Category Archives: Postpartum Voice of the Week

Postpartum Voice of the Week: @jamesandjax’s “Ghosts That We Knew (Hope in the Darkness)”

This past week there were several powerful posts about PPD. The writing these days is not only prolific but profound. It’s encouraging to see so many new voices growing and fearlessly sharing their journeys.

The post which caught my attention this week was over at Jamie & Jax’s place. She wrote a piece in which she used music as the inspiration, “Ghosts That We Knew” by Mumford & Sons to be precise.

I rarely listen to new music as I get stuck in my own rut because of my OCD. But I decided to find the song on Spotify and give it a whirl.

I cried.

The song is so perfectly fitted for #ppdchat, as Jamie points out –something another Warrior mom, Lindsay, mentioned to her. I haven’t listened to the song since the other day because it’s that powerful.

The lyrics that got to me the most?
Slam into you right at the start of the song. I was a blubbering mess for the rest of it.

The first few lyrics are:

“You saw my pain, washed out in the rain
Broken glass, saw the blood run from my veins
But you saw no fault no cracks in my heart
And you knelt beside my hope torn apart”

These lyrics truly embody the spirit of #ppdchat. We see the cracks yet we still love and support one another without judgment, without hesitation, and with compassion.

Thank you Jamie & Lindsay, for bringing this to “light” and for being such amazing members of the community –together, we are a light which will never rest, never fade, and always be brightly shone upon the path of those who follow in our path.

Go check out her post and the video for the song here.

Postpartum Voice of the Week: The Monster Within

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Every so often, I read a blog post which takes me right back into the darkness. Right back into the days spent in the middle of the vortex with the Wicked Witch flying right past my window.

This is one of those posts.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time ruminating or introducing the post.

I will say that if you’re vulnerable, you may want to avoid it. There’s a lot of showing instead of telling, raw honesty, and power in this post.

It’s why this post by Kimberly at Reflections of Now is my pick for Postpartum Voice of the Week.

Go. Read. Love.

Postpartum Voice of the Week: @jenrenpody’s Horror Show in My Mind

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I have a special place in my heart for women who struggle with Intrusive Thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, I have a place in my heart for all women who struggle with Postpartum Mood & Anxiety Disorders, but Intrusive Thoughts plagued me during both of my episodes. They are insidious tenacious monsters hell-bent on tearing your mind and soul apart.

When I come across a post mentioning Intrusive Thoughts, I read it with a heavy heart. I know how she felt when those thoughts attacked her. The burning fear, the anxiety, the repulsion of “Oh my GOD why am I thinking like this?!?!” which catapults itself through her brain as the monster takes hold in her mind.

This particular blogger, Jen, a proud member of #ppdchat, writes a heart-rendering (and potentially triggering) post about her journey with Intrusive Thoughts. She’s revisiting this time in her life as a result of a tragic event in her area this past weekend. It’s difficult, as women who have been through this, not to flash back when something terrible happens in a family near us – or even harder yet, a family we know personally. We internalize our thoughts, our fears, and everything comes flooding back, threatening to pull us under.

My absolute favourite part of this past is this paragraph:

I knew that these intrusive thoughts were not real and that they were not rational. I could not stop them from replaying over and over in my head. It took me months of therapy to realize that I had suffered from these thoughts. In order to protect myself, I stuffed those thoughts way down deep. I could not bear to bring them to the light of the day because they were just too horrible to contemplate.

Jen deals with these emotions in a powerful post which you absolutely should read. As stated earlier, however, it may be possibly triggering if you’re still struggling and on fragile ground. So read her post, “Horror Show in My Mind: Intrusive Thoughts,” with a mindful consciousness and an open heart. Then show her some love, will you? She needs it this week.

My Postpartum Voice goes Zeen

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I joined a new Beta site this past week. Darren Rowse, over at ProBlogger recommended checking it out.

I received my official invite last night and spent the morning playing with it. It’s a neat site, allows you to aggregate content from across the web, social sites, and beyond into a neat “zeen” (that’s hipster for magazine, I think).

I produced a Zeen focused on “Celebrating Postpartum Voices” this morning. The theme is “A Retrospective of Postpartum Voices of the Week.”

You can check it out here.

Postpartum Voice of the Week: @ksluiter’s “heavy alphabet soup”

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It’s been awhile since I’ve done this but this past week, I read a post worthy of being highlighted as Postpartum Voice of the week. In fact, it’s inspired me to dive back into blogging here – I’ll be somewhat changing direction but it’ll still have the same Postpartum Mood & Anxiety Disorder focus. More about that in an upcoming post though. For now, I want to simply highlight this very deserving post.

Kate Sluiter blogs over at Sluiter Nation and has been doing so for 5 years now. Her writing is amazing regardless of the topic but when it comes to her experience with Postpartum Mood & Anxiety Disorders, it’s phenomenal. Kate is an open book, bravely sharing her experience after the birth of her first son, during her pregnancy with her second son, and now, after the birth of her second son.

Last week, Kate hit publish on a post entitled “heavy alphabet soup.”

It’s a MUST READ for any parent with or married to a partner with mental health issues. She is brutally honest, transparent, courageous, and personable in this post.

My favourite part of the post is here:

“I still feel very angry that I have to deal with this at all. I don’t want it. Any of it. I don’t want to be on meds, not because I don’t want to be better, but because I don’t want to have all these letters.

I know they don’t define me. But they are part of who I am. They are part of my biological make up. They are chemical imbalances in my brain.”

Amen, Kate.

In writing these two paragraphs, especially the last one, she clarifies something very important – mental illness/letters do not define us. They are a part of us yes, but they absolutely do not define us.

Go. Read her post, “heavy alphabet soup.” Leave her some love.