When Noelle Elliott experienced postpartum depression following the birth of her second child, she initially hesitated to share her struggle, feeling it would somehow make her a less-than-perfect mom.
But one evening, over dinner with several girlfriends, she finally opened up and shared what she was going through. And she listened to what her friends had to say.
“All of us were just sitting around and telling stories,” says Elliott, a communications and marketing specialist with Notre Dame’s Department of Music. “And I just felt so good leaving, I just felt empowered, I felt like I had a support system. And I thought, I would really like to share their stories.”
That moment — women sharing real and sometimes raw moments of their everyday lives — stayed with her. And it ultimately helped inspire her to create The Mamalogues, a staged reading of women’s stories that opens each summer to a live audience in an intimate South Bend venue.
“We all have a voice and we all have something to say,” says Elliott, the mother of four boys. “I just give them a microphone and a stage and a platform to share. And when other women hear a story, it just sparks something in them to let them know they’re not alone.”
Read the rest of this story at ntrda.me/mamalogues and find more like it at weare.nd.edu.
The Mamalogues 2019 will take place at 7 p.m. Friday, June 21, at The Brick in South Bend. For ticket information, like The Mamalogues on Facebook.