Thanks to Canada Council, The Writers’ Union of Canada and Simon & Schuster Canada, Samantha M. Bailey, author of the #1 national bestseller Woman on the Edge, will be visiting Vaughan Public Libraries’ Adult Book Club on May 20, 2021. I wanted to invite Samantha for two reasons: first, she’s originally from Thornhill and used to frequent the Bathurst Clark Resource Library (had I met her already?!); second, while many would agree that her bestselling title is most successful in the gripping pace, nonetheless it promotes mental health awareness in a way, just in time for the Mental Health Awareness Week in May.
Thanks to I’d save most of the conversation about this intriguing psychological thriller and Samantha’s creative process for the event night. But if you can’t wait, take a quick peek at our Vaughan Reads video :)! Don’t forget to register on Eventbrite and enjoy an evening with Samantha on May 20!
Here, I’d like to talk more about mental health. Although Samantha’s writing emphasized more on creating a suspenseful page turner than exploring the matter of mental health, postpartum depression was one of the sources that had inspired her work. Her depiction of the protagonist Nicole Markham’s postpartum depression symptoms is absorbing. I’m pretty sure it resonates with many mothers. I myself had experienced a long period of postpartum blue after I had my first child. Without any social support (no parents, no friends nearby, only a husband as inexperienced as I was), brand-new motherhood had struck me with far more anxiety than joy. Even now, I can still vividly recall how strange my feeling was when I first saw my son’s wrinkly, bruised face when he had finally been suctioned and forcepped out of me after thirty-six hours of induction and labour – my heart raced with panic and wondered if I could have returned him like returning a wrong-sized T-shirt, and that feeling had caused guilt in me in every single second of the next six weeks. I still remember I would wake up every twenty minutes at night, gasping, worrying that my son’s little life would go cold before I could enjoy it. I would constantly get up to check on his breathing, never mind he was always hungry and woke me up every one or two hours to be fed, while my body was still experiencing severe pain from the traumatic delivery. Anxiety prevailed. Depression followed. The beginning of my motherhood was ever rough! Fortunately, the chemicals in my brain didn’t act up, and my symptoms gradually dispersed as my son became more playful about six weeks later.