Why I Jumped: The Story Of A Mother Overcoming Childhood Trauma And Postpartum Depression

This paper is a close study of Tina Zahn’s autobiographical text Why I Jumped: A Dramatic Story of Finding Hope Beyond Depression. This is an attempt to trace a connection between childhood abuse and Postpartum Depression(PPD). Transition from womanhood to motherhood is utterly challenging and it becomes even more challenging if the mother holds some untreated mental trauma of the past. Mothers with a history of sexual abuse or Childhood Interpersonal Trauma are more likely to experience PPD, since physical and psychological stress involved with parturition, birthing and child rearing may awaken the past trauma triggering PPD, therefore, impacting the mother- infant bonding. Unfortunately, Child Sexual Abuse is not a rare occurrence, though, other risk factors are being explored, there is still far less attention has been drawn towards the childhood abuse as a major risk factor of PPD. In a broader context, this paper is an attempt to analyse the interconnection between difficult childhood including physical and mental abuse later leading to troublesome parenting in special relation to PPD.