Shattered Motherhood: Surviving the Guilt of a Child’s Suicide
For a mother, the death of a child under any circumstances is unbearable. When the child is severed from the mother’s life by his or her own hand, the cleaving is particularly brutal. It is a bereavement with no equivalence in human experience.
If you are a mother today, you are mothering in patriarchy. What that means, and how it might impact a mother grieving the loss of her child to suicide, is a subject Donna Johnson explores in this profound book. Johnson, in her counselling role in a police service, worked closely with mothers who lost a child to suicide, supporting them through those first traumatic days, weeks and months as the impact of suicide reverberated throughout their lives.
What struck her was the absence of specific supports for mothers and the prevalence of a type of paralysis in the mothers. The burden of overwhelming guilt, shame and a huge sense of failure – emotions not shared by the fathers of the children – impeded the possibility of mothers recovering from their child’s suicide. In Shattered Motherhood, Donna Johnson argues for specific supports for mothers in these circumstances; supports that meet their unique needs, recognise the depth of their suffering and provide them with proper care. Through a feminist lens, she considers the institutions of marriage, motherhood and the family as well as the suffering of mothers who have lost a child to suicide.
Johnson articulates her belief in the power of women coming together to name their own experiences, feel their own pain and search for their own solutions.
FEBRUARY 2025 | ISBN 9781922964144 | Paperback | 180 pages | 135 x 180 mm
THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION
For a mother, the death of a child under any circumstances is unbearable. When the child is severed from the mother’s life by his or her own hand, the cleaving is particularly brutal. It is a bereavement with no equivalence in human experience.
If you are a mother today, you are mothering in patriarchy. What that means, and how it might impact a mother grieving the loss of her child to suicide, is a subject Donna Johnson explores in this profound book. Johnson, in her counselling role in a police service, worked closely with mothers who lost a child to suicide, supporting them through those first traumatic days, weeks and months as the impact of suicide reverberated throughout their lives.
What struck her was the absence of specific supports for mothers and the prevalence of a type of paralysis in the mothers. The burden of overwhelming guilt, shame and a huge sense of failure – emotions not shared by the fathers of the children – impeded the possibility of mothers recovering from their child’s suicide. In Shattered Motherhood, Donna Johnson argues for specific supports for mothers in these circumstances; supports that meet their unique needs, recognise the depth of their suffering and provide them with proper care. Through a feminist lens, she considers the institutions of marriage, motherhood and the family as well as the suffering of mothers who have lost a child to suicide.
Johnson articulates her belief in the power of women coming together to name their own experiences, feel their own pain and search for their own solutions.
FEBRUARY 2025 | ISBN 9781922964144 | Paperback | 180 pages | 135 x 180 mm
THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION
For a mother, the death of a child under any circumstances is unbearable. When the child is severed from the mother’s life by his or her own hand, the cleaving is particularly brutal. It is a bereavement with no equivalence in human experience.
If you are a mother today, you are mothering in patriarchy. What that means, and how it might impact a mother grieving the loss of her child to suicide, is a subject Donna Johnson explores in this profound book. Johnson, in her counselling role in a police service, worked closely with mothers who lost a child to suicide, supporting them through those first traumatic days, weeks and months as the impact of suicide reverberated throughout their lives.
What struck her was the absence of specific supports for mothers and the prevalence of a type of paralysis in the mothers. The burden of overwhelming guilt, shame and a huge sense of failure – emotions not shared by the fathers of the children – impeded the possibility of mothers recovering from their child’s suicide. In Shattered Motherhood, Donna Johnson argues for specific supports for mothers in these circumstances; supports that meet their unique needs, recognise the depth of their suffering and provide them with proper care. Through a feminist lens, she considers the institutions of marriage, motherhood and the family as well as the suffering of mothers who have lost a child to suicide.
Johnson articulates her belief in the power of women coming together to name their own experiences, feel their own pain and search for their own solutions.
FEBRUARY 2025 | ISBN 9781922964144 | Paperback | 180 pages | 135 x 180 mm
THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION
Endorsements
This book breaks a very deep silence about mothers whose children have committed suicide. Donna Johnson’s voice is a very ‘maternal’ one: intimate, soft, present, wise, and compassionate. She spent many years working with battered women before she stumbled upon and chose to serve this barely visible group of bereaved mothers. They could not see themselves, or each other, their loss and their guilt were overwhelming. Johnson brought a small group of mothers who’d suffered the same kind of loss together, and they understood each other’s pain. In doing so, her work became both politically and psychologically radical.
