What postpartum depression? “Oh! It’s just the baby blues. It will go away!” The biggest lie ever sold to a new mom. Every time I hinted a subtle cry for help, it was brushed off with a frustrating ‘but as a mother you’re supposed to blah blah blah!’ 

I still remember the nasty looks I got when I sat down in despair over my strange yet, unresolved feelings that made me almost 100% sure that I was going crazy. Of course, I was jostled into the real world with a set of dirty dishes and a pile of household work staring at me with disgust.

The worst yet funniest part was that it was somehow not okay for me to feel angry. Why?

‘You just had a baby! You’re supposed to drown in a pool of unlimited joy just by looking into your baby’s eyes.’ 

Some less harsh but equally ridiculous statements both offline and online included:

‘Love yourself’

‘You’re overthinking it’

‘So, moms have been doing this for ages? You’re not unique!’

As I sit here as a mother to two adorable sons, thinking about the time right after I had my first baby makes me crawl out of my skin.

I couldn’t stand my 4-month-old baby, so I ran!

There he was, this supposed 4-month-old bundle of joy squirming right in front of me as I felt intense anger rushing through my veins. He was more than innocent but somehow, this little angel seemed nothing but the biggest culprit to my well-being at the time. So, instead of lashing out at the unaware infant, I raised to the other room and broke down in disbelief. 

I’m heartbreakingly amused when I think about my baby crying in one room and his mother weeping on the floor in the very next room. And my irritation? Well, it would appear that making a mountain out of a mole hill was an idiom inspired by my real-life situation. 

It appeared as though the sun would never shine again. Even though I ignored everything else, I was unable to tend to the very basic needs of my child.

My crying got to such a point that catching a tiny bit of oxygen to breathe seemed like a privilege.

I faintly remember that there was even a time when I felt too defective to be fixed by medicines. Of course, this is not new, as a parent, you must be aware that there comes a point when sleep becomes the most significant privilege of all.

My postpartum depression lied to me all the time!

That’s right! My postpartum depression kept on telling me that I was the one infected with this deeply personal flaw. It made snide remarks to me like:

‘Poornima, you wouldn’t be in this mess if you were just a little stronger or smarter.’

I felt magnetically pulled towards a never-ending dark hole from which there was no way out.

When this went on endlessly, I had an epiphany. Something was wrong that was beyond me, my strength as a human being and my willpower. When I started to put a human spin on the emotions I was feeling, I began to realize that it’s not supposed to be all rainbows and unicorns.

Just like relationships are much more than walking off into the sunset together, motherhood is also more than endlessly cradling your baby. Before being placed into the role of a mother, I had one thing in common with the rest of the world. 

I was just as human as them, which meant I was still capable of feeling all kinds of emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant. The pressure of living a fairy tale slowly lifted.

Did I manage to break the glass ceiling?

Well, I am relieved to acknowledge that I had a glass ceiling in the first place. It was progress for me as I stopped putting every ounce of blame on myself for the way I was feeling. Along came the realization, the worst thing a mother could do to herself is to have no time for herself.

In today’s world, people are either glamorizing or criticizing the much-necessary me time. While I’m not advocating neglecting your baby to get unlimited manicures, but having a fixed amount of time every day is a must for your mental and emotional health.

So, it all starts off by blocking certain sounds. One prominent sound includes any sentence that starts with the phrase, ‘but as a mother you’re supposed to…’. After rejecting this notion, I decided to set aside 30 minutes each day for writing, one of my long-lost hobbies when I had a child.

So, to answer the question above, did I manage to break the glass ceiling? To be honest, not at first. But prioritizing myself with consistency and continuity helped me and become a better version of myself and a better mother. While I didn’t shatter the glass ceiling, my newfound approach to motherhood and life, in general, helped me put a bunch of cracks in that invisible ceiling.

The two pillars that finally broke all foundations and chased away my postpartum depression forever…

There’s one entity that can be your best friend and your worst enemy. For me, it was my hormones. It’s not a secret that pregnancy and childbirth can bring a whole wind of hormonal clashes in a woman’s body. 

As expected, the chaotic dancing of our hormones is bound to impact our mental and emotional faculties at some point. That’s exactly what happened to me when I was suffering from postpartum depression. So, I decided to befriend my hormones by rebalancing them.

No, you must be thinking about how. Well, to start off, I made myself aware of the role different hormones play to regulate our system and how diet impacts the working of these hormones. Mind you, I never promote munching on nothing but raw veggies and fruits.

A hormone reset is definitely possible by retaining your cultural foods and a happy lifestyle where your taste buds don’t curse you for depriving them of everything delicious! Anyway, since a complete hormone reset is beyond the scope of this article, I poured out all my right and wrong steps towards achieving this balance in my crisp and to-the-point ebook, ‘Hormone Reset’. 

Here, I also talk about an energetic realignment that finally kicked my postpartum depression to the curb. It’s unbelievable how I enjoy a life full of personal, financial, and relational abundance. This brings me to my next point. Energetic alignment is about balancing your energies by understanding and implementing simple concepts like an energetic shadow, brain drain, activation, and transformational mutation. 

Again, I have summed it all up in my short and sweet no-fluff ebook. To complement your understanding of these concepts, I urge you to contact me directly here for a quick & FREE 30-minute strategy session where I give you everything you need via a one-on-one experience.

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