Sophie Heawood explains the importance of sharing stories [Hermione Hodgon]

MOTHERS will gather in Camden Town tonight (Thursday) to tell their unfiltered stories of what they have been through in an event aimed at showing that nobody should feel alone.

A panel of speakers at the Camden Collective building in Buck Street includes writer Sophie Heawood, who said the value in sharing experiences should not be underestimated.

She told the New Journal: “I think a lot of how women socialise is through storytelling, and we don’t credit it as such because it gets disregarded as gossip or chatter or mum’s natter.

“If you look at the wider culture with what’s going on with Russell Brand, it’s those whisper networks of women who protect each other. With motherhood, stories of what childbirth is really like, what your husband’s really going to do, it’s the women’s whisper networks that protects us.

“There are women who say to me, ‘oh I could never write a book’ and then they tell me this incredible story that they explained so beautifully. Storytelling is how we pass on our knowledge to one another.”

Ms Heawood, who lives in Kentish Town, became a mother unexpectedly a week after she was told by doctors that she was infertile and stopped using contraception.

Her daughter is now 12 years old. “I had hoped to have kids one day, so I went with it. I took it as a gift,” she said. “I was in a very casual relationship, so that was hard. We were not on the same page. So I became a single mum.

“My experience of motherhood has been that you have to be everything. You have to be good cop. You have to be bad cop. You have to be the safe place. Motherhood is definitely being strong. But also I think people have forgotten how much fun it is.”

Sally Scott and, below, Jessie Hunt

Sally Scott is the co-organiser of the event, which is called Mum Secrets: Things I Need To Admit. An actor who lives in Hampstead, her three-year-old was born during the chaos of Covid.

She said in some ways it was a “blessing” because there was no pressure to be doing anything. But it was also “pretty isolating”.

She said: “I felt that the more you get to talk to other mums the more you realise you’re not going through things on your own. I had a miscarriage at the start of the year, it turns out at least half of the mums I know had a miscarriage.

“I’m in my 40s. One in two pregnancies in women over 40 end in miscarriage. Yet when it happens to you, you think it’s just happening to me and no one has been through this. As soon as you say something you find that people say ‘oh it happened to me as well’. It just makes you feel less alone when people say ‘yeah me too’.”

Jessie Hunt, an advocate at charity Action on Postpartum, another panelist, said: “I wish someone had told me and the people around me (family and friends) about the symptoms of postpartum psychosis and what to do.

“It’s a severe but treatable mental illness that begins in the days and weeks after giving birth. I experienced it 10 years ago, eight days after my baby was born. It came on quickly ‘out of the blue’, and I had no previous experience of mental illness. “No one around me had heard of this life-threatening illness before.”

Midwife, artist and activist Laura Godfrey-Isaacs and Charlotte Stevens from Pregnant Then Screwed will also speak on the panel.

Mum Secrets: Things I Need To Admit is supported by Camden Inspire.

You can get a free ticket at: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mum-secrets-things-i-need-to-admit-tickets-689153435477