This is, “The Stories We Tell,” a weekly series of true accounts in all things motherhood. These 100% vulnerable, raw and ferociously honest tales are from the LA-based storytelling event, Mothers Unleashed. This week, we’re highlighting a story that hasn’t been shared before. This is Gemma’s origin story, if you will, about why she desires to help other women. Gemma is mom to Brookes and the co-founder of Mothers Unleashed.

My new trajectory in life, since becoming a mother, is to aid and enable other women (mothers and aspiring mothers) to tell their stories, and for us as a community to start having real conversations about motherhood. I am two subjects away from finishing my degree, which will qualify me as a therapist, and originally, my desire was to work with teenagers and young people. I have worked with this demographic in a rather unusual way… touring high schools across Australia with an astoundingly impactful play about sexual assault, friendship, race and family life. This age group’s eagerness to engage and push back fuelled a fire in me to become qualified in the field of mental health so I could continue my work with them.

But, as I experienced firsthand the devastation that can come to us on our journey to motherhood, my initial idea of what my work as a therapist was to look like shifted. I lost my first baby. I did not miscarry. Rather, I had to terminate the pregnancy at 12 weeks gestation due to a fatal chromosomal abnormality. Devastation followed, and in the fallout that saw my mental health decline rapidly, I struggled to find help. The hospital supplied me with several sheets of numbers to call, but most were disconnected, and the others were for women trying to decide whether or not to have an abortion. I turned to Dr. Google for assistance, and in the fog of posttraumatic stress, I found nothing except for highly priced therapists whose websites were confusing. My husband didn’t know how to help me. My family was on the other side of the world. My co-workers didn’t know what I had gone through, and I pretended nothing was wrong. I suffered in silence. And I could not find anyone to talk to.

Now, I knew I wasn’t the only woman to experience this type of loss. I was with my best friend when she miscarried in the bathroom of a cafe. My sister-in-law had just experienced a miscarriage. Two close friends had to have D&C’s because their baby’s heartbeats stopped in utero at eight and ten weeks, respectively. At least three friends of mine had experienced a blighted ovum. My own mother miscarried in between my younger brother and me, and her sister, with three children already, had to terminate a pregnancy with twins at 9 weeks gestation. My cousin had to deliver her first baby at twenty-one weeks, and he died in her arms. Another friend had to deliver her little girl, stillborn, at five months gestation. And so, so, so many more devastating stories of pregnancy loss. So why, oh WHY, if it’s so common, why do we not talk about it?! And why is it so damn hard to find support?

It truly baffles me.

I am one of the lucky ones, however. I went on to have a successful pregnancy, and healthy baby. I count my blessings every day. And since becoming a mom, the issues that have arisen baffle me further. If women have been going through this life transition since the beginning of time, why do we only find out about the challenges that arise at this time of our lives when we are deep, deep in the belly of the beast???

For example, in my early days of motherhood, in the midst of the mental fog that accompanies the sleep deprivation and stress of having a new baby, I found that I needed to have the mental capacity to plan ahead in order to communicate my needs and ask for a slice of time to do whatever it was that I needed to get done for myself (ie: take a shower). I mentioned this to my husband a few times and he, in an effort to support me, said "It’s fine babe, if you need to do something, just ask." I didn't say this at the time, my head was too deep under water, but I wasn't able to even think to "ask." And so, for me, even the simplest of self-care tasks were insurmountable.

I found my life was completely and utterly turned on its head. In my past life, I could shower whenever I liked, leave the house by myself, eat alone, poo alone, walk around my living room alone, and do all the things ALONE that I now found were mandatory activities for two. My identity had become about this baby. I suffered social angst in the rare times I did venture out into the world alone. I was earning no money of my own, which had begun eroding my self worth. I was beyond exhausted. I felt I had nothing worthy to give to the world, except of course, my gorgeous boy. But the cost I was paying was myself.

I had taken it upon myself to do the lion’s share of the caregiving, and I found my health suffering badly. I developed an underactive thyroid in the midst of sleep deprivation and stress, and I wondered, is it like this for every primary caregiver? I know my female friends who have become mothers have felt this way. And I have no doubt that the generations of mothers who’ve come before me have felt these feelings and have suffered silently so that this generation here and now doesn't know how to avoid falling into the same pitfalls. And I wonder, are these roles learned? Or are they inbuilt into our DNA? The Akashic records of parental existence, if you will? My own mother has, time and again, been astounded when she hears me voice the same feelings she felt while raising me. And I can’t even imagine her mother’s generation – when women just got on with it and had no outlet to speak about the difficulties of childrearing. My grandmother died six months ago, and I cried imagining how difficult it must’ve been for her, raising two kids, with a mentally ill husband. How did she do it?

Suffice to say, I want to help. I want to give women a platform to voice their experiences. I want to hear us speak. To tell our stories. To get this shit off of our incredibly strong and ample chests and to be open about what motherhood really entails… from the journey it takes to get here, to the part where we are crying into our cereal at dinnertime because it’s the only meal we’ve been able to feed ourselves all day!! The gig of motherhood is an all-consuming, life-shaking, earth-shattering period of life... and as new (and old) parents, we should start sharing our experiences honestly, so that our babies have the full briefing when they finally step into our shoes.