Becoming a ghost: A memoir on motherhood

For many women, pregnancy means losing their identity to the life growing inside of them. Victoria Richards reflects on how writing let her escape from midnight feeds and nappies

This is loss of self can be more damaging than any injury (Getty/iStock)

They’re all around us: the ghosts of women. Thronging in coffee shops; exhausted, caffeine-desperate. Sobbing silently as they push buggies across the street. Sitting on a park bench, snatching a moment of near-sleep, heads tilted upwards like they’ve found God in the empty sky. Smiling, sighing, swaying, rocking. Repeat.

They are the mothers. The lost ones. Hybrid, half-beings who exist in the witching hour between midnight and three. While the world slumbers, they are its rulers. Their power vanishes when daylight begins.

Once women split in two, they become gently rounded whispers of milk and maternity. Removed from work, from responsibility, from heavy lifting; they’re not supposed to be “seen”, not really. They are elysian, beatified. Womanhood as they knew it, entirely erased – and so with it all sense of sexuality, individualism and power.