The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

by Gabor Maté

Support. If we want to build a world that provides it, we could start by asking its would-be recipients what the word means to them. I recently asked Rae—if I could do it over again, I would have done so long before now—what would have supported her back then. I can’t improve upon the wisdom, nor the accuracy, of her answer: “It would have helped if I had had a community in place. If there existed a larger consensus in our culture of what is required to gestate a baby. It would have helped if I had had a doctor or a social worker or family member who could have stood up for me. If the doctor had asked me, even once, how I was faring emotionally . . . If anyone had phoned my husband: ‘Are you aware you are hurting your baby? Whatever problems you have with your wife, your role now is to be protective of her and of the infant she is carrying.’ We all need to realize that entering a pregnancy should be like entering a shrine, a sacred place and time: a baby is being built. “Mental health needs to be on the curriculum as soon as a woman gets pregnant—just as there are prenatal classes for the physical birth, so there should be for the emotional birth. The woman’s focus must be on the baby, and not on the husband or even the job; the husband’s focus—everyone’s focus—must be on supporting the woman. Parents need to know that their job is mutual, that while the wife is pregnant, the husband is also pregnant. Society needs to protect pregnant women because everybody is creating th...