Keira Knightley’s experience of having a mental breakdown helped her cope with the stress of becoming a mother.
The 33-year-old actress was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder when she was 22 as she struggled to cope with the pressures of fame.
Keira’s breakdown almost resulted in her quitting Hollywood and she spent months recovering, but she says her mental health struggles helped her cope after giving birth to her three-year-old daughter Edie.
“Your body just created life and now it’s shifting in order to feed it,” she tells The Guardian. “That’s monumental and we’re all expected to go: ‘Oh no, all good, I’m groovy – I haven’t slept, I’m fine. That I’m able to forgive myself for not being brilliant (as a parent) every f**king day is probably because of that breakdown.”
The Brit, who is married to Klaxons rocker James Righton, worries for mothers who do not have a stable family and wealth to help them through tough times.
“It’s really difficult for me, who has an unbelievably supportive family and the money to pay for good childcare,” she adds. “How, as a society, are we not supporting single mothers 100 per cent? We should literally be wrapping them in cotton wool and giving them a cuddle.”
Although she’s embraced being a mom, Keira does not want it to define her as she’s fed up with women pigeonholed as either mothering types or sexualized flirts.
“Before motherhood, you’re sexy, but if we talk about the whole vagina-splitting thing then that’s terrifying; there’s no sex there, so what we do is go into the virgin-mother retrofit, that’s nice and safe,” she rages. “The problem with those two images is I think very few women actually identify with them. Women are meant to play the flirt or the mother in order to get their voice heard. I can’t. It makes me feel sick.”