The Lindsay Clancy case has, in many ways, cracked open a conversation we have been collectively avoiding for far too long.

A conversation about the quiet, indirect violence of neglect. About what happens when postpartum mothers repeatedly ask for help and are met with minimisation, dismissal or silence. About the devastating consequences of leaving women to carry an impossible load while simultaneously gaslighting them into believing that what they are experiencing is simply what motherhood requires.

Because somewhere along the way, we decided that because women are capable, we must therefore be capable of everything.

We birth the baby.

We feed the baby.

We keep the house going.

We work.

We organise the appointments.

We remember the school things.

We manage the emotional wellbeing of everyone around us.

We anticipate everyone else’s needs.

And because we have historically done these things - often without complaint - society assumes we can simply keep doing them.

So, when a woman says, “I’m struggling,” it can be treated like a minor muscle pull. Something she’ll recover from after a good night’s sleep. Something she’ll “get over.”
Something that can wait until tomorrow.

But what if tomorrow is the problem?

Women are exhausted.

Not “I need a nap” exhausted.

Not “Motherhood is hard” exhausted.

I’m talking about the kind of exhaustion that seeps into your bones. The kind that comes from carrying responsibilities that never switch off, while knowing that if you put them down, nobody else may pick them up.

And sometimes, when a woman is crashing out, losing it, crying uncontrollably, snapping or “overreacting”, perhaps the first question shouldn’t be:

“Why are you behaving like this?”

Perhaps it should be:

“How long have you been carrying this?”

Maybe, just maybe, she is at her absolute wits’ end.

We need to stop telling women to calm down.

Stop telling us to tshwara thipa ka bogaleng - to grit our teeth, endure quietly and carry on.

Because endurance is not the same thing as wellbeing.

And silence is not the same thing as strength.

What is particularly haunting about the Lindsay Clancy case is the reported history of reaching out for help and the questions that inevitably follow when someone repeatedly communicates that they are not okay.

What happens when the people closest to you hear you - but don’t truly listen?

What if your cries are soothed with, “It’ll pass”?

What happens when your partner can continue living something resembling normal life while you are drowning?

And what happens when the person who is supposed to notice the change in you becomes accustomed to your distress?

These are uncomfortable questions.

They need to be.

Because I suspect that many women have stood closer to that edge than they have ever admitted.

Some of us have been fortunate enough to find our way back.

Others are still trying to.

And this is where society often gets it terribly wrong.

We shame women for having been there.

We judge the mother who says she isn’t enjoying motherhood at that point in time.

We question the woman who admits she regrets something.

We tell the woman who is struggling that she should be grateful.

We tell her that other mothers managed.

We remind her that “our mothers did it.”

And then, when a woman reaches a catastrophic breaking point, we ask how nobody saw it coming.

But perhaps we did see it.

Perhaps she told us.

Perhaps she showed us.

Perhaps we just didn’t understand the language in which she was asking to be saved.

There is an uncomfortable contradiction here.

We expect women to emerge from the darkest seasons of their lives stronger, wiser and more resilient. Yet we don’t always extend that same compassion to the women who are still in the darkness.

And when tragedy happens, the woman becomes the villain.

The mother becomes the monster.

The complexity disappears.

There is no room left to ask what happened before the moment that changed everything.

To be clear: understanding the circumstances surrounding an alleged act of violence is not the same as excusing it. Nothing can undo the devastation experienced by the children, the families and everyone affected.

However, if we are serious about preventing another tragedy, we have to be willing to examine the conditions that surround these moments - not centre only the moment itself.

Because perhaps Lindsay has become, in the most tragic way imaginable, a sacrificial lamb for a message society desperately needs to hear.

Women don’t ask for help because they are spoilt.

They don’t ask because they are incapable of mothering.

They don’t ask because they don’t love their children.

They ask because sometimes the load has become too heavy.

And the “our mothers did it” argument needs to be interrogated too.

Yes, our mothers did it.

But many of our mothers did it in community.

Or, perhaps more honestly, how many of them did it burnt out to the core?

The Village We Lost

There were aunties.

Grandmothers.

Neighbours.

Older cousins.

Church communities.

Extended families.

People who could hold the baby while you showered.

People who could make food.

People who could take the older children.

People who could simply sit with you.

In other words, motherhood was never designed to be a one-woman operation.

Yet we have taken a deeply communal responsibility and placed it inside increasingly isolated nuclear households.

At the same time, the cost of living means many families require two incomes. In some cases, mothers work simply because their families need that second income.

Work doesn’t stop because you’ve had a baby.

Domestic responsibilities haven’t disappeared.

The emotional labour hasn’t disappeared.

And somehow, we expect women to absorb the difference.

There is so much more to juggle now.

And yet we continue to hold women to standards built for an entirely different social structure.

So perhaps the question we should be asking isn’t:

“What’s wrong with her?”

Perhaps it’s:

“What happened to the village?”

Where is the support?

Where is the intervention before crisis?

Where are the partners who notice?

Where are the families who listen without judgement?

Where are the communities that allow a woman to say, “I cannot do this today,” without making her feel like a failure?

And perhaps most importantly:

When a woman tells us she is drowning, will we believe her before she has to prove it?

Because women should not have to completely fall apart before we decide that their pain was real.

We should not wait for catastrophe to validate a cry for help.

Instead, we need to build cultures where women are allowed to be exhausted, overwhelmed, angry, frightened, ambivalent and human without those emotions immediately becoming evidence that they are bad mothers.

We need to stop romanticising maternal suffering.

We need to stop confusing sacrifice with love.

And we need to remember that sometimes the strongest thing a woman can do is say:

“I need help.”

Our response cannot be:

“You’ll be fine.”

It has to be:

“I’m here. Tell me what you need. And let me help you carry it. Let’s find you the necessary help.