Historically, mothers have not been able to tell their own story, due to either patriarchal exaltation/abjection of the maternal or the privileging of the child's experience of the maternal. The author finds herself reacting to Djurberg's depiction of the maternal experience as a woman who is a mother, not as a critic, theorist, or analyst, and wonders whether Djurberg has reenacted an abjection of the maternal or whether she is trying to awaken the viewer to these tensions between the theoretical and “real” mother.