— Phyllis Chesler, author of 20 books, among them Women and Madness and Mothers on Trial, and co-editor/contributor to 60 other books
It’s not before time that this much-needed book has arrived. Donna Johnson writes with great compassion about the pain, confusion and guilt experienced by women who have lost a child through suicide. At the same time, she encourages mothers to develop a new consciousness and find the courage to reject the woman-blaming that inevitably comes. Finding such courage is the first step in the journey toward healing.
— Betty McLellan, Psychotherapist and author of Beyond Psychoppression: A Feminist Alternative Therapy and Truth Abandoned: How Can Democracy Survive?
In this compassionate, beautifully written book, Donna Johnson provides a space for mothers who lost a child through suicide to be heard and have their bottomless grief and guilt understood. This transformative act of turning women’s experiences of shattering pain into the power of story offers a life-affirming gift to both these mothers and the readers.
— Marjorie Anderson, creative writing teacher and co-editor of Dropped Threads with Carol Shields
Donna Johnson’s book, Shattered Motherhood, takes us to a dark place no mother wants to enter or even contemplate: the suicide of one’s child. With her extensive experience leading women’s groups, she gently brings us in to what she calls “holy space” with compassion, deep respect for women’s grieving, and a sharp feminist analysis of mothering, guilt and atonement. This important book offers solace for mothers, guidance for those supporting women in crisis, and hope for women’s liberation, grounded in women talking, alone and together.
— Elizabeth Sheehy, Professor Emerita of Law, University of Ottawa
As a mother who had her world shattered following the loss of my son to suicide, I highly recommend this wise and wonderful book. Beyond brimming with empathy and understanding, it opened my eyes to how societal expectations of mothers added to my suffering. Mothers drowning in guilt and despair will find a lifeline in this book.
—K. Johnson
Shattered Motherhood is an eye-opener onto the silenced voices of mothers who lost a child to suicide and are socially condemned as the sole culprits by the power politics of motherhood. Johnson overturns the patriarchal construct that coerces women to live haunted by guilt, torture and atonement while men remain blameless, thus extending the eternal narrative of grievous harms done to women in the name of societal norms.
— Omnia Amin, author, translator and Professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University in Dubai, UAE
Donna’s searing prose plumbs the depths of unfathomable loss, revealing the raw reality of a mother losing a child to suicide. With exquisite sensitivity, she captures the bond among women who share grief, guilt, shame, solace, pain, as well as laughter and comradery in their healing journey. Donna unearths the layers of suffering while deftly weaving a narrative that exposes society’s role in marginalizing these mothers. This book is an elegy of love, a clarion call for a powerful change, demanding recognition and atonement for the patriarchal demonizing and unjust blame placed upon mothers who have endured the ultimate loss.
— Gina Wong, psychologist and professor of perinatal mental health. Recipient of the 2024 Canadian Psychological Association Award for Community Service, Human Rights and Social Justice in Psychology
I love this book so much. Whether by stillbirth, illness or suicide, the loss of a child cuts to the core of mothering like no other loss. In a world where mother-blaming is the norm, many of us internalise this blame and take on the mantle of guilt. I too know that ‘maternal guilt is a patriarchal contrivance’ but I have seldom seen it explained so well, and the antidote laid out for all to see. For many years I have said to mothers, ‘let go of the guilt, it does not serve you’. Donna Johnson says this in her book in so many profound, loving, angry ways which deeply moved me. An exceptionally beautiful must-read for all women, but especially for those of us who mother.
—Janet Fraser, author of Born Still: A Memoir of Grief
In Shattered Motherhood Donna Johnson offers a powerful and moving tribute to the suffering of mothers whose children have died by suicide. What’s more she provides the essential key to their healing: a community of mothers who have suffered the same loss. Here is a compassionate and compelling roadmap through and beyond mother shame, guilt and despair. Johnson’s brilliant and compassionate book centres mothers’ unique stories in such a way as to restore their suffering to a new wholeness. A profoundly moving and essential book.
— Petra Bueskens, author of Modern Motherhood and Women’s Dual Selves
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
1. The First Year After the Suicide:You just want to put yourself to sleep for a few months and maybe you’ll get through it
2. Five Years Later: We’re expected to be better by now
3. How Partner Abuse Affects the Loss: If I had left earlier, maybe my child would be here today
4. Maternal Guilt: What kind of mother am I that this could happen to my child?
5. The Power of Women Talking 119: But I was a good mother
6. Lessons from a Police Crisis Unit: Never separate a mother from her child
7. Atonement: A Feminist Reversal
Bibliography
Index