What the Therapist Said

Amanda Linsmeier

i unloaded the dishwasher that morning

and then i went to therapy and unloaded

on this new doctor

and she said, perhaps, maybe, possibly

my post-partum depression was

because

i just missed having attention

because all the babies i had lost apparently hadn’t given me enough

unwanted side-show-status-attention

i wondered if it would be rude

to leave early

they probably didn’t care as long as i paid the fee

and on the way home i thought about

that woman who drowned her five beautiful children

and my heart was frightened

wondering if someone had said that to her

Photo Credit: rippchenmitkraut66 Flickr via Compfight cc

Written by 

Amanda Linsmeier is the author of Ditch Flowers and Beach Glass & Other Broken Things. Her writing has been featured in Portage Magazine, Literary Mama, and Brain, Child Magazine. Besides writing Women’s Fiction, she loves reading and writing fables, fairy tales, and fantasy, and sometimes she pretends her Hogwarts letter is still coming. When she’s not writing, she works part-time at her local library and brings home more books than she has time to read. Amanda lives in the countryside, surrounded by trees, with her family, two dogs, and two half-wild cats. For her, writing is the best kind of magic, and her work is heavily influenced by mysterious women, nature, and beautiful images and fueled with lots of iced coffee and background music. She’s the kind of monster who dog-ears book pages, and she has read her favorite book, Beauty by Robin McKinley, probably a hundred times. She loves pizza, tattoos, shopping, and pretty much anything French.

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2 thoughts on “What the Therapist Said”

  1. Idiot therapist doesn’t know about biological basis of postpartum depression. Unfortunately those psychodynamically trained (as was I) lack that knowledge.

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