Category Archives: Motherhood

I Am Reclaiming My Role As A Maternal Mental Health Advocate

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I used to consider myself a maternal mental health advocate. There was the memoir, the podcast, the peer support group… I even designed an awesome tote bag!

Then, as I wrote about in this recent post, my intuition told me to stop and take a big step away from my postpartum work.

It took me a few weeks to honor my intuition, and a few weeks after that to wrap up the podcast and peer support group, but I did. I am in the process of figuring out why I needed to take a break from the advocacy work. I will share more here as I figure it out! If I try to walk you through my thoughts now … well, shit, I like to ramble, but even I know when a good thing has gone too far.

During my break from being a maternal mental health advocate, my other website broke. It was a website I had created for my podcast, and so I naturally published everything I wrote about postpartum depression over there. I created this website for everything else.

I have no idea what happened to that other website. I am sure I could have paid someone to fix it, but it was a passion project and I did not want to spend more money on it. (I already pay hosting fees for the podcast and I paid someone to edit my memoir. Money well spent!) I assumed the problem would resolve itself.

It did not.

I lost all the content I wrote for the postpartum depression website.

This was more than a little annoying.

I felt defeated. I knew I could write posts about postpartum depression here. I could probably find some of the lost material on my trusty MacBook Air. But I was overwhelmed by the idea of starting over. Also, I felt like a bit of a fraud. What sort of maternal mental health advocate starts a podcast, writes a book, runs a support group and then walks away from it all? And more: what sort of advocate creates a website with all sorts of great content and then let’s the internet eat the website?

THIS ONE!

And damn it, I am proud to own my journey. I rode the narrow highway of success for years and years, getting straight As in school, going to an Ivy League college, going straight from college to law school, then taking a job at a big law firm, and then taking another lawyer gig and yet another even as my soul screamed and railed against being a lawyer. And you know what the narrow highway to success got me? An ass shit ton of misery, anxiety and depression.

I may have left the law after I had Pippa, but I still had this subconscious need to conform to someone else’s idea of success. I still felt an attachment to being “successful.” Even with my advocacy work, I felt this need to fit into someone else’s idea of what it meant to be a good advocate. I don’t know who that “someone else” is! I just got to a point where I was ticking off boxes on someone else’s checklist of what it meant to be a maternal mental health advocate instead of being the advocate I wanted to be.

Huh. Maybe that was why my intuition prompted me to take a break from my advocacy work. Or, more accurately, maybe that is one of the why’s. There are probably many.

Long story short: I am reclaiming my role as maternal mental health advocate.

I do not know exactly what that means for me.

But right now, as I write this, I feel effervescent, like there is a river of energy pouring through my heart, so I know that I am doing something that is right and true for me.

I Need A Sabbatical

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I know, I know. I’m a mom. I can’t just walk away for a year while someone else packs the school lunches, drives my kids to school, and does all the thousand little tasks that amount to motherhood. Even if that was an option, I would not take it. I feel called to be a Stay-at-Home mom so that is what I am going to do.

But I also feel called to write, and the past nine months, I have had very, very little time to write. For the 2020-2021 school year, I am going to make sure I get the time to write by taking a sabbatical from all the work I do for my children’s schools.

Julian is currently in his second of three years at a co-op preschool. I love his preschool, the teachers, the parents, and I have devoted extra time to volunteering beyond the basic requirements. I have served as a board member in charge of the book fair. This was fun and fulfilling, but after this school year, but for Julian’s last year of preschool, I am retiring from that role. Someone else can do that extra work for the school.

I am a Room Parent for Pippa’s first grade class. I was Room Parent last year for her kindergarten class. Next year? Someone else can do that job.

I will still be involved with my children’s education. And I am sure I will be Room Parent again. Maybe I’ll run the book fair at their elementary school in a few years. But right now, I am depleted. I need to write more. If I don’t, I will feel like a shadow of my best self. It is time to apply the principles of crop rotation to my life and let myself lie fallow for a school year.

Whew. I feel like I can more gracefully handle my extra responsibilities this school year knowing that next year, I will let them go and invest the extra time in myself.