Postpartum Depression 

An illness – not a broken person

During my postpartum depression experience, I was frequently told that I was likely suffering from depression because I’d disconnected from God. The obvious solution was to reconnect with God, something I was, of course, trying to do. Nobody wants to deal with depression. Nobody wants to experience that personal hell. So of course if the answer was God, that’s where I was going to go. On the one hand, they were right. I’d disconnected. But it wasn’t God I’d disconnected from. It was myself. God was still present in my life, even if I wasn’t present to it. I, however, was not present in my life. God had nothing to do with my postpartum depression, but being told that I had somehow lost my way with him certainly had an impact!

As my journey unfolded I began to reconnect with my Self, and rediscover the beautiful soul I’d buried so deeply. I am a very nice person. I am loving, caring, and compassionate. I love to see people find joy. I love to see people discover their greatness and live inside that. I love to see beauty kindness. When I had postpartum, I didn’t know any of this. I thought I was a crazy bitch destroying everything and everyone around her day by day, minute by minute, second by second. In my head, I was a destructive force of nature that could only cause pain and damage. All those beautiful things about myself had been buried and lost so deeply and I didn’t know how to find them. But I learned, and I discovered that they were there all along, I simply had to reconnect with them.

*Originally posted April 1, 2016