All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy

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All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy is a rallying cry from the trenches of maternal mental illness: a cry for visibility, for treatment, for compassion. Mixing academic research with personal experience, these poems push back against the rosy picture society paints of motherhood and instead lay bare the raw, neglected parts: the rage, the sorrow, the confusion, the ambivalence, the tentative joy. But these lines do more than simply give voice—they weave together to create a lyrical safety net, a road map to survival.

Bridget Bell teaches composition and literature at Durham Technical Community College in Durham, North Carolina. Originally from Toledo, Ohio, she is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence’s MFA program in creative writing. All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy is her debut poetry collection.

from This is for the mother (postpartum psychosis)

. . . and this is for the mother who smells horses,
hears mares galloping outside her bedroom door,

who watches walls pulse like open veins,
who wears a flat affect, her face empty
like plates after dinner, who won’t eat,

convinced of poisoned food, who pleads for the hands
of a deep, sparing lake. If you can hear me,
I am sorry we left you alone. I am sorry we failed you.

from Origin Stories

VII.
Our heads hang on our necks
like thirsty flowers, like our spines
are snapped, like we are deep in prayer
to the baby, who has become the only god.

VIII.
My homework is to make a birth plan:
lemon-infused ice chips. Massage
the perineum. Sip raspberry leaf tea.
My proposal does not unfold accordingly.

In All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy, Bridget Bell dismantles myths surrounding motherhood, offering a poignant and unflinchingly honest portrayal of the struggles faced by women around the world. Through a striking use of various poetic forms from the sonnet to the found poem, she sheds light on the physical and emotional challenges of childbirth, postpartum depression, and the complex realities of motherhood. She writes: “We are not mothers. . . . We wear the mother mask.” The words resonate deeply, urging readers to question prevailing narratives. She writes: “There was no pain. The pain was everything.” I was shaken by both the beauty and the brutal honesty of these poems. In the end, Bell explains that to speak against the lie is the way to survive. “You are not alone,” she writes, “Everywhere there is a woman awake with you.” All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy is a powerful testament to the resilience of women and a vital addition to contemporary poetry collections. 
—Blas Falconer, author of Rara Avis 

 I read Bridget Bell’s All That We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy with my whole mouth open, stunned by the harrowing precision and striking lyrical prowess with which she throws us into the hellish reality of perinatal mood disorders. Fearless and frank, these poems belong to everyone navigating the splintering terror of new parenthood. Bridget Bell is the best friend you need, the voice you can trust to give you the whole truth: “I whisper, You have changed everything, / and I hate you for it. Then shame / and its thorny arms.” I wish I’d had this book when my child was born. Everything would’ve been more bearable.
—Eugenia Leigh, author of Bianca

 “My god, the relief, to know reality / is reality,” writes Bridget Bell about her passage through postpartum depression to a new identity as a mother. What is often dismissed as “baby blues” here is explored in harrowing, thorough lyrics. Bell sings a song about motherhood, that extraordinary event of body and mind, and about her traumatic survival from PPD, an experience more common than acknowledged and seldom written about so vividly. Full of difficult and beautiful poems, this book is a must read because “[e]verywhere, there is a woman awake with you.”
—Connie Voisine, author of The Bower

88 pages
Bridget Bell
Pub date – February 2025
Trade paper – 6 x 9″
$18
ISBN: 978-1-960327-08-6
LaurelBooks: The Literature of Illness and Disability (Poetry)