Things That Helped: On Postpartum Depression

by Jessica Friedmann Narrated by Shiromi Arserio

Overview

Things That Helped is a memoir in essays, detailing the Australian writer Jessica Friedmann's recovery from postpartum depression. In each essay she focuses on a separate totemic object-from pho to red lips to the musician Anohni-to tell a story that is both deeply personal and culturally resonant. Drawing on critical theory, popular culture, and her own experience, Friedmann's wide-ranging essays touch on class, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as motherhood, creativity, and mental illness. Occasionally confrontational, but always powerfully moving and beautifully observed, Things That Helped charts her return into the world: a slow and complex process of reassembling what depression fractured, and sometimes broke.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

11/27/2017
Australian writer Friedmann makes her debut with this uneven collection of essays cobbled together under the theme of postpartum depression, though few of them really explore this issue. Many of the selections instead dwell on Friedmann’s experiences in the years before her son’s birth or hold forth on social justice and psychological theory, only barely referencing her child or her illness, giving the impression less of an unconventional approach to memoir than of difficulty finding enough essays to fill a book. The strongest pieces, however, are also those that directly deal with motherhood and depression. “Maribyrnong” describes in powerful sensory detail the betrayals of the body and mind that postpartum depression can bring. “Red Lips,” the collection’s standout, and “Center Stage, Five Dances, and Other Dance On-Screen” lyrically narrate how a makeup ritual and bingeing on dance movies, respectively, helped Friedmann regain ownership of her body after a traumatic Caesarean section and the ensuing physical and mental pain. By comparison, her essays on artistic struggles, grief, white privilege, violence against women, and marital difficulties lack insight and urgency. Too often, Friedmann misses an opportunity to reveal the evolution of her love for her son—and herself. (Apr.)

From the Publisher

Praise for Things That Helped

"A beautifully lyrical and intellectually complex series of essays . . . Jessica Friedmann is able to celebrate and interrogate the vivid, grotesque, and sublime tissues of the female body." —Erin Bartnett, Electric Literature

"A necessary and compelling collection of essays . . . In reading Friedmann, one thing is clear: she is an extraordinary thinker, a precise and complex writer, a tireless seeker of le mot juste. . . Watching a keen mind wrestle is one of the pleasures of reading nonfiction, and this book is a prime example . . . Despite the horror she narrates, her prose rarely strays from a calm, thoughtful tone. And this is the genius of Things That Helped: it’s bringing light to an aspect of women’s lives that publishing has thus far turned away from, and it’s doing so with such beauty, with such precision and skill, that these struggles can no longer be ignored." —Katharine Coldiron, Proximity

"Exquisitely written . . . breathtaking . . . Wise, thoughtful, and provocative, Things That Helped raises important issues and asks important questions about white privilege, unequal access to medical care, cultural memory, and how best to navigate complex relationships with peers, family, employers, and acquaintances. The things that helped Friedmann may not help everyone suffering from postpartum depression, but as a testament to recovery, the text is sure to inspire, uplift, and educate." —Eleanor J. Bader, Rewire.News

"[Friedmann] never succumbs to sentimentality in these pages even when it's obvious how much she loves (or has learned to love) her son and how fortunate she feels for all that she has. Well-rendered essays that make readers think and feel deeply." —Kirkus

"By carefully and deliberately describing the pain, dissociation, discomfort, alienation, and other forms of havoc she experienced after birthing her son, Friedmann legitimates and recognizes the physical, psychological, and political features of postpartum depression." —Booklist

"[Friedmann] writes with brutal originality." —Terri Apter, The Times Literary Supplement

"To read these essays is to observe a keen intelligence at work both coolly analyzing the social forces and gender expectations that inform our understanding of this condition, while grappling with powerful feelings that bewilder and appall [Friedmann]." —Fiona Capp, Sydney Morning Herald

"[A] deeply affective debut . . . Friedmann’s self-awareness is complemented by a grounding in psychoanalysis, but she strikes a good balance between memoir and theory and never lets the latter weigh down her essays . . . Her style of politicised personal writing is refreshing, and this book is further proof that these cultural institutions are vital in unearthing new, intellectually stimulating voices." —Emily Laidlaw, Weekend Australian

"An impressive book, lyrical and erudite even as some of the topics Friedmann broaches are disturbing . . . She effortlessly mixes the personal and the political in this memoir. Critical theory is blended into the book, but remains accessible and not intrusive. The intersection between selfhood, motherhood and womanhood are all written about with visceral candor, and she uses imagery to a startling effect." —Thuy On, The Big Issue

"While I’d recommend this book to almost anyone, I’d particularly recommend it to those who, like me, jumped on the Solnit train and are looking for some more discerning and beautifully executed feminist criticism to get excited about—not that there’s any shortage. It’s incredible to read Friedmann engaging with so many voices without having them, even for a minute, drown out her own." —Grace McCarter, Hot Chicks with Big Brains

"A brutally insightful and often heartbreaking study of the complexities of womanhood. Her transportive writing will break you open and fill you anew." —Anna Spargo-Ryan, author of The Paper House

"Jessica Friedmann has left safety behind and walked into something vast—a self,a world,on the verge of unravelling yet exhilarating and full of love. This book runs deep and wide. It’s alive with arresting images, with thoughts too big,sometimes too dangerous,to pin down." —Maria Tumarkin

Kirkus Reviews

2018-02-06
A writer with a history of depression and anxiety plunges deeper into the abyss following the birth of her son.This memoir, structured as a series of interlinked essays, begins with Friedmann at a river, intending, at least in her mind, to drown herself; it ends with her return to a river, her son a little older, her mind a little clearer, and her attitude sunnier. "With the aid of medication and self-care, I was learning to forge new neural pathways," she writes. The rest of the book is devoted to other things that helped, including a strong, supportive marriage with a loving husband; the music of Antony and the Johnsons and then Anohni, the woman whom Antony has become; the feminist criticism of Siri Hustvedt and others; the inspiration Friedmann received from dance and the movies she watched repeatedly; and the recognition that she was not alone and that what she was experiencing had been experienced and survived by others, many of whom lacked the resources she enjoyed. When she is thinking more clearly, the author offers acute analysis, blurring distinctions that are too common and simple: "Illness and health, movement and inertia; they are not dialectically opposed, but constantly approaching and retreating from one another, overlaying each other, coexisting." Yet in the depths of her depression, the author felt that she had lost her grip on the lifeline of language, that motherhood has subsumed her, and that she would be incapable of resuming her roles as a writer and editor or balancing her own professional ambitions against her husband's. She never succumbs to sentimentality in these pages even when it's obvious how much she loves (or has learned to love) her son and how fortunate she feels for all that she has.Well-rendered essays that make readers think and feel deeply.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170157044
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	04/10/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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