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Back to topPMSL: Or How I Literally Pissed Myself Laughing and Survived the Last Taboo to Tell the Tale (Hardcover)
Description
More than one-third of women are living with urinary incontinence. It's time to talk about it.
PMSL is one woman's story, providing a razor sharp perspective from the sharp end of a medical issue that affects 1 in 3 women but that remains shrouded in taboo and social stigma, an untold story of a common condition. It's heartfelt, raw and funny--but crucially it is the first memoir to look at incontinence, lifting the lid on what anyone affected can do to navigate their way through the wet-knickered wilderness and what we can learn about ourselves, individually, and as a society cowed by our shamed bodies and desperate for information and control.
When Luce Brett became incontinent at the age of 30 after the birth of her first son, she felt her life had ended. She also felt scared, upset, embarrassed, itchy, bewildered, dirty, shocked, broken, desolate, angry and ashamed. How the hell had she ended up there, the youngest woman in the waiting room at the incontinence clinic?
Charting Luce's journey to (relative) health and sanity PMSL also offers practical advice about how and where women can find help and support, with a final chapter directing readers to useful links and organisations.
It's not good enough for women to be told that post-birth they should expect their lives to be diminished along with their pelvic floor function, but to date no one has been brave enough to come forward and break the silence in such an acutely personal and public way.
About the Author
Lucy Brett was born in 1977 and learned about her nether regions from MORE magazine, other peoples' big sisters, Tampax leaflets and her mother's copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves.
She has spoken about her condition in print, online and on national radio, most recently on BBC Radio's The Naked Podcast, where she stripped with the hosts to talk about how leaking affected everything from her ability to enjoy a party to her sex life. World Continence Week conveniently starts on her birthday each year. @lucebrett
Praise For…
“Warm, generous and genuinely useful. Women will be pressing PMSL into each other's hands - and they'll be doing so without any shame because of the brilliant stigma-busting outlook of this book” —Lynn Enright, author of Vagina: A re-education
“There is no better person to finally illuminate this last taboo than Luce Brett” —Milli Hill, author of Give Birth Like a Feminist
“A breath of fresh air” —Anna Williamson, TV presenter and author of Breaking Mad
“A brave and witty memoir every mother must read” —Daily Mail
“A feminist roar of a health memoir ... a stigma-busting, generous, funny, moving book about an important subject” —David Nicholls, author of One Day