The initiation into motherhood may be a woman’s most pivotal time in life. Everything you thought you knew about yourself is challenged, disrupted, rearranged and flipped on its head. It can feel chaotic., ecstatic, and existentially critical. There are so many aspects of this transformation that catalyze growth. We are asked to stretch ourselves in every direction and often times far beyond our capacity. Our bodies expand, our sleep cycle contracts, our relationship morphs into something far more utilitarian than we ever intended. The noise is constant the physical contact can feel outright violent and the demands are relentless. All with the backdrop of the most intense love, joy, and wonder that a person can feel. That growth can be both deeply exhilarating and profoundly painful all at the same time.
From fertility journey to pregnancy to post partum the path is not defined, straightforward or one way. We forge ahead through experimentation, trial and error while relying on our ancestral intuition.
Western medicine has assigned the terms post partum depression, postpartum anxiety, traumatic birth injury, post partum dissociative fugue or previously maternal hysteria. Like many other aspects of women’s health perinatal phenomenon has been under researched, under funded and women and mothers lack the support they need as the human family moves away from communal to autonomous isolation. As a result the industry has been quick to pathologize and over medicate mothers. And though the motherhood condition my lead to mental disturbance and disrupted functioning I don’t feel that we should oversimplify the multidimensional experience. This is why I have developed the nuanced clinical, creative, emotional and spiritual approach to assisting perinatal mothers in birthing themselves. Though you may be experiencing a variety of symptoms, there is nothing,”wrong” with you but you may be one of the millions of women with the Diagnosis Motherhood.