Story of Resilience - Navigating and Overcoming Postpartum

With babies joining the family, sometimes depression, baby-blues, and anxiety join too. So many women struggle with this after the birth of a child! Kate is here this week, and she tells us her story of post partum from signs, mental health, physical health, things that helped, things that didn't help, and overcoming it and seeing the progress and joy years later.

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Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast with Hillary and Jen.

Hilary: Welcome to the Podcast. We're excited to have you guys with us today. We have a topic today that we are due to discuss should have been discussed a long time ago. It's a topic that I think will really help so many of you listeners out there. And so that's why I'm so excited to introduce Kate here today. She's going to share her story of resilience as she talks a little bit about her experience with postpartum and some of the skills that she has developed in order to build that resiliency in her life. So, I'm just going to go ahead and turn the time over to her. Officially welcome her here and let her tell you a little bit about her life. Go ahead.

Katie: All right. Well, thank you so much for having me come. It is a story that is it's close to my heart. It's a it's become a huge part of my life. It's one of those things where when you're in the hard, you are definitely not happy that you're there, you're not grateful for it. But now looking back, it has shaped my life into so much more than what it could have been. So, to just like share just a little bit about who I am, I am a mother of three. I'm a writer. I write for a magazine. I studied English and I also perform in musical theater. So that's a little bit about me, just a little bit of background, and I'll just go ahead and jump in to my story. So, I think we could just begin with the birth of my third child. The whole pregnancy was awesome, things went great. I was feeling good. We were very excited to welcome our little boy. My other two were a boy and a girl, and we were just our whole family was thrilled for this little guy to join our family, and we're so glad he's a part of our family. But about four days after my delivery it I knew something was off and I just I knew I wasn't OK, but I thought, Oh, will I know, you know, I had a little bit of the baby blues, mostly with my second, not as much with my first, and I'm sure my hormones are shifting. You know, I was feeling a little bit anxious but thought, Well, it's I'm sure it'll pass. But I immediately just decided, you know, this is my third kid. Like, I'm not even going to wait. I'm going to start reaching out for help. And so, I just asked a few neighbors like, Hey, I'm probably going to need a little bit of help. I'm not feeling OK. And me thinking like, so confident, Oh, I'm on top of it. You know, we'll get through this. But something that just surprised me and totally threw me off is that it didn't get better. It didn't get better with like people coming in and helping me with my kids. It didn't get better as time went on, it just got worse. And so, you know, of course, I went back into the doctor for my six weeks follow up and was not doing well. Six weeks after the baby was born. And so, from there, we started to jump in and try to find, you know, therapists try to find psychiatrists, looked into medications and things like that, and things just continued to worsen and they worsened. And then about four months postpartum, things really started to spiral out of control that it was no longer just anxiety, it was no longer just the baby blues or depression. I started having panic attacks, but not just like a panic attack here and there. There was one day where I had three in a 24-hour period. They were they were brought on by just simple stimulus like the kids would turn music on and somehow it was throwing by nervousness and panic attacks. One happened at a parade. And for anyone who has or has not experienced a panic attack, it's extremely exhausting. It often messes with your digestive system. It would often cause me to vomit and went in it and shake. Oftentimes you feel like you're going to die. That's usually a lot of people. When they're in it, they they'll repeat over and over. I'm going to die. This is the end. I love you. You know where they think they're having a heart attack. There's often chest pain associated with it. That just gives you like kind of a quick overview of what those were like. But you can't really stop them when you're in them. You just you're in them.

