October 12, 2020

If I am going to advocate for maternal mental health, then that means being honest in the midst of the bad days. It is much easier to wait until the ugliness has passed to share about it, rather than invite you into the darkness, but that isn’t real. Today has been a hard mental health day. In fact, the past several days have been difficult. Have you ever seen the meme about starting your own business? It shows this nice upward trend for what others think it looks like vs this totally messy trajectory with a gradually successful trend as reality. I feel like that is also what treating mental illness (and any chronic condition, really) is like. We expect it to look like this smooth healing trend forward, and oftentimes it isn’t; it is a couple steps backwards…. or maybe forty. And on social media especially, it looks like it is this ever-progressing path of healing to overcome perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs). Can we just cut the nonsense together today? Its okay if you have been doing fantastic in your recovery and are having a rough go all of a sudden. It happens. It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t let your brain go there. It’s just a bad day! Heck, this picture is me leaving therapy today after EMDR…. Where my mind attempted to dissociate during session. Talk about a whole mess!! But it is part of this convoluted path that is “healing”. You have to do the work to get through it. And wherever you are on your journey, I am proud of you for waking up, making the choice to fight, and pushing through another day.