Welcome to my positive micro-corner of the Internet where you get honesty, slight coddling, and a smack of the truth you might not want to hear. Because being positive isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. Just like motherhood isn’t always that fresh baby smell and snuggles. Sometimes positive things come with a dash of darkness.
Darkness can come in many forms, from external or internal forces. It can come by way of depression (postpartum included), anxiety, feelings of inadequacy and irrelevance, obsessions, addictions, chronic low self-esteem, and a slew of other mental ailments.
Part of what I do as an attorney has been to work in the area of mental health. I spent over a year working with the court in Marchman Acts (seeking treatment for addicts and dual-diagnosis addicts with mental illness) and Baker Acts (involuntary hospitalization of someone mentally ill for a brief period). In my time working with the court, we’d sometimes hear 30 cases in a four-hour span. Each case unique with outcomes being one of a few, either the person would accept help and get better, stay the same, roll through the waves of both getting better then relapsing to then re-start the cycle, or die by way of an overdose or suicide.
People constantly and insistently believed that they could heal themselves, and they’d suffer in silence while they tried. A lot of times their healing would be by self-medicating. They’d do it by using drugs and alcohol to cope, which often snowballed into an addiction that would exacerbate their mental illness. Other times, like in the case of my cousin, the only way they thought they could find peace was to take their life.
She drowned herself in a bathtub.
This is the reality of mental health, including in the case of maternal mental health, people suffer in silence. There are so many people with great intentions that offer and provide their support, but so seldom is it that people reach out for it.
They suffer in silence.
In my case, even the people closest to me hadn’t the slightest idea that I suffered from severe postpartum depression. They had no idea that it had become so bad that I left my family one afternoon with no intentions of returning, stopped at Target for supplies, and found myself crying in an aisle before I called my mom and doctor to ask for help. I wouldn’t share it until years later because the desire to abandon your family was so embarrassing and unacceptable, but it needed to be shared because the women suffering in silence need to hear that they are not alone. They need to see that there is life with and after mental illness, that coping with anxiety and depression is possible, and happiness can be found even in the darkness.
Maternal Mental Health week opens a wider door to such a necessary conversation, a door that is constantly open in a wall that needs to be knocked down. Many people are sharing their stories and lending their ears to those suffering. But the world needs more than that. It needs people who call mothers with six-week old babies to see how they are feeling, because that’s when postpartum typically begins. It needs people that actively look for a way to reduce someone else’s burden even when their own burden feels heavy enough.
Call, text, email, carrier pigeon, or visit someone when your gut tells you to. Listen proactively, observe your surroundings, and take action. Be more self-aware and more mindful, but less self-absorbed. Take an interest in the lives of those around you and in your families, read between the lines of what they may feeling, because they typically won’t share it.
Women and men both these days are expected to have it all together. Balance, success, happiness, and presence. So you will seldom hear about their depression or anxiety. Especially in the days of social media where we put our happiest selves on display, even when we’re not very happy.
Common signs of people that may need support are those who only speak of the good in their lives, overcompensate, distance themselves, or begin to withdraw from social activity.
What’s easier than detecting those struggling, is to serve and support everyone around you. Smile at them, hug them, compliment strangers, call people and let them know you’re thinking of them, drop off a meal to a new mom or Uber Eats a mom that you know is probably having a tough time. Offer to host a play date while another mother takes some ‘me-time’. Be kinder, less judgmental, more patient of others, more inclusive, more mindful, more serviceable, and more supportive of others. Start your day with a thought or prayer that you will be able to find a way to help someone and I promise you will find three before the day ends. Litter the world with random acts of kindness.
Live everyday in an effort to do something that makes you deserving of being on Ellen.
An exhaustive support for those around us is a combative force for good.
Remember those standing in the sunlight can be suffering in darkness. Be the light they need, show them the rainbows that come afterwards and the light they can find throughout, and help them without them having to ask for it so that they can heal or simply cope.
If you are struggling in silence and cannot bring yourself to reach out and share your story, know that there is hope and that there are so many people who are in your corner cheering you on. Mental illness is an experience, not an adjective. It does not define you and it does not decrease your value. There is no such thing as being broken. Know that there is life after postpartum. Know that there are ways to cope with maternal anxiety and maternal mental illness. Know that you are not alone. There are over 43.5 million mothers in the world who understand you.
I will be hoping for your rainbow, even if it means I have to paint the sky until it comes.
*National Helpline (800) 662-4357
I love your posts, always positive and encouraging.