Maggie

An interview with a doctor had been arranged. He explained that if Mum had taken ill in this age things would have been different. Much better understanding and methods of treatment had made great advances. I was very sad thinking of what might have been.

From then on we visited occasionally. After these hospital visits I felt very upset. The doctor said we had to weigh up the possible good it was doing Mum and the harm it was doing me. The seemingly wasted years preyed on my mind to a certain degree.

I was never ashamed of my mother because of her condition, but felt unable to speak to her, except to close friends. Mental illness had a terrible stigma attached to it. Having a mother at Seacliff would be a disgrace in the eyes of so many folk. Only MAD people lived there. Not being able to talk freely about your mother or father was a drawback. I felt “out of it” and a bit of an outcast, in that area. My gentle, sweet, kind, artistic mother was categorised.

Stories for my Grandchildren, Isobel Spence