Jen: Ya, you’re in it. I have had several of them and they are not fun. They are super scary

Katie: Ya, they're super scary. So scary, so terrifying. So, at that point, it was just like, OK, if I'm having multiple during the day, it was just rocking my whole body and just exhausting me. And so, we had already tried a couple of different doctors, but we decided to try another one. And I was able to get in to see a psychiatrist and he prescribed medication that was like one of the safest. You know, I'm not necessarily going to share the name here because it's not like it's not safe. It is a safe one. However, it did not do well with my system. It caused something called the paradoxical effect, which means it did the opposite of what it was supposed to do. On all SSRI drugs, you'll see something called the black box warning that you know you need let loved ones know when you start taking this medication. Sometimes it can bring on suicidal thoughts, different things like that. So anyway, it was kind of like that, but blown to epic proportions. So, I had already been having like panic attacks, right? But this medication, once I started on it and it got into my system, I woke up shaking violently. It wasn't the shaking of the panic attacks I'd had before. Like, the whole bed was shaking and it felt like my throat was closing off and a lot of my muscles were just contracting. And I mean, the shaking woke up. My husband and I said, I don't know what's going on like, you know, I couldn't speak very well, but and he was like, what should I do? And we, luckily at the time had a paramedic living across the street. So, in the middle of the night, he got our paramedic neighbor to come over. And of course, I didn't know, I didn't know what to do. But during that panic attack, there were just some odd things that I hadn't experienced before that now started happening. And those were intrusive thoughts and also just kind of weird out of control thoughts like I felt like I couldn't get out of the bed. If I did, I would throw myself against the wall or, you know, things that didn't make any sense, but it just felt like something else was taking over my mind and body. And then, of course, like when it’s kind of started to come down, I, you know, had the normal digestive distress. And then and then all of a sudden it was just like hitting a wall of pain. It was just everything in my body hurt. And the only way to kind of tolerate that pain was to run and walk. And so, in the middle of the night, I went and ran, walk in, walked in my neighborhood for about five hours just to kind of get through it. So unfortunately, the next day, when I called the office to explain that I had had a problem with the medication and. That was kind of the end. They didn't say, let's come, have you come back in, let's check things out. They just kind of canceled my follow up and said, OK, because I said, Well, I can't take that medication anymore. So, I think there must have been some kind of a misunderstanding there. But I just thought, really, like, I just have to figure it out now?

Jen: You’re leaving me high and dry now?

Katie: Yeah. So, it was that just I felt so, so discouraged because I thought, OK, well, the medicine was supposed to help, and it just made it worse anyway. So that was that was that was like rock bottom. I would say, however, thinking, OK, I guess I have to figure this out on my own. I tried to keep going and you go two more months like that. And by Christmas, like I couldn’t. My cognitive ability to even reason was really waning. I was having a hard time holding up my head, my appetite was totally gone. I had lost the ability to shallow food. Could no longer fall asleep. I had forgotten how to do that and was just basically panicking. About 90 percent of the time there was usually about a 10 percent moment, and it often hit in the afternoon when I was like, Maybe I'm OK, sort of. But most of the time it was just panic. And so, I was frantically trying to find lots of different things. I would try holistic doctors and, you know, different things people would say, why don't you try these essential oils? And like, I'll try anything, I'll try anything. You just let me know, I'll try it. But because of that experience with the medication, it created so much more anxiety about medication because I didn't know if that would happen again. So that's how it was at the time. But I kept trying, kept trying. And the right after Christmas, I had four different appointments scheduled for the week after Christmas and by the fourth one, my sister came to pick me up one morning after being up all night. And she was supposed to take me to my doctor's appointment and she asked me if I'd eaten anything. I said, No, I really can't eat. I just don't have an appetite. And she said, as my sister, you know, she's like, Well, you just try for me. And I said, OK, you're right. Like, I need to try and eat. I will try. So, I grabbed a little cutie orange and took it in the car with us because I couldn't drive like it was a mess. It wasn't safe at the time, so she was so sweet too, to give me a ride to my appointment. But as I like, picked up that orange and peeled it and put a piece in my mouth, like when I literally could not swallow it and I was shaking and I'm like, OK, I haven't slept in who knows how long? I just told her, I said, Hey sis. Can you just take me to the E.R.? Like I, I'm not getting better. And whatever it takes, it was point like, I need to get better. And that day, realizing like how severe things had gotten. I remember telling my seven-month-old baby. Like talking to him because nursing had become it was one of the only like semi positive things that I had in my day to day life was just that bond with my baby. But knowing my body had just reached a point where it had nothing left to give, I remember telling him, I can't nurse you anymore, and I’m, you know, it's not like he was offended or anything, but it was hard for me to let go the last thing.

