Navigating Postpartum Depression with Self-Compassion with Jeannie Ewing
Get to know the 2024 Mental Health and Motherhood Virtual Conference speakers in this summer series!
It’s time for another meet and greet!
As we wait for the 2024 Mental Health and Motherhood Conference on October 11, 2024, we have the chance to meet our speakers this summer on Substack. I sat down with
and asked her our conference question:“How can we treat ourselves with compassion through navigating postpartum depression and crisis?”
This is a question I ask myself a lot in this newsletter and it was a joy to hear Jeannie talk with energy and passion on this topic. Take a 5-minute pause in your day to watch our chat or read the transcript below!
“So I think compassion is really about giving ourselves grace, giving ourselves space. It’s really being gentle with the moments that we might fail in our own estimation. Meaning like if we're really hard on ourselves, if we have this really high bar or standard of motherhood that when we fall short of that, which we will, that we just really say it's okay. You know, I'm a good enough mom. I did my best today.”
You can also reach out to
through her own newsletter, on her website, or ask questions in the comments here.Transcript
Chanel Riggle (00:00)
Hi, Jeannie thank you so much for joining me this morning. I wanted to give everyone a quick idea of what you're going to be speaking on at the Mental Health and Motherhood Virtual Conference in October. So I would love to know, how can we treat ourselves with compassion through navigating postpartum depression and crisis?
Jeannie (00:22)
I think first we have to recognize what it is. We have to name it.
And that's really hard to do when you have severe brain fog, when you are chronically sleep deprived, when you're kind of just shifting from like one task to another and you don't really get a lot of room to breathe or think or process. And that's different for different personalities.
So for instance, I'm a highly sensitive person and I'm an introvert by nature. And what I've found in speaking with other moms who are a lot like me, wired like me, is that it's kind of harder for us to actually catch our breath or catch up with the demands of an infant because we need more space and time to kind of like collect ourselves and say, “Wait, what just happened? How do I deal with that? What was that that I was feeling? And what do I need like to be attentive to or to attend to our needs?”
And so, I think that the first thing is we have to notice what those signs are and I'll talk about that in depth in my talk at the conference, but then also in familiarizing ourselves with that.
Then also just saying OK I have to take a breather to really find out what I need before this does become a crisis before I'm actually like crumbling and collapsing and I have a breakdown, because if we don't do that and things kind of compound really heavily and we feel this weight…what happened to me was that, you know, I'd wake up every day with just a sense of, of, foreboding and just like, this is my life. It's never going to get better. It only gets worse. It's filled with noise and activity and demands, if we don't, take like micro breaks, which, look different for every mom.
I have five kids, somebody might have one or two, you know, and it also depends on the needs of your children. I have kids with special needs. So you even just taking like small breaks that are frequent throughout the day and actually like really going inward and asking ourselves, being curious about what we're feeling, what we're thinking, and then recognize if there's any red flags, if I feel like life is bleak.
If I have thoughts of harming myself, if I wish that, you know, life would be over or I would die. I mean, I had those kinds of thoughts. And so those are huge red flags that, you know, it's really important to take immediate action. To get your life back on track and to take care of yourself.
But a lot of times we're not really equipped to know what that is and what that looks like, because we're told that you know, motherhood is going to be this flowery experience and we're going to have this perfect bonding with our babies. And when postpartum depression sets in, it's a shock because we don't really know why this is happening. And we felt an immense amount of guilt that it's not the experience that we were told, or we expected it to be.
So I think compassion is really about giving ourselves grace, giving ourselves space. It’s really being gentle with the moments that we might fail in our own estimation. Meaning like if we're really hard on ourselves, if we have this really high bar or standard of motherhood that when we fall short of that, which we will, that we just really say it's okay. You know, I'm a good enough mom. I did my best today.
Also to ask for help. And that's really hard for a lot of mothers. I mean, ask for help from your partner, ask for help from your community, whatever that looks like. It could be siblings. It could be parents. It could be your neighbors. It could be someone from your place of worship friends, you know, I mean, just reach out and let people know how they can help you. “Can you babysit for two hours? Can you go with me so that I can go shopping for medical equipment”, like in my daughter's case, where you just don't know and you feel overwhelmed.
I think journaling is helpful for some of us, probably the majority of us too, to actually just kind of explore privately and also to get this like brain dump on the page. So it can be like your own private space where you just get it all out.
You can draw, you can doodle, you can write poetry, you can write a letter to yourself, you can vent, but you're not actually transferring that to the people, to the humans in your life.
Chanel Riggle (05:01)
I am so excited to hear more about what you're going to talk about in October and you have me feeling just very pumped up about this event. Thank you so much for stopping in and letting everybody know what to expect from you.
Again, we are going to have our virtual conference on October 11th, 2024 and the topic is how can we show ourselves self -compassion. So thank you so much for joining and we will hear more from you later.
Jeannie (05:31)
Thank you.
Ready for more discussion on mental health and motherhood?
Learn how to treat yourself with compassion in mind, body, and spirit during this live-streamed event. Motherhood Minute is hosting its first virtual conference October 11, 2024.
TICKETS ARE LIVE JULY 1st!
https://www.mentalhealthmomevent.com/
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