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Mama's Cloud, Jessica Williams' children's book, explains how young children understand and treat their parents struggling with mental illness.
Provided by Jessica Williams / Saskatoon
Jessica Williams of Swift Current uses her writing skills to help children tackle a difficult subject. Her new children's book, Mama's Cloud, describes the imaginative journey of a young child trying to figure out how to help her mother cope with mental illness. She talks with Matt Olson.
Q. Why focus on the subject of mental illness for this book?
A. I have suffered postpartum depression and anxiety after the birth of my daughter, and mental illness has become so prevalent and more prevalent – which is fantastic – but with that, you have to also help kids understand what's going on. They have these great emotions themselves, but they do not necessarily understand what is depression or what is anxiety. It's a complex feeling to try to explain to a small person. By writing Mama's Cloud, I started thinking that this could be a way to explain things and start those conversations with kids.
Q. What is your hope for the upcoming book?
A. My hope is that families, caregivers and parents, and perhaps older siblings, can have this point of reference from a nice story. I did not want to expose it as a big downer … I wanted to create something that was fun and engaging and magical, and talked to kids with their interest in fantasy. So, I wanted something that they would be interested in reading again and again.
Q. How are you going to put your feelings into words with such a personal subject?
A. For me, it was about taking a big emotion like depression or anxiety, then resizing it into something definable and tangible. A child can identify with what one feels like on a cloudy day … it's a visual representation and something that they may be able to relate to – if this is not a problem. is not immediately, so maybe somewhere on the road. It's kind of come with that particular imagery, and this notion of reducing the crush of depression and that feeling that you're in a fog, and that you're in a cloudy day all the time.
Q. What's going through your head when you look at the end product?
A. It is so much more beautiful than I imagined in my head. I had seen the work of Mateya (Ark) elsewhere and I looked for it to illustrate that … She put her own style in it, she put so much more than I could ever have done imagine, even up to the symbolism of the blues for depression and the yellows for the child and their magic and their hope … I cried every time I saw a new image .
Q. After all your own experiences, what do you see when you read the book?
A. I see children's imagination, and I see their compbadion, and I see their love for each other and for their families. I see something that children can understand. When I wrote the book and when I was talking to Mateya about illustrations, I wanted the child to be as genderless as possible so that the children could see themselves in the little person … I think the children can see it and see each other in that little person who does these magical things. And the kids are magic. They have exceptional imaginations, an exceptional ability to take care of themselves and to be compbadionate to each other.
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