
Therapy for Maternal Mental Health Concerns
For when you want your old life back (but also don’t)
You’re allowed to need support, too.
You’re bouncing your baby in a Target checkout line, wearing your maternity leggings because they’re the only thing that fit postpartum. You haven’t eaten lunch. You haven’t peed. You’re holding it all together because you have to — because you love your kid, and this is just what moms do.
And then a stranger smiles and says, “Enjoy it! They grow up so fast!”
You smile back, because what else can you do? But inside, something cracks.
Motherhood is full of contradictions no one warns you about.
You love your baby and you miss your old life.
You’re grateful and overwhelmed.
You’re managing and…you’re truly not ok.
Maybe you’ve cried in the shower so your kids wouldn’t see.
Maybe you’ve Googled “postpartum rage” at 2am.
Maybe you feel like you disappeared the day your child was born.
Girl listen - even if I never speak with you, I need you to know
You. Are. Not. Alone.
And you don’t have to live like this.
Specific Concerns:
-
Mood issues during the postpartum period are incredibly common. In fact, 1 in 5 mothers and 1 in 10 fathers meet criteria for postpartum depression. These conditions are hugely misunderstood. They might show up as the sadness we expect, but often appear as anxiety, rage, or bone-crushing fatigue. They can appear weeks after a baby is born, but actually the most common onset for postpartum depression is six months postpartum.
Basically, what we DON’T learn about postpartum mood disorders could fill a book, so if you are asking yourself “is this PPD?” please reach out. That question indicates something is going on that deserves care and attention, and I would love to meet you where you are to help you process these feelings, develop coping strategies, and create a supportive plan to help you find your footing again.
-
Maybe you’ve had a thought that scared you: an image, a “what if,” something you don’t even want to say out loud. It’s not that you want to hurt your baby - it’s that your brain won’t stop flashing the worst-case scenarios. These thoughts feel out of control, unwanted, and deeply upsetting. You're not broken, and you’re not alone. This is more common than people talk about, and there is help.
-
Maybe you’re a new mom just trying to do right by your baby, but unsure how to sift through the mountains of advice and conflicting information out there. Maybe you feel you have to smash yourself into a certain “vibe” to be a good mom, but you’re beyond burned out at having to fake it all day. Maybe you've been in survival mode so long you can’t remember who you are outside of the daily grind of parenting.
Regardless of where you’re at in this process, I would love to help you find your values-aligned mom self. One where you feel like a good mom AND a person.
-
From conception to pregnancy to birth and then to the physical experience of parenting, we put our bodies through a LOT during the motherhood phase. Our body shape and size changes so much and so quickly we can end up feeling like we’re living inside a stranger.
Maybe you have struggled with infertility, miscarriage, or a traumatic birth experience that leaves you with a lot of unresolved anger and distrust of your body.
As someone who specializes in both eating disorders and maternal mental health, I have a unique lens on this issue. I would love to help you learn to make peace with your body and find a way to settle into your skin, so that you can find joy and confidence in moving through the world again.
-
Maybe feeding your kids brings up more fear or pressure than you expected. You want to break cycles, but you’re not even sure what’s yours and what you’ve absorbed. Welcome, fellow millennial mom! You survived the 90s/00s diet culture nonsense, and now all you want is to help your kids be less weird about food than you were. But how?
This is a unique passion of mine, and I would love to help you as you engage in this work. I have resources and referrals I trust on how to help you feed your kids, but the unfortunate reality is that your own relationship with food and your body shapes the way your kids see theirs — whether you mean for it to or not. So to really break this cycle, we’re going to have to explore deeper so that you can finally make peace with your body and food. Check out my link here to see how I approach eating concerns.
You don’t have to disappear to be a good mom.
We get SO MANY messages about what it takes to be a mom. And in some senses they’re true - there are a lot of sacrifices that come with becoming a parent. Some things DO get lost; your free time, your quiet, your ability to be one person, moving carefree through the world alone.
But something that we are all too quick to give up are the amazing, powerful, unique women who make up the moms. And you know what? No one wins in that scenario.
You’re allowed to have needs, too. You’re allowed to take up space.
My dream is to live in a world where there are as many different “kinds of moms” as there are women. Because we are all freaking awesome - don’t we want to show that to our kids?
Therapy doesn’t promise perfect balance. But it does give you space to be honest. To be messy. To remember who you are under all the noise.
If any of this sounds like it could be the breath of air you’ve needed, let’s chat. I’d be honored to meet you where you are and figure out what support could look like for you.