Between Love and Fear of Loss
A Daughter’s Realisation of Her Mother’s Postpartum Depression
I was born in the late 1980s. It was a time when urbanisation was on the rise. People were slowly moving from different parts of the country to the cities in pursuit of the Nepali dream: A social status, a well-earning job, a house in the capital city and an ideal family. Nuclear families were on the rise. Family planning efforts were beginning to take place, education for girl children and gender equality was entering mainstream conversations.
My mom was the first among her 6 siblings. Among them, she had one brother and the rest of them were sisters. Her family had to go through a lot of discrimination for having many daughters. My grandmother would be kept in dark rooms for delivering a girl child devoid of nurture and care she d.
So it was given that despite being educated, having travelled outside Nepal, my mother experienced the conflict of a modern era where women were expected to have many more roles than she could ever handle. She had her ambitions, she had her dreams. But the world around her continued to tell her to sacrifice, to endure, to never question. Love came with strings attached, and duty was always to come before desire.
When I was born, my mother was 26 years of age. She had major complications as medicine and science had not progressed to the level today. Her first child was a son when she was 22 and it wasn’t a complicated delivery. His birth had brought great joy into the family. My father and she had recently moved to Kathmandu after marriage and this was a beginning to the life of her dreams, with the man she loved. Theirs was a love marriage. Both supported each other in building a life together. However, there were challenges mostly that came from the internal and unconscious conflicts of the upbringing she had versus the changing world.
When I, the daughter and the second child came along, something broke inside of her, not quite because the child was female but because she felt herself drowning in a sea of exhaustion, resentment, unnamed emotions.
Wasn’t she supposed to be celebrating the completion of her family? My dad has always been proud of me, happy that now he had a son and a daughter. And that's exactly what Radio Nepal’s family planning commercials hollered : "Mera ta dui chhora ra chhori, khelchan hain aagan bhari." (I have a son and a daughter and they both play joyfully in the yard.)
Her world of truth was otherwise. There was no respite from the exhaustion, the hope and expectation of making every aspiration meet. Depression had sneaked into her perfect world. And when she looked at her daughter, she felt a heaviness she could not name.
"You almost killed me when you were born," she would say. As a child it really did not matter. But as a teenager, I internalised this a lot.
Her words cut, but trust me, it was not laced with malice. Those were the words of someone who had given so much of herself, never to know how to hold anything back, constantly trying to meet everyone’s needs. A woman who had never been taught to rest, to ask for help, to say, "I am not okay."
The Silent Struggle of Postpartum Depression
PPD is a silent thief: it steals moments of joy, replaces love with doubt, and makes exhaustion unbearable. But in societies where a mother's worth is measured by how much she can endure, and where mental health is rarely acknowledged, how does a woman even begin to ask for help?
Nepal in the 1980s was changing. But within homes, the silent battles of women were still going on. My mother and grandmother were among them. I don't know whether she realized that what she was going through had a name - postpartum depression. All I knew as a child was that her love came with shadows. That I had inherited not just her loving, kind and altruistic features, but also her pain.
A child does not understand mental illness. I did not understand the complexities of being born a daughter to a mother with intergenerational trauma of being a woman. A child only knows warmth or coldness, presence or absence. And so, I grew up feeling like something unwanted, something that took up too much space.
The pain of unwantedness does not stay in childhood alone; it lingers and continues to seep into our sense of self, and shapes the way we love and trust. In my case, it became uncontrollable.
As I grew older, the emptiness became unbearable. The fear of abandonment clung to me like a second skin. My emotions were too big, my love too desperate, my pain too sharp. Relationships felt like walking on broken glass, every step uncertain, every moment oscillating between love and fear of loss.
Eventually, I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. There were hospitalizations, moments when the weight of my emotions became too much. And yet, even in those dark moments, a small part of me still yearned for my mother's approval for a love that had always felt just a little out of reach.
Breaking the Patterns
Consciously, I have never blamed my mom. She is no longer walking on this earth and I would give her back my life, if it meant she could have hers. If there is such a thing as a journey of the soul, I hope she is having a beautiful one. But when I think of our bond, there is an unconscious void. She was not the person I felt safe sharing my emotions and needs with. I see that she herself was conditioned to experience love that seemed conditional. A mother was supposed to continue giving and giving, even to the extent that it leaves her empty, depressed and unable to seek help. She did not know how to give me what she never received. And there were times I mirrored her resentment towards me.
And while understanding her pain, mine is not erased.
Longing, wounds, the struggle to feel whole does not change so easily. What it does do, however, is allow me to choose differently: to break the cycle in ways big and small, to remind myself that I am more than the echoes of rejection, that I am worthy of love, no matter how I was made to feel.
This year, I am graduating as a counseling psychologist. As I work with my clients, I see this pain reflected in some of them, many of whom are mothers dealing with postpartum depression, anxiety, and unresolved trauma. I listen to the echoes in their stories of my own. I am using my learnings, from textbooks and my own experiences, to support them through healing.
It is a fact that postpartum depression involves not just the mother herself. It forms an entire constituency of families, communities, nations for generations. This is one mental health crisis that warrants understanding, management, and conversations without feeling personal shame. Silence will nurture devastation, while awareness, support system, and opportunities to heal will help upcoming mothers to make informed choices and raise their children into healthier dwellers of the earth.
Postpartum Depression (PPD) can manifest in many ways, and its symptoms often go beyond just feeling sad. Here are some common signs:
Emotional & Psychological Signs:
Persistent sadness, emptiness, or hopelessness
Severe mood swings or excessive irritability
Feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or panicked
Guilt or shame, often feeling like a bad mother
Lack of interest or connection with the baby
Loss of interest in things once enjoyed
Thoughts of self-harm or harming the baby (in severe cases)
Physical Signs:
Extreme fatigue or exhaustion, even with enough rest
Sleep problems (insomnia or excessive sleeping)
Changes in appetite (overeating or loss of appetite)
Unexplained aches and pains
Behavioral Signs:
Withdrawing from family and friends
Struggling to care for the baby or oneself
Feeling restless or agitated
Difficulty focusing or making decisions
PPD can happen to any mother, regardless of circumstances, and is not a sign of weakness or an ill intent. If you or anyone you know are suffering from postpartum depression or any mental health issues please contact us.
Note: This piece of writing was submitted anonymously to our editorial team.