BEYOND THE EDGE
One woman’s journey out of post-natal depression and anxiety
By Hazel Rolston. IVP. 170 pages. £6.99
ISBN 978-1-84474-216-5
Beyond the Edge is the compelling account of how a Christian woman falls into terrible post-natal depression and anxiety and of her struggle to recover from it. In her introduction, Hazel states that her hope is ‘that through sharing my story you too will see that, no matter how bad or wild and messy your life is, all is not lost: God can bring new life out of rough places’.
It was the cardiac arrest of her ten-week-old daughter that made Hazel Rolston feel she had been pushed ‘beyond the edge’. While the first chapter graphically describes the first weeks of the life of Katherine, culminating in her cardiac arrest, the next few outline Hazel’s life up to that point. In the next chapters Hazel gives an honest and lucid account of how she felt: ‘I felt…as if I was crawling in rough terrain with my head bumping along the ground, bleeding and bruised…’ The temptation to suicide was strong. Hazel is brutally honest about how her faith was challenged at this time and also about the lack of comfort found within the church at times. This was written not in a vindictive way but simply because it is of wider relevance.