But I was just to the point where I knew that I couldn't do that anymore and that I was ready to go to the hospital knowing like I might have to stay. And that was part of why I knew I had to wean him right then and there. So, I went to the hospital and after having been to so many doctors and therapists up to this point. I had a really sweet experience with who, a social worker who I like to refer to as my fairy godmother. She when she walked in the room, she had silver hair and little glasses on the end of her nose and big brown eyes. And I remember thinking she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. I was extremely weak at this point. I was laying. I couldn't sit in the chair. I was kind of laying sideways in the chair, and she came in and started asking me some questions. And for anyone who doesn't know this. If you if you end up in the emergency room for mental health issues, they usually send in the social worker because they need to assess if you are a danger to yourself or others, that's just normal protocol. I didn't know that up until that point, but so she came in and she started asking me what's going on and to go into a little more detail of what was going on with like those intrusive thoughts, which they really were in a lot of ways, sometimes the catalyst of the panic attacks because it would be I would be sitting down nursing my baby. And as soon as the milk would let down, I would like have these very vivid images of me, like picking up my baby and just smacking against the crib. And it's not like I wanted to do that. It was, and then it would terrify me. I remember having that happen and I ran to my neighbors and I handed her my baby and I said, I am so scared, can you just hold my baby? I just need to know he's safe because like, I'm having this really terrible thoughts. So, I was telling her how I was having some of those thoughts, how I was. I was afraid when I would sit in a vehicle like I just constantly felt like I was going to open the door and jump out. And so, it was really weird, a really weird experience to have, like on the other side, kind of seeing people experienced suicide or lose someone to suicide and kind of how my own judgment of like what that would be like, why would you ever do something like that? And then having had those weird thought it was like, wasn't even really coming from me. And I don't really, I can't really explain that. However, I feel like there's like the suicidal ideation, but there's also the there's also kind of I like to call it homesick for heaven rather than wanting to die. I mean, it is wanting to die. But sometimes I think that life gets to the point where your day to day is so painful that you just longed for a place where someone loves you, someone will hold you and where you can feel at peace. And I think that it created a lot of compassion for me, for other people who had taken their life or had experienced thoughts along those lines. I understood that so much better. So, I was explaining this to the social worker, my fairy godmother, and she just looked me dead in the eye and had been the first person that had ever been this bold to me, and I don't know why that is.

