Letters to the Editor
I’ m writing in response to Allison Vovk’ s article“ Facing Reality: an honest discussion about the clinical implications of beginning motherhood while working in long term care as a music therapist.”
I work in an all-male state prison, and in the period of my employment there, three mental health staff members on my unit became pregnant and essentially did not return from maternity leave. Each circumstance was different, but since the inmate / patients(“ clients” moving forward) were never privy to the reasons they did not ultimately return, there seemed to be a perception that once a staff member went out on maternity leave, they were not coming back.
At the time I became pregnant, one of the process-heavy groups I was running had several members with borderline personality traits, and the majority of group members had experienced some form of abandonment. As Allison did, I informed them of my pregnancy early on so they would hear it from me and also so we would have plenty of time to process their responses to my news. I would not promise that I would be returning because in my own life I have experienced events that were unexpected and have learned we really can’ t make promises about the future. What I did tell them, instead, was that it was my honest intention to return. I felt at this stage I had prepared myself and my clients as well as I could.
What I was not prepared for was how my personal boundaries would shift. I have generally felt that sharing details about my life could detract from the client-therapist relationship, and additionally, by virtue of working in a prison( and an all-male prison at that), I have always been very conscious about boundaries. When asked personal questions, I would politely defer or use humor to shift the focus away from myself. I discovered, however, that with an ever increasing waistline, it became impossible to keep my personal life entirely private.
While, previously, I would generally not comment on my marital status, I found myself mentioning my husband from time to time. Subconsciously, I think I was concerned about how I might be viewed if my child was“ illegitimate,” despite the fact that many of the inmates had fathered illegitimate children themselves. Still, working in part with pedophiles and child molesters, I did maintain some boundaries and refrained from sharing details about the baby such as the gender.
In the time since returning from maternity leave two years ago, I have found myself openly making mention of my child( though still not using gender-specific pronouns), and otherwise talking about my family structure when I never would have done so previously. Even though the majority of the clients I work with now were not on the unit when I left for maternity leave, since there are a decent number who were, I guess, in my mind, there is no point in keeping my child a secret. Yet I find myself on a slippery slope. Due, I believe, to body image issues following childbirth and struggling with a new“ mom” identification, I find myself wanting to be liked by my clients much more so than before. I want to be the therapist running the“ fun” groups that clients
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