S6 Ep3: Momfessions and Maria Viner (CEO Mothers for Mothers)

I actually got quite emotional when you said lonely there, which I'm surprised at because I have... gone over my experience and story so much, but it sort of hit me in the stomach.

Because I think if I were to sum up my whole experience, it was loneliness.

Obviously, it wasn't just loneliness, but it was that deep sense of I'm the only mother who's experiencing this.

Nobody else can relate to me.

Nobody else is going through this.

And because of that, that sort of, you know, you spoke there about suicide ideation.

It drove this kind of hopelessness, kind of, well, if there's no one else like me, then there mustn't be a solution to this.

And I think it's a really key point that I think a lot of mums will relate to, even if you're not at that stage of having those thoughts, because early motherhood is so lonely, whatever your journey is, and it can feel like there's nobody else going through what you're going through.

And I think that is the power of when you have support that's peer led as opposed to clinically led, because For me, and I don't know if you relate, when I had access to clinical support, it didn't help me.

I didn't have any access to peer support or other mothers who were like, hey, I actually felt that too.

I'm feeling like that.

And for me, that would have made the full difference because it was only really until I got into this career and started talking about this where I learned that other mothers had actually felt it too.

So for you, is that what the power of the peer support was, is knowing, yeah, there might not be another mother who's in this exact situation, but they have the same feelings as me?

For sure.

I think that's true.

I think there's something else as well for me.

And I don't know if this resonates with you, but I, before I went to Mothers for Mothers and before I met those other amazing, incredibly brave women, I carried a huge amount of guilt that it was only me who was this rubbish mother, who felt like this, who couldn't do this properly, who was a complete failure.

And that everybody else was out there doing it beautifully and wonderfully and making a success of it and being happy and their babies were happy and everything was, you know, they're having this amazing life.

and I had just a huge amount of guilt because I was the problem.

It wasn't my husband.

It wasn't my son.

It was me.

I was the problem.

And when I went to Mothers for Mothers and learned, actually, I'm not the problem, other people experience this.

This is actually an illness.