand tiny joys her son brings every day.