Die My Love: Ending Explained In The Eyes Of A Mother Who’d Gone Through Postpartum Depression – Everything That Grace’s Story Can Teach Us About New Motherhood

Jennifer Lawrence has recently blessed us with her comedic charm and a great voice of reason and truth to everything that has to do with womanhood as she came out to advertise her new movie with Robert Pattinson. Fans of both the Twilight and The Hunger Games franchises were rejoiced as soon as Lawrence’s collaboration with Pattinson on their movie, Die My Love, which she also produced, was announced. The movie Grace, played by Lawrence, a young mother in rural Montana grappling with severe postpartum depression and psychosis that unravels her marriage to husband Jackson, played by Pattinson.

Postpartum depression is a serious mental health disorder that’s truly close to my heart. It caused me a lot of pain and turmoil – both in my own life and the lives of those close to me. My best friend was charged with murder 2 years ago for the killing of her child. This child – this innocent, beautiful child that did nothing wrong but want to be loved – was a victim of a mother who was abandoned by the medical system and didn’t do all they could to help her through her mental illness. Research shows that postpartum psychosis affects one to two moms out of 1,000 births, but many reproductive psychiatrists believe that is an underestimate because the symptoms are easy to miss, and the doctors who most often see new moms are not trained to recognize them.

As soon as news broke on the internet about what happened, people online were quick to judge my friend. Those that didn’t know her, as well as those that did, villainized her to the core; made her look like a complete monster for killing her 6 month old boy. My heart completely broke for her as I saw other people’s reactions to her actions and what had happened. This was a woman who was a victim of postpartum psychosis. And yet, commentators wrote that she was the “bad guy” and didn’t deserve any remorse or forgiveness whatsoever the harm she’d caused.

Nirmaljit Dhami, a reproductive psychiatrist in Mountain View, said of the disease that destroyed my friend and her son’s lives, ‘Postpartum psychosis often presents with delirium-type symptoms, mainly confusion and disorganized thoughts and not classic hallucinations or paranoia. And the symptoms wax and wane. I had one patient who was confused at times and very clear at other times.’ I knew, right when I was told of what happened, that this was exactly what happened. It wasn’t her. It was the illness that took over her body and mind that did it.

My friend – as I knew her – was the most magical person I ever met. If there was anyone who deserved to be a mother, it was her. She was the most maternal woman I ever knew. She was caring, nurturing, loving; almost to a fault. All she wanted was to love and be loved in return. Having a baby was something she truly wanted for herself, and she went through great lengths to get there. After going through fertility treatments, she finally got pregnant. I was truly happy for her when she told me the exciting news. That said, however, I felt a sort of disconnect between the realities of motherhood and her version of it.

When she first told me she was pregnant, I felt that in her mind, she was living a fairytale life; that she didn’t grasp the true hardships of being heavily pregnant and a new mother. At the time, my son was 3 months old. I was having a hard time navigating my own life as a new mother. Even with my husband being an amazing father, and even with me getting a lot of help and support from my parents, it was hard. Some days, it was too hard. My friend was so excited for her own pregnancy. At the time, she was only a few weeks a long. She was asking me all these cute questions like, “What’s your favourite part about motherhood?” I wanted to tell her that absolutely nothing was my favourite part about motherhood and sometimes I questioned becoming a mother in the first place, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that. And so, I lied and came up with the most bullshit answer.

My reality looked completely different than the peachy image of what motherhood looked like to my friend. Honestly, I wish I hadn’t done so. Maybe things would’ve turned out differently if I’d given her the true image of motherhood looked like; especially life as a new mother. The biggest question during the first days following the killing was, “How could she do this?” Those that were close to her were asking this very question too. The real question that should’ve been asked more was, “How could this have been prevented?”

We need better intervention and social supports and improved understanding of psychological and social factors that are often at play in parents’ live – for both women AND men. Studies and research found that between 1961 and 2011, at least 1,612 children in Canada were killed by parents; many more incidents have since been reported in the media. Amongst the findings in the killings included:

• More males than females were accused nationwide, a difference that appears to be increasing.

• Female accused were more common among people under 18, and males dominated in older age groups

• Women made up four out of five accused who were single and never married, and men represented two-thirds of accused who were divorced, separated or widowed.

