Sad Mum Lady is a collection of essays by a woman who loves her kids and hates motherhood. Pregnancy dragged Ashe kicking and screaming into parenthood, and when she arrived it hit her in the face with a brick. Repeatedly. The stories take place during her own excruciating birth as a mother. Her claw marks can be traced from hospital corridors to play centres and a lingerie shop by the sea. This book is motherhood "real-talk" meets bitey anecdotes with a touch of the surreal. It's for the mum wrestling her screaming toddler out of the cafe, her cheek red from having just been slapped with a tiny sticky hand. It's for the partners pushing the pram on a Saturday morning, mystified as to why they just received a hissing death threat in response to their suggestion that the baby needed feeding. It's for smart funny mothers and people who like them.
During Ashe's first pregnancy she started a blog called Sad Pregnant Lady. According to the internet, sadness and pregnancy meant postnatal depression. The internet kept telling her she was something that needed to be fixed. The blog was Ashe's attempt to reclaim sadness as an appropriate human response to pregnancy. Her life as she knew it was about to change forever, her body and mind were no longer her own and the climate crisis was potentially going to engulf her child's future in flames. It connected with a lot of people. Most of them were mothers who were struggling too. After Ashe became a mother, she found that she was still quite sad, and this book is her exploring and sharing that experience. Writing this book helped Ashe a lot and it is her hope that its humour and raw honesty will help others too.
