Category Archives: Podcast

Episode 1 and 2 Show Notes: Anxiety During The Pandemic

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Look! Show notes! As promised!

Episode One is really just a hello, welcome, and brief introduction to what I am trying to do with the podcast. In short: I am using this podcast as a tool to thrive during my forties.

Episode Two is the first proper episode. It is about my adventures with anxiety during the Covid-19 pandemic. Here’s an overview of that episode:

  • 2013: I had postpartum depression, which involved anxiety, depression and OCD. I started taking Zoloft and Mirtazipane and also worked with a cognitive behavioral therapist. I felt like I became the master of my anxiety.
  • Since then, I have continued to do a lot of work on my mental health. I have a therapist, I journal almost daily, and I read a lot of books in the self-help genre.
  • At the start of the pandemic, I thought that I was in control of my anxiety. One can even say I was a little smug about this. I had my self-care routine. If I stuck to that, and thought positively, I’d be all set.
  • Mid-March 2020: I was taking 7.5 milligrams of Mirtazipane and had been ready to wean off that dose. So I figured, I’ll stay on that for the pandemic and la de da, I’m set.
  • Fast forward to early July 2020: I’m taking 30 milligrams of Mirtazipane and 100 milligrams of Zoloft.
  • Between March and July 2020: My sleep quality declined. But it was not like I suddenly could not sleep. I was getting enough good sleep that I could ignore the insomnia that was happening. Until wham, I was having way more bad nights than good.
  • May 2020: I went up to 30 mg of Mirtazipane, my bedtime sleep aid, but rushed to get back down to the smaller dose of 7.5 mg. I was fine for a bit. Then: back in insomnia land!
  • Mid-June 2020: I called my psychiatrist and also made an appointment with my therapist. I went back to 30 mg of Mirtazipane.
  • This worked for several days – until it didn’t.
  • July 1, 2020: My psychiatrist and I decided it was time to bust out the Zoloft!
  • Looking back, there were some red flags: the tightness in my chest for several days that I blamed on allergies; not texting back friends; feeling really overwhelmed by Pippa’s first day of camp. And then: I took the kids to the beach and when I saw the fog coming in, I thought it was a tsunami.
  • No More Caffeine: I was so agitated, I quit caffeine cold turkey.
  • How the anxiety felt: like a moment of terror that lasted for hours on end. Constant adrenaline
  • Pandemic PMS: As my anxiety reached its highest pitch, I was at the end of my menstrual cycle. But the thing is, I’ve had PMS before that is bad for a day. Pandemic PMS is just above and beyond anything I want to handle.

My intuition is telling me to lay off the caffeine and keep on the Zoloft. We are living in a world that just feels flooded with anxiety. Headlines, social media, emails – it’s a lot. I go on a walk, and people are wearing masks. I go to grocery store: masks.

There’s social isolation; lack of things to do and places to go. My kids miss their friends and routines. This adventure is tough on them, and they come pour their messy feelings all over me.

I am seeing that I thought I had mastered my anxiety back when I had postpartum depression, but actually, I still have work to do. That’s okay.

And I also had some resistance to going back on medication. What’s that about? I did a whole podcast about mental health and I published my memoir about having a mental illness. So what gives? But I’m not going to get upset at myself for this resistance. It’s an issue pointing me in the direction of the work I need to do.

My therapist reminded me that plenty of people are dealing with their pandemic anxiety in unhealthy ways. Zoloft is a healthy way for me to manage my anxiety. It is helping me calm down so I can do the work I need to do. It’s a tool in my wellbeing toolkit that I did not need the past couple of years, but now I do.

So that’s it for the first two episodes! I am so excited to be back in the podcasting groove.

Episode 82: A Very Pandemic Mother’s Day

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A couple of days ago, I thought, I should add my memoir to the Kindle Unlimited thingee on Amazon. So I did. Then I discovered that if an author adds her book to Kindle Unlimited, she is allowed to make her book free for Kindle download for up five days.

How could I resist?

So as my 2020 Mother’s Day gift from me to you, my memoir is available as a Kindle download on Amazon for FREE from Sunday, May 10 until Thursday, May 14, 2020. Get your copy now! If you enjoy the book, please consider leaving a review. It helps other people who might need the book find it.

Having made the book free for Mother’s Day, I initially thought I would post about it on Instagram and Facebook. But then I thought, I could make a Mother’s Day podcast episode.

And that is why I am now typing the show notes for Episode 82! (If you have never listened to the show, it’s called Adventures with Postpartum Depression and is available on iTunes and all those other fun places that play podcasts.)

We have been sheltering-at-home for eight weeks. Eight weeks! It’s crazy and surreal but a few good things have emerged from the experience. For example, blogging. My intuition has been urging me to blog for years, and for years, I have delayed, insisting that I did not have the time. Well, enter the pandemic, and I have less time than ever but here I am, blogging. It helps me process this experience and dig into my feelings and I do believe this is a practice I will continue even when the pandemic is just a memory.

Now that we have settled in for the long haul (summer camps are being cancelled, the 2020-21 school year is very Iffy), I have also been forced to reckon with some ideas I have about motherhood. I am realizing that even though I recovered from postpartum depression, I am still carrying around an idea that motherhood = martyrdom.

This is an idea that I will be exploring in my journal. As I hash out my ideas, I’ll blog about them here as well.

But Glennon Doyle really got me thinking about this in her amazing new memoir Untamed. She writes:

Mothers have martyred themselves in their children’s names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

Untamed pg. 128

Wow. I could just talk about that for hours and hours. And a few paragraphs later:

What if love is not the process of disappearing for the beloved but of emerging for the beloved? What if a mother’s responsibility is teaching her children that love does not lock the lover away but frees her? What if a responsible mother is not one who shows her children how to slowly die but how to stay wildly alive until the day she dies? What if the call of motherhood is not to be a martyr but to be a model?

Untamed, pg. 128

I think I had postpartum depression because my hormones went beserk and pushed my preexisting anxiety into the realm of mental illness. BUT. I am starting to see that I also had postpartum depression because I had internalized a martyrdom standard for motherhood that annihilated my sense of self when I gave birth to my first child. How could I be the person I had been for thirty-four years when I had to now sacrifice everything to prove my love for this new person?

It feels like such a relief to finally say and write the thoughts that have been rattling around my head.

I also think that for me (we are all different!), another piece of the PPD Puzzle was a sort of “crisis of intuition.” I did not trust myself. When it came to Pippa, I wanted to trust all the parenting experts. Anyone but me. But I could not follow all of the experts’ advice because there are so many conflicting opinions. So in part, PPD was my body’s protest against the denial of my motherly intuition.

I am still thinking these things through and expect I will keep writing about them, and keep recording podcast episodes, as I dive deeper into my thoughts about PPD and motherhood.

For those of you who listened to Episode 82 and are currently suffering from a maternal mood disorder, I strongly recommend that you start with Postpartum Support International in your search for help.

I hope you have a lovely Mother’s Day, wherever and whenever you are. But if you don’t, that’s okay. Do not put too much pressure on yourself to have the perfect Mother’s Day. You have to do whatever works for you.