• More men than women were accused when revenge or jealousy was the motive.

• Most accused were biological parents. When stepchildren were killed, nine of 10 accused were stepfathers. While numbers remain small, the proportion of accused who were step-parents, and particularly stepfathers, appears to be increasing.

• Since 1991, more reports of family violence have occurred before filicides.

• Fathers are more likely than mothers to commit suicide after killing a child, although the likelihood of either parent committing suicide has decreased in more recent years.

It’s not just women who kill their children. Male postpartum isn’t talked about enough, but it does make perfect sense. It’s a real a real condition affecting about 10% of new fathers, characterized by symptoms like anger, irritability, withdrawal, fatigue, and changes in appetite or sleep, often manifesting differently than in mothers, sometimes as “masked depression” (anger, risk-taking) and stemming from hormonal shifts, lack of sleep, role changes, or a partner’s depression. It’s a significant issue with potential impacts on the family, requiring awareness, screening, and support for new dads.  To break it down more thoroughly:

Common Symptoms in Fathers

• Emotional: Increased irritability, anger, frustration, cynicism, feeling overwhelmed, sadness, hopelessness, anxiety, or feeling detached.

• Behavioral: Withdrawing from family/friends, increased work hours, avoidance of caregiving, indecisiveness, negative parenting, increased alcohol/drug use, or risky behaviors.

• Physical: Fatigue, changes in appetite/weight, headaches, stomachaches, insomnia or excessive sleepiness, and difficulty concentrating.

• Cognitive: Lack of confidence in parenting, feeling like a failure, or thoughts of escape/suicide. 

Contributing Factors (Risk Factors)

• Hormonal Changes: Drops in testosterone can affect mood.

• Partner’s Depression: Higher risk if the mother has postpartum depression.

• Sleep Deprivation: A major stressor.

• Psychological Adjustment: Stress from new roles, responsibilities, and identity shifts.

• Personal History: Past mental health issues. 

Why It’s Overlooked

• “Masked” Symptoms: Men often express distress as anger, aggression, or substance abuse rather than sadness.

• Societal Expectations: Fathers may feel pressure to appear strong and not admit vulnerability. 

Die My Love wasn’t about romance. It was about a marriage and everything that comes with its glories and consequences. A Rotten Tomatoes review for the film read, ‘A frenzied depiction of a common but oft-ignored experience, Die My Love might be too stylistically mannered to fully connect but gifts Jennifer Lawrence with one of her most vivid roles yet.’ Many critics cited the film as being Lawrence’s best performance in her career. Pattinson, too, gave a phenomenal performance in the film, portraying a man desperate to help his wife through a difficult period in her life. And yet, it was mostly overlooked because male postpartum depression is something that’s even more taboo than that of a new mother.

Truthfully, there’s no real villain when it comes to postpartum depression. That’s just with the exception of the mind itself. The brain works completely differently after having a baby, and with that, the mind constantly tells you things that are completely untrue. The feeling can get overwhelming with a mix of love for your baby and grief for your old life and sense of self. Thoughts like, “Who am I now?” or “I wish I could go back to my old life,” are common. The brain is wired to be hyper-alert to danger after birth as a protective instinct. This can manifest as constant worry about your baby’s health, safety, or if you’re “doing it right”. When you feel like you’re not, or when you’re told by judgemental assholes that you’re not, you feel like a complete failure. Around 90% of new parents experience unwanted, scary, or disturbing thoughts or images that pop into their minds, often involving accidental harm coming to the baby (e.g., dropping them down the stairs or a thought about SIDS). The fact that these thoughts are distressing to you indicates you have good protective instincts and no desire to act on them. Instead of sadness, some mothers experience intense anger or irritability at their partner, the baby, or the expectations placed upon them. 

Grace, in Die My Love, felt a widespread of emotions that included loneliness, anger, abandonment, resentment, and frustration. Jackson, her husband, got her a dog to try to ease her emotional pain. This backfired as Grace shot the dog. She initially asked Jackson to shoot it, but he refused. She said to him, ‘Something you love is suffering. Put it out of its misery.’ The dog was injured in a car accident. Jackson had plans to take it to the vet, but Grace saw other means in easing its suffering. In her mind, the only way to ease the dog’s pain was to kill it. In the end, she, too, killed herself.

