Dolla Bush: It's not me anymore

Dola Posh has multiple identities: photographer; woman; Nigerian; the mom; British.

But after giving birth, she was no longer sure of her identity.

Six days after her daughter was born, she was lying in a bed in an English hospital, amid a coronavirus lockdown.

She was worried about how her life would change and whether she would ever do what she loved again — taking photos.

Since she was unable to visit her, her relatives continued to call her to check on her and the child. After a difficult pregnancy, the doula felt stressed.

Her mother was thousands of miles away in the place she had left two years earlier – Lagos, Nigeria's largest city.

All of this put her mind in a very dark place… She thought: 'It's me; I am; “I'm me. The baby's out, and I'm still me. But no, I'm not me anymore.”

Loss of identity can be one cause of postpartum depression, which disproportionately affects black women. Although she did not recognize it at the time, this was what Doula was experiencing.

Once she was released from the hospital, she was almost immediately bombarded with unwanted advice.

“There was a lot of talking, a lot of control over how to raise the child. In a way that also affected my mind. It made me feel like I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have the opportunity to be a mother.”

There's a matter-of-factness to the way the 33-year-old talks about the events of 2020. She's fighting back tears this time, but she cried a lot.

One night, exhausted from feeling like a zombie, due to the lack of sleep, isolation and monotony of her new existence, a voice in her head told her to take her life into her own hands.

She was emotionally unattached, clinging to her blanket as if it were a life jacket. Her little girl – Monyulwa, which means “I have God” in Yoruba – was at her side. She sang songs from home.

She then made a midnight call to her health visitor who, fortunately, answered and agreed to attend.

“I buried my head in shame. I felt so much shame because I'm not even a good mother. I don't have the strength to be a mother.”

Doula was persuaded to see a therapist, who encouraged her to use the camera as a way to deal with her emotions.

She learned the craft in Nigeria, while studying for a degree in marine biology, and stood out from the crowd with her dyed golden hair and pink shoes.

Dola began building her reputation in the male-dominated worlds of fashion and celebrity photography in Lagos. But she was drawn to portraiture because it allowed her to document people's lives and encouraged people to share something deeper.

For therapy, she turned the lens on herself – and using an app on her phone to remotely control the camera, she began producing a series of shots of herself and Muniulwa.

The image of the Mother and Child, based on representations of the Virgin and Child, is a staple of the Western art tradition.

Dola's imagery fit this situation but the connection was initially unconscious and it took a guide to point this out.

She grew up in a religious family, with her father being a bishop in a Nigerian church. Paintings of Mary and Jesus were on the walls of her house, and images of the mother and child were present in the Gospels and hymn books.

“Colors: green, red and gold; The golden frames and the glow of light – growing up in that environment, it was all there in my subconscious.

All of this then appeared in the way she composed and lit her images.

“Sometimes you do things, you don't even know why you're doing them, and then when you sit down and reflect, it's like: 'Oh!'”

The veil, or head covering, which had been part of her uniform for going to church, also became a staple of her work.

“When I wore the hijab, I didn’t feel like an empty person anymore. I felt more like myself… I was reconnecting with my family, and I felt like their essence was with me.”

The project began to help a doula better understand her feelings.

She says that when she started sharing her story, “motherhood was not all joys, and I suffered from postpartum depression, which opened a door for me to no longer feel ashamed.”

“Now I'm starting to work on the stories of what really happened and the darkness, and how I crawled out of it, and I'm trying to capture that through pictures.”

And earlier this year, the doula won an award from camera manufacturer Leica to allow her to continue her series and encourage more women — especially Black women — to break the stigma surrounding postpartum depression.

“I want a world where Black mothers don't have to carry so many burdens and feel like they have to go through this journey alone, and I want them to look at the media and see a reflection of themselves trying to make things work.”

In the UK, black women are more likely to suffer from postpartum depression than others. says the mental health charity. The reasons are complex, but doulas believe being more open is vital in tackling the issue.

“It's a new thing for a woman to stand there and say, 'I almost took my life, and I'm not ashamed of that — I'm still an artist, I'm still a woman and I have something to say.'”

If you feel you have been affected by the issues mentioned in this article: