Author Archives: Jennifer Butler Basile

Grayscale Photograph of Man Laughing
May is Mental Health Month

Generational

Last weekend, I traveled a good portion of the eastern seaboard and visited with a dear aunt. The eldest of her three siblings, my godmother, I hadn’t seen her in seven years. She is the keeper of important family details, historical data. My cousin (and travel partner) had countless deep conversations with her across our four-day visit.

When my aunt showed us her photo album/geneaology book, she pulled out a copy of the following blog entry. Given the weight of many of our conversations, the poignant irony could not be any thicker than if fog had filled the room.

The motto of the weekend, a lot of our family, my life.

Laugh So You May Not Cry
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Young Woman on a Session with Her Therapist
May is Mental Health Month

Mental Health Help for Moms in Rhode Island

One of the developments of the past year is my writing for Rhode Island Moms. While I was not hired to write specifically about mental health, fittingly, my first two articles for them were about this topic so near and dear to my heart. Then Megan Block, the founder of Rhode Island Moms, allowed me to share my personal postpartum story.

My Mental Health Articles for Rhode Island Moms:

Today, to mark 2025’s mental health awareness month, my latest article dropped to share resources with women and mothers who are thinking they might need extra support.

Mental Health Help for Moms in Rhode Island

I am incredibly grateful that Rhode Island Moms gives mental health a platform on its site and allows me to write about it.

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May is Mental Health Month

May 2013

May 2013 was the first time I undertook a month-long theme of multiple posts to mark mental health awareness. Below are some of my posts from that series. A trip in the way back machine that explains a lot about my current state of mental health, motherhood, and life – and how I got here.

The Perfect Storm
Don’t Fear the (Ir)rational
The Brand of Crazy I Am
You Got Some ‘Splainin to Do
The black dog of depression
All the Rage
A Sit-com of Errors
The Blue Chicken or the Anxiety Egg?
Patate Pazze
Destymie-ing Dysthymia
An Imperfect Porpoise
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Green Leaves and White Flower Crown
may is maternal mental health month

Immaculate

When I was a child, bright May mornings were filled with energy.

Sturdy rubber soled, strapped toes met pebbly concrete as in formation we marched

to crown Mother Mary.

Even if your hands didn’t rest the blooms atop her head

the songs and solemn file made you feel special.

The Mother of our Church, it makes sense that this month also celebrates earthly mothers.

And given the true gravity of motherhood, it makes sense that it also celebrates mental health.

I’ve done all manner of mother-centric posts over months of May past.

This past year has been full of research and connection as well, but in some new directions. I’ve decided to share some of my experiences over this month of maternal mental health and mamas. To shine a light on some of the amazing work that mothers and women are doing. On their own and in support of each other.

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A Woman in Purple Pajamas SHVETS Pexels Canva
parenting

Independence or Inculcation

It filled me with sadness.

Hours after she’d reluctantly gotten on the school bus, I saw how she’d laid her pajamas out neatly on her bed. It was only a few nights ago that she’d asked me to ‘fix’ the mangled inside-out ball of them before she could put them on for sleep – a task she was perfectly capable of doing, but at which somehow I was better.

The magic of mom. We somehow only notice it when it isn’t employed.

But this isn’t about the unrecognized or underappreciated.

This is about the wistful movement toward independence.

Hinted at in outfits plucked from the drawers by oneself, pajamas outlining the little person who is no longer there.

She’s still there. She didn’t want to go to school. She told me by moving her little body in an angry run down the driveway this morning.

But it was paired with more grown-up concerns like math and writing and reading – but not about what we want; by two-player games when there’s a third; by recesses that are too short and far between.

All of my kids struggled during this year of school. The threshold between little and bigger; fun and hard work; learning and toil.

It’s an important step that she’s being proactive and more independent. It’s good for her and easier for me. But its gain is paired with the loss, or erosion at least, of whimsy and nonsense, carefree days and easy play.

Laying out one’s outfit for the next day is just one more lock of a cog on the wheel. I want her to run freely down the road and into life.

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perinatal mood and anxiety disorders

The Connection You Never Knew You Needed

Postpartum Support International (PSI) was founded in 1987 in Santa Barbara, California by Jane Honikman, who was spurred on by her own experience with postpartum mood and anxiety disorders in the 1970s and the obvious need for social support for new mothers.

Now headquartered in Portland, Oregon, PSI has expanded across the United States and into 36 countries. With helplines, peer support groups, and professional training and resources, it is a bastion of maternal mental health.

While PSI came on my radar over twenty years into its tenure, spurred by my own struggles, it quickly became a source of hope and continued utility and inspiration. All the women I’ve met in the maternal mental health space have been incredibly affirming and supportive. To be able to amplify those connections and community on the PSI blog is a true honor. Read my piece below:

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Frank Cone Pexels
Living

Looping Me In

Drawing a circle over a circle over a circle

That’s how Kate Bowler describes anxiety.

I laughed knowingly as I read it out loud

because I know that feeling, that repetitive loop

of thoughts, of sensations

But now my ‘normal’ anxiety loop is piggybacked by the dopamine loop

of what I use to ignore my anxiety –

or what is causing my anxiety.

And as hard as it is to get out of an endless cycle of anxiety,

I worry if I’ll ever be able to escape this other addictive loop.

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Legacy

Working with What We Have

The way our parents parented shaped us.

Intellectually, we can understand this. Rationally, we accept this.

I don’t think, however, we realize how much our relationship with them informs so much of our relating moving forward.

Only now, after over twenty years, do I realize how sticking points with my father are presenting themselves in my marriage.

Of course it shows up in how we parent.

But it wasn’t just in how their example informs our parenting behaviors.

Their shit affected how they raised (treated) us and consequently how we see ourselves and so on and so on ad infinitum.

I’ve always said I have to slow my roll as I uncover pieces of my emotional history and upbringing – because any anger I harbor will just come back to bear on me when my kids dissect their own upbringings.

One good thing about social media is that it has normalized this phrase that one of my older girls said she’d heard during a recent discussion:

Your parents did the best they could with what they had

May we all be covered in the Grace of that statement.

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Mental Health, motherhood

Her Journey – Not Mine

I sat in on my daughter’s therapy appointment.

I was invited. I did not force my way in

in helicopter fashion.

Perhaps my daughter didn’t want to be in the wash of the rotors by herself.

And I am fully there for that

despite my own second guessing about . . .

the optics? I felt the need to tell the therapist it was requested.

the process? Is my presence inhibiting personal growth?

It is hard as a parent to let go of the idea that we know our child better than she knows herself.

It is dangerous to hold, though.

The process of separation began as the fourth trimester ended, as infant realized her own personhood.

There is no sense in cinching the ties now.

It inhibits the self-actualization we want for our children.

After the hours of my own therapy I’ve put in and countless readings and writings, I look at things differently from my end – even though we’re both sitting on the same couch. And knowing her as well as I do, I can offer a perspective she may not have even considered herself.

But that doesn’t mean she won’t. And that doesn’t mean she won’t learn a ton in the journey to get there.

Because it’s her journey – not mine.

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