PMSL: Or How I Literally Pissed Myself Laughing and Survived the Last Taboo to Tell the Tale

More than one-third of women are living with urinary incontinence. It's time to talk about it.

PMSL is one woman's story, providing a razor sharp perspective from the sharp end of a medical issue that affects 1 in 3 women but that remains shrouded in taboo and social stigma, an untold story of a common condition. It's heartfelt, raw and funny--but crucially it is the first memoir to look at incontinence, lifting the lid on what anyone affected can do to navigate their way through the wet-knickered wilderness and what we can learn about ourselves, individually, and as a society cowed by our shamed bodies and desperate for information and control.

When Luce Brett became incontinent at the age of 30 after the birth of her first son, she felt her life had ended. She also felt scared, upset, embarrassed, itchy, bewildered, dirty, shocked, broken, desolate, angry and ashamed. How the hell had she ended up there, the youngest woman in the waiting room at the incontinence clinic?

Charting Luce's journey to (relative) health and sanity PMSL also offers practical advice about how and where women can find help and support, with a final chapter directing readers to useful links and organisations.

It's not good enough for women to be told that post-birth they should expect their lives to be diminished along with their pelvic floor function, but to date no one has been brave enough to come forward and break the silence in such an acutely personal and public way.