heart-centered mamas

A friend asked me recently when I struggled most with postpartum depression. This is a friend I have known since my oldest child was a few months old. And she didn’t know. Many of my friends didn’t know, maybe still don’t. They didn’t know because I didn’t know. They didn’t know because I was afraid to use the words postpartum depression. I believed the stigma that postpartum depression only happens to moms that don’t love their babies, moms that don’t take care of themselves

"If you break your arm, everyone runs over to sign your cast, but if you tell people you're depressed, everyone runs the other way. That's the stigma." Kevin Breel, honest comedian We probably all know this impulse, to move away instead of lean in. I know it. When I was hit with Postpartum Anxiety and Depression for the third time, and this time actually had the language to understand what was happening to me, I looked back on friendships in my past where I hadn't understoo

After birth, a new mama may find herself famished. The birth journey, coming after possibly months of discomfort and limited eating, combined with a new nursling takes a lot of energy. Regardless of blood loss, birthing a baby is the largest energy out put a woman has in her life. In traditional cultures, warming foods are said to heal and stabilize a new mama's body. When I am pregnant, a significant part of my nesting revolves around food. I make lists of food to store

A woman opens her body, her soul, her identity & psyche in order to travel through birth. In many ways all that she was is shattered. She is coming into being alongside her new born babe. The pieces fly around then settle into a pattern so erratic it feels her life is still airborne. The first forty days is the time of integration. There is truly a fourth trimester with its own catalogue of hormonal reactions & physical changes. What took 9 months to form is suddenly gone, bu