Write to Heal

Chopping out a Shared Space

After nearly three years of living with postpartum depression and anxiety and four months less treatment, my mind and heart began to yearn for processing through the written word – as it always has. I should have known I was coming back into myself if I began to get that itch, to set pen to paper and excise those thoughts, soothe those frayed nerves.

I even got the urge to share these thoughts online. Still, the stigma – that keeps many mothers from seeking help at all – gave me pause. Did I want to air my dirty tattered laundry for all the world to see – and judge? The fact that all my secrets would be laid bare became the determining factor. If I was to write my story, I was to own it and post it for all mothers to see that they were not alone in their struggle.

Motherhood – be it ‘typical’ or out-of-the-ordinary, adoptive, biological, or step, mentally fit or ill, of littles, teens, or empty-nested, sought-after or surprised, happy or hard – is a challenging road. As I’ve risen out of the deep depths of environmental, mental, emotional, and hormonal morass, I’ve talked. I’ve sat around tables in the dappled sunlight of backyards, holding cups of coffee long since gone cold or empty, on sidewalks, at kitchen counters, in the unearthly glow of the computer screen late at night, in the darkness of a lone streetlamp that just closed its pool of light. And the more I talked, the more I learned that I wasn’t alone. The more I shared, the more it opened the floodgates of similar experiences and struggles.

There is community in common experiences. There is solace in shared realities. There is strength in vulnerability.

If you’ve read a blog post and thought, yes, that’s exactly how I feel, I’m honored that I’ve given a struggle a voice.

If you’ve joined in a discussion at a workshop and felt, yes, I see a way forward, I am humbled that a question sparked an answer.

If you’ve been yearning for a way to hold space for yourself and fortify or expand that space’s edges, I hope you’ll join our journey with its weekly promptings.

Subscription Details Coming Soon!

chopping potatoes
Standard
Mental Health Month 2017

For All Mothers

Three years ago, Kelly Kittel began her journey of book tours and signings, publicity and PR for her newly published memoir, Breathe: A Memoir of Motherhood, Grief, and Family Conflict.  I’d journeyed with her, on parallel paths, in a shared writing group for months before.  Kelly has journeyed today to Washington, D.C. to advocate for appropriate allocation of funding for maternal health programs.

In December 2016, the Bringing Postpartum Depression Out of the Dark Act of 2015 was signed into law.  Today and tomorrow scores of women visit the Capitol to discuss how to enact programs highlighted by the legislation.  It’s wonderful to see my news feeds filled with faces I’ve met in my maternal health circles, gathering together at the core of our country, for the health of mothers.

Kelly and I have had different journeys in motherhood.  She will be speaking to bereavement and infant loss.  She is speaking from her own personal experience.  My personal experience is with postpartum depression.  I was honored and touched that she asked me to give her my take on the care I’d received postpartum and what it may have lacked; to bring a firsthand account of what mothers in Rhode Island might need to recover and thrive despite postpartum depression.

To be a mother is to know the utmost joy and deepest despair.  While our manner of grief might differ, we all embody the emotion.  I thank Kelly Kittel for taking hers, and mine, on her latest journey.


More info on this initiative:

http://mmhcoalition.com/advocacy-days/

http://mmhcoalition.com/impact/

Standard