All My Worldly Joy

A powerful memoir of how a traumatic journey to motherhood helped one woman revisit the myriad mental-health assessments she'd endured since childhood, and led her to an autism diagnosis which helped her find the support and recognition she'd needed all along.

Laura Richmond had no idea that childbirth could result in post-traumatic stress until she experienced it for herself. Following a traumatic labour and the subsequent admission to a psychiatric mother and baby unit together with her six-week-old son, she was compelled to write the book that she'd needed to read in the midst of this experience.

But as Laura wrote her story she realised that there was another, larger narrative. Having been funnelled into mental health services for almost twenty years, she had tried every medication going and everyone had different views about what her problem was. Eventually she came to the conclusion that sometimes no one - however qualified they are or however deeply they care - really knows what to say or do. The services we have are not always fit for purpose.

Laura retraces her steps through all of this - teenage years with a bipolar diagnosis, the decision to have a child after being diagnosed with a lifelong mental illness, the concept of 'personality disorder' and what it means; the ways in which trauma shapes us and directs us, and how we learn to trust ourselves as parents and as people.

All My Worldly Joy is a story of self-discovery, of purpose, and of profound love. It is a story of how one woman's life has been transformed, and of the thousand tiny joys her son brings her every day.