LATEST BLOGS

What does it mean to be a father in 2020? - Father's Mental Health Day, 22 June

Last year, I took part in a discussion with Guerilla Science about fatherhood and mental health, at Shambala Festival, alongside Viren Swami, Professor of Social Psychology. Fathers at the event recounted birth trauma, struggles with addiction and how they couldn’t talk easily to friends and family about the profound changes fatherhood had brought. They also spoke of a weight of societal expectation and pressure.

The Big C in the Big C : Cancer in the time of Corona

A friend sends me a supportive message and asks ‘how’s it having the Big C in the Big C?’
She’s referring to my situation in the midst of Corona, having had breast cancer and a major operation – a double mastectomy.
As a child, that was the way cancer was referred to – the Big C – a scary, unnameable condition, almost shameful. Equally, Corona, seems like the Big C right now, a modern plague, unknowable and unpredictable.
Image above - good luck card by daughter, Tallulah 

Articles 

Laura has written for a variety of publications and blogs including: Midwives Magazine, MIDIRS, The Practising Midwife, Perspectives in Public Health, ARM Journal, Mental Elf and Maternal Mental Health Alliance blog.
​Maternal Journal — How creative journaling can support pregnant women*, new mothers, and those that birth with a history of mild to moderate mental health issues
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— Perspectives in Public Health, May 2019
‘Straight outta vagina’ — how depictions of violence and abuse towards women’s bodies in Western art, media and culture can be seen to influence and perpetuate the incidence of ‘obstetric violence’ in maternity care

— MIDRIS Midwifery Digest, January 2018

Recent Book Chapters

'Understanding Anxiety, Worry and Fear in Childbearing: A Resource for Midwives and Clinicians' Edited by Kathryn Gutteridge.
Published by Springer Nature Switzerland. ISBN: 9783030210625 
'Gathering Storm' - a chapter about Birth in the Media is written with Dr Tracey Cooper.
Image: Femen - Sextremism feminist group, referenced in Birth is Not Porn blog on Birth, Art & Culture.

Mother Art Magazine

MAM is a new art magazine focusing on artists from around the world producing work about the maternal. The first issue, Stay At Home is a response by 22 artists to their experiences of working at home during the COVID-19 edited by Helen Sargeant, an artist and academic based in Todmorden, Yorkshire, UK. ​The magazine is for sale with proceeds going to charity, Women's Aid.
I have published a series of images of my mastectomy scars, an operation I had during the lockdown - see my blog The Big C in the Big C above, for context.