Depression Prepared Me For Motherhood

Early Motherhood and postpartum life has such a weird set up process in our world. We’re sold this idea that motherhood is going to be beautiful and amazing and everything our hearts desire. We are going to bounce back to our pre-pregnancy selves, have these amazingly clean houses, babies that sleep, and time to manage a business.

Then the reality of early motherhood hits. Motherhood is an awakening in and of itself. Awakening here meaning a newfound perspective and responsibility to live with this new level of awareness.

In the process of birthing or adopting a child, many women don’t realize that they are also being reborn as a mother. They are going to go through some really intense growing pains as a result and so few of us new moms have been properly prepared for this journey. Increasing rates of postpartum depression and anxiety demonstrate this clearly. We haven’t been told that it’s also our turn to become a new person.

However, I feel as if I was given some sort of leg up on this awakening process by being given the gift of Major Depressive Disorder.

My experiences with depressive states prepared me for early motherhood. I had no idea that was even a possible outcome of having a mental illness. That the symptoms and experiences you have somehow, in some weird ass way, are preparing you to level up for the next step in your life path.

Being able to pull yourself out of bed when you’re exhausted and don’t want to, figuring out how to make it work when you haven’t washed your hair in 5 days, feeding yourself when everything tastes like the color gray, and honestly just living with depression prepared me for the task that is raising another human and maintaining my own sanity.

I used to believe that depression made me unfit to be a mother. But the skills and insight that I gained due to working through my depressive episodes has made me more capable and able to handle this rodeo of parenthood than I ever could have dreamed.

Seriously.

Even more so because the deep burning embers of love I have for my daughter have literally given my dull, achy world so much meaning and color. They’ve fueled me in ways I can’t begin to describe. She was truly what was missing from my life and there were times in my life where I genuinely believed she wasn’t.

Well not her, but the idea of her. The idea that I am worthy of being responsible for the growth and development of another human being besides myself. That’s the lie that depression allowed me to believe.

I think believing that lie is a lot of what new moms face when they are facing postpartum depression and anxiety.

Postpartum Depression was 2 things for me:

1. On my radar

2. Something I had been training for almost my whole life.

Every depressive episode I’ve had since I started having them about 15 years ago has been an awakening of sorts. A period of deep and sometimes tumultuous contemplation of myself and my surroundings. Eventually it leads to a new burst of insight I did not possess before. I’ve had to rebuild myself hundreds of times since depression entered my life. Motherhood has been an easier rebuilding than previous rebuilds.

Depression has required so much self-taught education on coping mechanisms, awareness of my emotional states and when/how they shift, and most importantly how to care for myself on a very very basic level in order to function most days.

I used to be so embarrassed that I was spending years of my life essentially re-learning how to care for myself. Relearning how to brush my teeth, pick out clothes, and get a meal in my stomach so I can function and start the day. I’ve had depressive episodes so intense that I don’t eat for days at a time. Weeks where the only reason I left my bed was to go sleep on the couch. I have truly had to relearn how to survive during undesirable situations and circumstances.

And though it does feel like there are years of my life missing, I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Those years of rebuilding my identity and general self care abilities were some of the most important and crucial years of my life. I had to figure out how to pull myself out from the trenches of the deepest depressive states I have ever experienced. I had to get crystal clear on who I was as a person and woman in this world. It was tough work. But I realize now that it was preparing me for this exact stage of my life.

My depression and ability to feel things so intensely and so deeply was preparing me for motherhood.