Happy New Year!
I’m not normally the type of person to make New Year’s resolutions but there is just something about a new year that makes me feel inspired. It’s a great place to start if you’re looking to change your life and that’s exactly what the Running in Triangles blog has been for me.
This month marks the two year anniversary of Running in Triangles and it has been quite a journey. When I first started, I knew that I wanted to talk openly about postpartum depression and help raise awareness about maternal mental health. But I had no idea what an impact it would make on my life and the lives of others.
In 2017, I wrote about all kinds of things I learned while raising my three kids, from sleep training and breastfeeding to party planning. But it was my posts about postpartum depression that gained the most popularity, and the ones I felt most inspired to publish.
Posts like 9 Reasons Why Mothers Don’t Speak Up About Postpartum Depression and 14 Ways to Help a Mother with Postpartum Depression were easy to write because they were the things that I’ve always wanted to say. Two years later, they are still some of the most popular posts on the blog and have inspired many women to speak up and seek help.
I didn’t know it at the time, but those two posts have become the cornerstone content of Running in Triangles. The fact that women don’t talk about postpartum depression was something that needed to change and a big part of the problem is the lack of support.
Their popularity confirmed what I already knew: women with postpartum depression wanted to speak up and their loved ones wanted to help them, but no one knew how or where to begin.
This discovery led to last year’s Postpartum Depression Guest Post Series. It was my way of giving these women a safe space to tell their stories without worrying about being judged or criticized. I accepted and published every single guest post that was submitted, no matter who it was from.
Of course, I led by example and shared my own postpartum depression story, which was not at all easy to do. I also tackled tougher topics such as intrusive thoughts, postpartum rage and feeling suicidal. As difficult as it was to research and write about these topics, I knew that mothers needed to be better informed about them.
This past year, I spent a lot of time reading postpartum depression stories, participating in online support groups and watching YouTube videos of women trying to explain what it’s like, and their stories were all so unique.
I read about women who spent thousands of dollars on fertility treatments to conceive, and others who ended up pregnant unexpectedly.
I heard from women who had incredibly supportive spouses, and those who suffered from divorce and separation at the hand of postpartum depression.
I watched some women struggle openly and others do everything in their power to hide what they were feeling.
But one thing was the same… their pain.
Knowing that thousands of other women, from all around the world, were dealing with the same pain, no matter their backgrounds, made me feel incredibly empowered; as if I had an army of women behind me who could validate my feelings.
To help put it into perspective, I chose ten questions about postpartum depression and decided to ask as many women as possible to answer them.
I am excited to see how the answers will compare and my hope is that they will prove to other women who might feel isolated and afraid of speaking up that they are not, in fact, alone.
My goal for 2019 is to get as many women with postpartum depression as possible to answer these 10 questions.
If you, or someone you know, has postpartum depression, please click below to submit your answers and help me share this questionnaire so that it can reach women from all around the world.
In addition to this exciting challenge, I hope to continue providing more information about postpartum depression and maternal mental health this year. They say knowledge is power and it couldn’t be more true when it comes to mental health. Being misunderstood, judged and stigmatized are some of the biggest barriers for a woman with postpartum depression and it’s my mission to change that.
Thank you so much to all of my supporters, readers, contributors and of course, to my fellow postpartum depression survivors who inspire me to keep going.
