Bellyful is an illustrated book unfolding the author’s personal story, combined with quotes out of interviews with nine mothers. Intuitively, the thought of motherhood connotes love, closeness and warmth. In reality, however, mothers’ experience is more complex, sometimes also including expressions of distance and alienation from their children, which often lead to pain and guilt. The book directly addresses these often repressed experiences, trying to interpret, understand and normalize them. The book raises questions assuming that there are no rights and wrongs, and knowing that a final answer or absolute truth will not be found. The contemplative process and the willingness to open the proverbial Pandora’s Box are the point of the process. The illustrations constitute a parallel axis to the text and in the encounter between the illustration and text, space is created for the reader to produce interpretations out of her personal memories and inner world.
