The film, rooted in an unconventional depiction of early motherhood, is artistically and performatively compelling in every way. Jennifer Lawrence, in my opinion, gives one of her best performances of all time. It achieves such raw intensity by pulling from a sensitive and very real struggle, capitalizing on the emotional weight and complexities of postpartum mental illness. \u201cDie My Love\u201d is a brave disruption to the cliche sit-com style depiction of life after birth that mainstream Hollywood leans towards. But neither of these two narratives, one being pure joy and the other being pure despair, value truth and awareness over entertainment. \u201cDie My Love\u201d <\/em>portrays motherhood in a way that creates more fear than representation.For most people, the postpartum experience is far less hopeless and extreme. This is something I didn’t really understand until I talked to someone who actually lived it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tamara Frankfort Odinec, my mother, experienced postpartum depression after having her first child. Throughout my childhood she mentioned it once or twice, with the conversation scratching the surface of her experience and usually cut short by an \u201cI\u2019m sorry you had to go through that,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m glad you’re better now.\u201d As her daughter, I understand that my lack of knowledge on the topic could have been a result of her not wanting to burden me. But in a family as open, unhinged and fairly unconventional as ours, the lack of discussion on this topic felt unnatural. Conversations about self confidence, plastic surgery, politics, divorce, therapy and more are not out of the ordinary for us. We routinely dive fearlessly into things most families would stray from to avoid discomfort. Because of this, I assumed that in our family, nothing was quietly off limits and little was left unsaid; this, of course, was disproved when I reflected on the fact I knew nothing about postpartum depression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was ashamed that most of my knowledge came from the two Hollywood extremes, allowing me to subconsciously accept the fact that early motherhood was one of two things: perfection or disaster. Yet when I finally sought real insight, my mom opened up immediately. \u201cThere\u2019s not really anything like postpartum,\u201d she said without hesitation, \u201cIt’s extremely isolating. The truth is, extreme anxiety and extreme depression is isolating no matter where you are. You feel like an alien.\u201d It felt foreign to imagine my mother, a social, charismatic and endlessly positive woman who says \u201cgo with the flow\u201d daily, as isolated, anxious and paranoid. In that moment, postpartum mental health stopped being an abstract and distant concept and began to feel like something that is even indirectly part of my story. It is something my mother has experienced and grown from to become the mother she is today. <\/p>\n\n\n
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