Asking for Help Was Only the Beginning
Hi Friends,
Last week, I shared what it looked like from the outside. I had returned to work after having my second daughter. I was performing well. Leadership was happy. On paper, I was thriving.
Behind the scenes, I was experiencing postpartum depression and anxiety for the first time in my life. At some point, I knew what I needed to do. Or at least I thought I did. "Ask for help." That phrase had become almost a mantra in my head. Because it's what we tell new moms, it's what we tell people who are struggling, and it's what I told myself.
I remember thinking that if I did the vulnerable thing and just asked for help, then everything would finally start getting better. Culturally, we have conditioned ourselves to believe that asking would be the hard part. That once we swallowed our pride, recovery would simply begin. I was wrong.
Asking for help mattered. It also wasn't the finish line I imagined. It was just the beginning. The irony wasn't that I needed help. The irony was that getting help required the exact cognitive skills depression had quietly taken from me.
Before postpartum depression, if you had asked me what depression looked like, I probably would have said sadness, exhaustion, hopelessness - I would not have said executive functioning.
I didn't know depression could change the way your brain plans, organizes, remembers, prioritizes, or follows through, and I didn't know it could take away the mental skills you need to recover. And that was really hard - for a woman, a mother, an ambitious dreamer who has always just made it work.
Planning becomes harder.
Decision-making slows down.
Prioritizing feels impossible.
Paperwork becomes overwhelming.
Following up takes enormous effort.
Your executive functioning, the mental system that helps you plan, organize, initiate, remember, and follow through on everyday tasks, can become significantly impaired.
And that's exactly what makes getting help so difficult. Because asking for help isn't actually a single action. It's all of the hundred tiny ones that come after.
Getting help meant:
Recognizing something was wrong
Figuring out what kind of support I actually needed
Trying to find providers, then realizing I had to pay $800 out of pocket to see a specific postpartum psychiatrist (because somehow living in a large metropolitan city like San Francisco still meant she was "out of network")
Waiting weeks between appointments while knowing I needed help now
Navigating Short-Term Disability and multiple leaves of absence
Completing a ridiculous amount of paperwork
Explaining my story over and over again
Remembering to follow up
Advocating for myself when the first answer wasn't enough
and on, and on, and on...
Every single one of those required executive functioning. The work of getting help was happening while my ability to do that work was quietly disappearing. That has stayed with me long after my own recovery.
We often tell struggling mothers, "Just ask for help." We mean well. But I've started wondering if that's only the first sentence.
What if the better question is: Who is helping her get the help?
Because support isn't simply the existence of resources. Support is making those resources possible to access when someone's capacity is at its lowest.
I've been thinking about that question a lot over the last 2 years. Not just because of what I lived through. But because I've started wondering how many women think they somehow failed at getting help...when really, they were being asked to navigate an impossibly complicated system with a brain that was already carrying too much.
That has become one of the reasons Momma Chill exists.
Momma Chill doesn't replace therapy. It doesn't replace psychiatrists or medication or the patchwork of resources, I knitted together to help me heal. But I do hope it can become one small part of the space between "I need help" and "I'm finally receiving it."
Because that space can be a long one. And often, it's the loneliest part. Sometimes healing begins with someone sitting beside you in the boat. Helping you read the map. Reminding you that you don't have to navigate the whole ocean by yourself.
And this week, something beautiful happened. We opened the doors to our very first Momma Chill Circle.
Four women. One room. One beginning.
I left feeling deeply hopeful about what's possible when we create spaces that aren't asking women to perform strength while they're still searching for it. Thank you for being here while this idea continues to become something real.
