24/11/2025
Before I became a mother, I understood postpartum depression the way many clinicians do—through textbooks, case studies, supervision, and the stories clients entrusted to me. I approached it with the framework I trusted most: cognitive-behavioral therapy. I focused on identifying distortions, restructuring thoughts, and building practical coping strategies. And while I offered genuine compassion, I now realize that my understanding lived mostly in my mind, not in my body.
I could describe PPD, but I had never felt its weight.
Motherhood shifted everything.
No amount of clinical training prepared me for the emotional tidal waves that arrived after my child was born—the exhaustion that blurred the days, the quiet guilt that seeped in when I didn’t feel as joyful as I “should,” the intrusive thoughts that felt foreign, unwelcome, and terrifying. The disconnect between what I was experiencing and what I believed I was supposed to experience created a painful tension.
Suddenly, PPD wasn’t a chapter in a manual—it was a lived reality.
Through that experience, I learned that postpartum depression doesn’t ask for cognitive reframing first. It asks for gentleness. For slowness. For permission to not be okay. It asks for someone to sit in the dark with you before trying to bring in the light.
My work as a therapist changed because I changed. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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My journey through postpartum depression didn’t just make me a more empathetic therapist—it made me a more whole one. Through lived experience, I now meet mothers where they truly are, not where theory says they should be. My work is infused with humanity, and my understanding of PPD is no longer abstract. It’s embodied. It’s intimate. And it fuels my passion to walk alongside others with compassion, clarity, and care. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
