” I have always drawn my emotions, as if to translate my mental state, tells Hélène. For this work, I started with figurative drawings and then I deconstructed them until they became abstract. The book was born like this. From the meeting between texts that I wrote on one side, the drawings that I made on the other to express my discomfort, this discomfort of not being a mother. I created a common thread, a chronological narrative then I made the two meet “.
A job that took him three years.
A dive into the origins of a desire
Not easy to have to explain, even justify, the fact of not being a mother after 40 years.
Especially when you have a grandmother who received the family medal for having raised seven children, and a mother, a nurse in a maternity hospital and then in a school environment. A mother figure overflowing with love and benevolence.
“My mother took care of lots of children, she was very present for my two brothers, my sister and me. She transmitted to me this idea that children were joy, love too … it’s difficult to let go of that “.
Like most girls, little Hélène saw herself as a mother. She played at putting a pillow under the sweater to pretend she was pregnant.
This desire to be a mother comes, for many, from the environment in which I grew up. At home, envisioning a life without children necessarily meant accepting not to be an accomplished woman, to have a sad life. Not to come true.
Helene Defromont
Once an adult, this desire became an obsession, an inner suffering that she killed for a long time.
” I spent ten years of my life looking for a man to have a child. I wanted to start a family, forge a relationship of trust and rediscover this love that I knew when I was little because the child for me referred to this unconditional love that I received from my mother “.
Only here, the meeting between this deep wish and his sentimental life did not take place.
The women of my generation were conditioned to procreate… as men are to discover the wide world! And I lived as a failure not having children, I saw myself as a victim
Helene Defromont
On this subject, the editorial staff recommends
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“I think I also cultivated the fact of not being like the others, says Hélène, before continuing. There was the external injunction, yes, but also this interior injunction which prevailed. We are the first to demand things of ourselves … that’s what makes us suffer first “.
How to get out of this state of being? How to live with it? Don’t feel left out?
Perhaps by meeting other people, by crossing other paths. Near her home, in Nantes, to Quebec.
This is what Hélène did.
“For this book, I also drew on others, their experiences. There are many reasons why you are not a mother. Women who have no children, there are some. full. Women who suffer. Either because they cannot have it, or because they do not want it (and do not feel recognized in this desire for a non-child). “
Questioning the desire for a child has allowed me to meet many people and also to realize that not being a mother can be a choice “.
The author conducted her introspection with the tools she masters best: the pen and brushes.
While most authors send storyboards, a script or a few pages, Hélène has decided to send a complete manuscript to around thirty publishing houses. “In my case, it was quite complex as the drawing changes from page to page, I explored the many facets of the desire for a child and how this desire has evolved during the different phases of my life. In this book, the graphic technique responds to these emotional evolutions “.
Ultimately, L’Œuf, the aptly named, a Rennes publishing house, chose to publish the work.
“When we received the text, it seemed very sincere to us, tells Julia Boucaret, the person in charge of the Egg. Obviously as women, this is a subject that speaks to us … We had already edited a comic book of a man who tackled the subject on the father side * and we found that it was good to have the female counterpart of this theme which is ultimately to assume the fact of not having or not wanting children. It made us want to edit it “.
“We felt in Hélène the desire to materialize, to exteriorize what was becoming heavy for her. This” therapeutic “dimension in comics is not uncommon. Many authors deal with subjects that touch them but use other characters to tell their story. And often, when you materialize your story, it allows you to give yourself other perspectives. This need was very clear in Hélène. And with this graphic novel we are not far from the essay. Her work is at the crossroads of different societal, feminine and psychological reflections “.
* Ampère-Vincent Normand-ed. The Egg
Today, live without and do with
At 42, thanks to this book, Hélène has traveled a path which, she says, allows her “to no longer suffer the absence of a child as a fatality but to live it as a choice”.
After considering ART, reflecting on the meaning of adoption, she decided to continue living as a “non-mother”. Because she did not see herself assuming the life of another being alone.
“To give up having a child is a mourning, said Hélène, we learn to do without the person. The dreamed child. There is always a sorrow buried in oneself, but we make do with “.
“We all have within us an imaginary child, in which we project ourselves. Moreover, I have drawn children without eyes, without facial expressions, to allow everyone to ‘appropriate this drawing or this child. I really wanted this book to be as open as possible “.