No matter how much Jackson, played by Pattinson, tried to help Grace through her grief. He ran into forest just in time to see Grace walk into the rapidly spreading fire Grace had set, where she also burnt her journals. She snapped. The family tried to do a good thing and host a “welcome home” party for her where they consistently hyped up about her looking well and healthy. But all it did was make things worse for her. Jackson took her for a drive, where things escalated between them. When they reached a stopping point, they sit in silence for some time, before Grace kisses Jackson and said, “Enough,” walking into the nearby forest.

Empathy was all I could feel for Jackson at that moment. Even knowing the fact that he’d cheated on Grace throughout the marriage didn’t make me feel less for him. He was struggling too. It’s certainly not an excuse for his cheating, and yet, there’s a bit of a remorseful feeling that I sensed for him. Whether Grace actually died or found liberation through her act, the ending signified a definitive end to the trapped, suffering version of Grace. Director Lynne Ramsay suggested it was about Grace burning her “world down” and achieving a form of freedom, not just darkness, with Jackson ultimately letting her go. The film deliberately blurred the line between reality and Grace’s mental state, leaving viewers to question if it’s a literal death or a powerful metaphor for rebirth.

Personally, I believe that Grace had killed herself. Lawrence herself believes that too, as she said in an interview while promoting the film. But she only saw it that way when she saw the movie after she became a mother herself. Otherwise, when she was filming the movie while pregnant, she saw Grace’s ending as a means of her freeing herself from her demons. That’s the real beauty of the film – everything up until the very end is up to the viewer’s interpretation and imagination. While Pattinson initially saw it the same way Lawrence did, he added in that same interview with her, ‘Or, [that] she’s gone off and… she’s gone off with somebody else. When he paints the house that color, (“That color!” Lawrence exclaims), it’s like, look what I did. I’ve got this dog, and look how much better my life is.’

There’s no right or wrong answer here when it comes to the ending of Die My Love. How one views the ending is all up to interpretation. But I do think that when you become a mom, you start seeing things and view things completely differently. That’s why how a mother might interpret the film’s ending might be different than someone who’s not a mother might interpret the film. As a mother, you truly understand the essence of Grace’s struggles. You resonate with her. You feel for her. You empathize with her. You root for her. That’s at least what I’d done as I watched her journey unfold. Every inch of what she felt, I felt as a new mother. Even though I survived through it, I understood why she didn’t.

Motherhood is absolute madness. Some days can feel like the best days ever. Other days can feel like the absolute worst. That’s true for any age, but especially when your child is a newborn. You just never know what each day will bring. One day can look completely than the next. One day can look peachy and beautiful, and the next can feel like a tornado. Motherhood is completely wild. It’s unpredictable. It’s messy. It’s a little bit of everything in between. Die My Love truly portrays the heartache and mental toll of isolation, motherhood, and the struggle to claim one’s identity in Lawrence’s character.

As Grace’s struggle with her new “normal” escalated to a deeper crisis, her relationship with Jackson deteriorated. All she was able to identify herself with was her role as a mother to her and Jackson’s baby. She felt trapped; like an animal in a cage. She gave up a lot for her family. She moved to a new town to be left all alone with the baby while Jackson was absent doing what he could to provide for the family. Grace didn’t know anyone. She didn’t have a community. She didn’t have anyone to turn to and lean on. As time went on, she began to lose sight of reality.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle Grace faced was that she felt all alone. She WAS all alone. Motherhood is hard even when you do have the help and support of others; but when you don’t, it just seems impossible. Her final straw was when her family commented on her looking well and healthy following her stay at the psychiatric ward. She didn’t need anyone commenting on her looks. She needed help. She needed to feel like she belonged. She needed safety; assurance. It was something that she didn’t get in anyone around her; not even in Jackson. Even more so, she felt betrayed by him when she found out he was cheating on her.

That’s never to say that Jackson didn’t love Grace. He did, and he tried to help her any way he could; any way he knew how. By nature, men are the more logical ones. They don’t understand the emotional toll women can go through during pregnancy and/or the birth of a child. My husband, in particular, didn’t. When our son was just born, he helped me in all the ways he knew how. He took a month off work. He changed all the diapers. He got up at night to feed him. He went out with him each day to give me a break. In a physical sense, he didn’t disappoint. But when I voiced that I was struggling emotionally and mentally, he’d question me and say, ‘But you signed up for this life,’ while chuckling.

