Coughing, crying, and spilling coffee

on digging out of holes and letting people in

I’ve found that navigating postpartum mental health means walking a fine line between taking the dark twisty part of your mind seriously enough to take action, but not so seriously that you believe everything it says.

As a research hound, it made a big difference when I learned that intrusive thoughts and postpartum anxiety are primarily a factor of an amygdala that’s primed to keep my baby alive.¹I try to remember this, but there are times, such as this past week, when it’s easy to forget.

Everything was overwhelming, I was feeling anxious, foggy, depressed and discouraged, and I was pretty sure I was mentally headed somewhere I didn’t want to go².

So what did I do?

I’ll tell you what I almost did. I almost wrote a rather dramatic post here that probably would have gotten traction. It would have been slightly self indulgent, perhaps relishing the sadness and feelings in the way that only someone leaning hard into their Enneagram Four can. I probably would have felt better for a minute, …