Six years.

Wow.

Six.

For six years, I’ve been blogging about Postpartum Mood Disorders. I started with my own journey, in an effort to refocus facing pregnancy after two harrowing experiences with Postpartum Mood Disorders myself.

Then I moved on to Sharing the Journey, adding more voices to my own, acknowledging that there is power in the details of ALL our journeys. Through this interview series approach to my blog, I interviewed not only Moms, but experts and authors as well.

Three years ago today, I started #PPDChat and have since met some of the most awesome people to ever grace the Interwebz with their presence.

Being in the belly of hell during my darkest times with Postpartum Depression, OCD, and PTSD sucked. I was alone.

But I’m not alone any longer.

I want to thank Katherine Stone for supporting me as I first got started…for being a powerful and motivating voice which kept me going.

I want to thank Karen Kleiman for her words of wisdom in her book, “What Am I Thinking: Having a Baby After Postpartum Depression” which advises women to re-frame their pregnancies after Postpartum Depression. Her words are the ones which planted the idea of starting a blog to share my journey with others – to make it a real life example of what it’s like to navigate pregnancy after Postpartum Depression.

I want to thank Amber Koter Puline and Ivy Shih Leung for being there with me too as we all navigated this Postpartum Mood Disorder blog thing. Thanks for having my back and for your willingness to listen whenever we had issues. I love you both as if you were sisters. Seriously.

Most of all, I want to thank Wendy Davis of Postpartum Support International. Wendy has encouraged me in my journey of advocacy and helped me think through some very tough questions I had in the early days. She’s been the voice of reason, and never hesitated to talk with me when I needed advice or support. Meeting you in 2010, Wendy, was awesome.

I’d like to thank my Mother too – for her never-ending support through the hell that was my Postpartum Depression journey – for always being just a phone call away and for listening even when she didn’t want to and for letting me just pour my heart out. I can never thank you enough for being there for me when I needed someone to just listen. A huge thanks to my Father for telling me that while hospitalized that what I was experiencing was a completely normal reaction to everything I had been through. More than he’ll ever know, I clung tenaciously to that sentiment as I healed.

I know I’ve forgotten some people but if I thanked every single person, we’d be here forever.

A HUGE thank you to the #PPDChat community as well – without you, women and families wouldn’t have a 24/7 network of support to access on Twitter. Each one of you, yes, you too, are amazing. We exist in every corner of the world, it seems, and someone is always around. Even if you’ve moved on from the depths of hell or are now battling a different diagnoses, you don’t hesitate to refer someone to us. For that, I love you. You are part of this beautiful breathing thing  – this hands across the world cradling new mothers and families as they fight back and fight to see the light in their worlds once again.

I am truly blessed and grateful for the past six years, for all the good, and for all the hard. For if it were not for the hard, I would not be grateful for all the good.

Finally, thank you, dear readers, for reading and interacting for six years, for hanging tough with me when I didn’t have much to say, and for understanding why I needed to pull back. Thank you for welcoming me as I work my way back toward finding My Postpartum Voice once again. It has not gone unnoticed and I am blessed to have some of the best readers on the Internet -all of you so full of love, depth, honesty, support, and best of all – hope. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.