While I did sign up to becoming a mother, I didn’t sign up for the hardships I faced as a new mother. I needed solace. I needed someone to listen to me, not just hear me. I needed empathy, not laughter or belittlement towards me. I especially needed it from my husband; my partner; the person closest to me. When I told him I wanted to get professional help, he told me it’d be a waste of time and money. He told that I just needed to deal. That was the most hurtful thing I ever heard. To this day, I can’t believe he could ever face me and say such a thing to me. I didn’t end up going to a therapist back then.

The time when my son was just born was the most precious time of my life. But it was also the most emotionally crippling time in my life. I felt a numbness I’d never felt before. I felt lost in a world that was so foreign to me. There were days I’d forget I was a mom. There were days I’d forget there was a whole other person in the house that needed to be taken care of by me. There were days I didn’t want to be a mom. There were days I wanted to go back to my old life – before I had the baby.

It took hearing the news of my friend killing her child and being charged with murder that my husband truly understood the depth of my struggles. That was the moment he stepped up, and that was the only reason why I survived. I’m just sad that it took something horrific to have happened to make him see that. But no matter the case, I’m just glad it happened. Otherwise, I really have no fucking idea where I’d be today; if I’d even be here today.

Psychological experts, legal scholars, and medical professionals largely agree that cases where a woman kills her child during the postpartum period are complex and should be viewed with nuance rather than simple blame, considering the severe impact of postpartum mental illnesses. These illnesses can drastically affect a mother’s mental state, decision-making abilities, and perception of reality. To break it down more thoroughly:

Key factors that are typically considered include:

• Postpartum Psychosis (PPP): This is a severe, rare psychiatric emergency that can manifest as hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized thinking within the first few weeks after childbirth. A mother experiencing a psychotic episode may believe she is acting to “save” her child from a perceived danger, or she may be following delusional commands, completely detached from reality.

• Mental State and Intent: In legal and ethical contexts, a person’s capacity to understand their actions and their intent is critical. Postpartum mental illnesses can impair this capacity significantly. The act may stem from the illness, not a malicious intent to harm.

• Medical Condition: Postpartum depression and psychosis are recognized medical conditions, not a personal failing or a choice [1]. Sufferers may lack the appropriate support and treatment needed to manage their symptoms.

• Blame vs. Accountability: While these women may be held legally accountable for their actions (depending on the jurisdiction and the specific diagnosis), the moral and medical consensus is that “blame” is an oversimplification [1]. The focus often shifts toward understanding the underlying causes and preventing such tragedies through better screening, support systems, and mental health care.

In summary, the mother’s actions are typically understood as a tragic outcome of severe mental illness, which often mitigates the assignment of simple blame. Grace, unlike my friend, wasn’t seen as the villain in her story, but that’s just because she didn’t kill her child. I, too, wasn’t ever seen as a villain because I didn’t kill my child. But in reality, all three of us were going through the very same thing. We were feeling the same exact emotions. We said the same things. We probably even did the same things.

In a more recent case, Cassie Marie Acorn, who plead guilty for the killing of her daughter while suffering from postpartum depression, received no jail time for her actions. Both the Crown and defence couldn’t agree whether she should go to jail or not. In the end, she didn’t. Whether it’s right or wrong is up for you to decide. What’s true was that she had a disturbance of the mind. It’s important that I look at the facts. Acorn’s daughter was conceived as a result of a sexual assault. Dr. Hygiea Casiano wrote in her testimony, ‘Cassie was a vulnerable woman…. She was provided surgical intervention preventing further pregnancies, and she appeared to desire the chance to fully experience motherhood with her last child. She seemed to derive a sense of purpose and identity through her role as a mother. She was likely eager to prove others wrong and demonstrate that she was capable of parenting well.’ A psychologist also concluded Acorn had an intellectual disability in the “mild range” and test results showed the possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder, a persistent depressive disorder and at least four other conditions or disorders. 

What’s true is that women like Cassie Marie Acorn, women like me, women like Grace, women like my friend, need HELP. Women going through postpartum depression CANNOT be dismissed anymore. This very fact causes so much pain and harm to too many people, and it needs to stop…NOW.