Gillian's poem: Unraveling of the Mind

Gillian experienced postpartum psychosis in 2014 after the birth of her third daughter was born. She is a children’s author and illustrator and has shared the following poem about postpartum psychosis with us.

Unraveling Of The Mind

Wandering through the mist of hazy memories
Unutterable thoughts whisper gently on the breeze

Ideas worries concerns all cloaked with invisibility
Ensuring that no one else is able to see

The danger walking along a tightrope is masked
Sustaining of balance completing the tasks

No safety net is ready to catch
Heaven forbid should attention lapse

Not for an audience for no one’s aware
To make it to safety does anyone care

Occasionally thoughts will lose their way
Having wandered too far drifting astray

Owing a debt to human Infallibility
Drifting from that place they call reality

So it has been historically defined
In a crude attempt to constrain the mind

Alteration of mood that replaces confidence
And certainty of unique significance

By fear that knew no bounds no safety no friend
Limitless with no light signaling the end

Of a tunnel twisting turning bend also those rules
But wait essential truth separates us from fools

Does it lay cast off dejected and misunderstood
Or terrified like being lost alone in a wood

Or moulded into a new unrecognisable form
By the shreds of confusion most recently torn

A story that may not be quite so appealing
If it were not for the promise of restoration and healing

A shattered vase disturbs and slumbers are woken
Kind hands collect the pieces so broken

Like the mending of wings lends flight to caged birds
Repair takes place ever patient through words