Jenny Slate got real about the realities of being postpartum and feeling what she called a “purple-dark hole” after giving birth to her daughter Ida.
“I cannot tell if it is inside of me, or spotlighting me, or like a price tag on me, like maybe it states how much time I am costing everyone or wasting for myself,” Slate, 42, wrote in her memoir Lifeform, released on Tuesday, October 22. “The purple-dark hole sounds like a version of white noise that has been corrupted. Instead of doing what white noise does, which is to clean the atmosphere, to smooth it, what I hear from this hole is more of a purple noise.”
Slate added that the sensation was like a “grating” noise that would fill her mind with intrusive thoughts of self-doubt.
“Of course this purple-dark afternoon occurrence also belches messages about me, or the state of things: ‘You are nothing, something bad will happen, something is bad,’” she penned. “And it is deeply uncomfortable because obviously I feel threatened by these statements, but I also cannot pinpoint what is bad and why I am bad or why I am nothing, yet I feel that somehow the hole is telling the truth and I should just admit it.”
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Slate welcomed daughter Ida with husband Ben Shattuck in February 2021. In addition to struggling mentally after while becoming a new mother, Slate opened up about her experience with childbirth and its complications.
“When you were starting to be born, the doctor had to try everything to dislodge you from the opening of my vagina, and of course I had to try everything, too,” Slate wrote, addressing her daughter. “I asked for them to put the needle in my spine so that I could not feel the pain anymore, but this also partially immobilized me, which was expected, In most cases, being immobilized from the waist down while having your whole vagina showing to a room of strangers would be an image from a fear-fantasy, but in this case, it was for health.”
After giving birth, Slate confessed that she “felt a bit timid” to be around her newborn, adding that she “did not want to intrude” while doctors and nurses tended to her daughter.
“They had taken you away from me, right away, because they realized that you had your total body but that you did not know how to use it,” she continued. “You were trying to learn to air-breathe, and they put you in a room full of other tiny strugglers.”
Slate shared that she learned that the doctors took Ida because she “could not breathe.” The comedian confessed that she “felt so ashamed” not knowing what was “wrong” with her child and that she could “not fix” the problem herself.
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Despite her struggles, Slate wrote that she eventually came to terms with what was causing her purple-dark hole.
“I treated this purple-dark hole as a huge annoyance, when it was only whining because it was desperate to make a request,” she reflected. “I dug around in the issue of why I can feel so disturbed. I found an answer: It is because I feel unfinished.”
After identifying the purpose of the purple-dark hole, Slate decided to combat it the only way she knew how.
“I must actually surround the purple-dark hole with an overlay and underlay of the twigs and strips of my life,” she said. “The ones that are receipts from requests that I have been able to fulfill for myself, small pieces from where my life has worked.”