Maybe it never had sunk in with anyone else, but I remember looking at me and saying, So I don't know you super well, you know, but I've been talking to you here for a few minutes. And from what I can see and what I know, you are not going to do any of those things. You know, the percentage of the chances that you're actually going to hurt your baby or yourself are so low. And for some reason, it like stuck, she knew that I had a really intense fear of medication because of what had happened before. And she was again very bold and she just looked me in the eye and she said, Look, the doctor is going to give you some medicine here today. I want you to just try and take a deep breath. And say this is going to help. And I want you to be super brave and just take that medicine. And it was it was one of the quick acting drugs that like typically they don't give to nursing mothers. And that's why I hadn't had it up to that point because I was too afraid of what it would do to the baby. So, I'm trying to think what it even was, Ativan? I think, is the it's one. It's like a Xanax type thing that it’s kind of snaps you out of it quicker, but they can be very addictive. So, they're not really a long-term thing. But I was at a point where we needed something to snap out of it, to try to get my nervous system to the point where I could like relearned how to sleep and eat. So, they gave that to me, and it was the first time in almost eight months that I was like, Wait, maybe it's going to be OK. And I remember I ate that day, I ate some food, and it was amazing. But then, of course, that led to like some withdrawal symptoms that were really, really hard. I ended up only taking that for a week. Again, back to my fairy godmother, she told me, I want you to get the Headspace app and I want you to meditate every day. And I was like, I don't know what that is, but I'll do it and I'll share a little bit more about this, as we probably discussed, but I still meditate pretty much every day. And that was almost six years ago. So, the meditation changed things for sure, it read. It taught me I learned how to fall asleep using meditation, so that was really cool. So that's kind of that kind of gives you the worst of the worst as far as how hard things were. If we want to do like a I'll give you like a quick little timeline of my recovery. I would say I didn't really feel other than like the very short lived, you know, drug induced calm that I had for a minute there. I didn't feel any real calm connection. Comfort, peace. For a solid 18 months. But I was working on it, and I and I remembered that I had had those emotions before, but my nervous system, just like was in so much turmoil as we were, you know, trying new medications and therapy and all of those things that it just wasn't there yet. So, 18 months of really bad. But I remember at that 18-month point, I was out for a walk. My baby was 18 months old and it would have been September the following year. So, had been almost a year from, well, I mean, Christmas to September. What is that? Nine months since that E.R. visit. And I was out for a walk in the leaves were gold. They had changed colors and they were waving in the wind. And when I looked at them, I felt joy and I just was completely overcome because I hadn't felt joy or so long. And it was such a beautiful experience to know that my recovery had gotten to the point where I could feel joy. And I just, oh, I can still just like, picture myself being under those trees and just being so amazed like, Wow, what a miracle. Here I am feeling joy for the first time. If you skip ahead to three years postpartum, I was doing pretty well. I think at about three years I was like functioning, still having some anxiety symptoms, occasional panic attacks that may be only like two a year at that point, so functioning really well.

And then this is the reason why I think that the story of resilience may be why I could be one to share my story of resilience, is that I had a realization last fall. So last October, it would have been exactly five years from kind of my rock bottom time that time and my baby was about four months old and I was having multiple panic attacks a day. I had the medication failure. I was feeling extremely hopeless. I remember I'm a very spiritual person, so I remember one of the days lying in bed after being totally rocked by a panic attack. And I prayed, I said a simple prayer and prayed that I would get well enough that someday I could make mac and cheese for my kids. And that was my greatest desire to just be like functioning kind of doing those normal, everyday things like laundry. Like, I remember just being like, I just want to like, get up and do laundry and make mac and cheese and, you know, clean up a mess and read a story and not feel like this. Anyway, so. So, I had remembered that prayer. So last fall, October, five years . From that point, I went on a trip with my husband and a group of family and friends, and we decided we were going to scale the entire Grand Canyon in one day. So, it's called Rim to Rim. Maybe, you know, people might be familiar with that term. It's about somewhere between 20 and 26 miles Everyone's like, things clock it a little bit different and you drop about, well, elevation loss and gain is total about 5000 feet. So, it's like marathon length, but plus elevation . It's a really. Big thing, I was pretty nervous about it going into it. However, I did it. I mean, long story short, I did it. And as I was on the final ascent, there's switchbacks that go up for the like the final seven miles. You're just going up the whole way, the whole way, the whole way. And I was in extremely good condition like, I won't lie. I had been training well, honestly, if you go back like I'd been working on stuff for five years, but I was training specifically for this event from January to October. So however, I didn't, I still didn't think I was going to be strong enough. But then when I was on those final switchbacks, I felt so good and I was just going up. My body was just carrying me, and I was just amazed and amazed by the Grand Canyon. It was so beautiful and so exhilarating.

And just as I was probably within the last three miles, I remember looking back over the Grand Canyon and right then it just popped into my mind was the memory of saying that prayer praying that someday I would make mac and cheese for my kids again. And as I looked over one of the most majestic places on the planet Earth and realized my body had carried me all the way across that. I realized that. That prayer had been answered , you know , for whatever your beliefs are, I'm not like pushing mine on anyone else, but my prayer had been answered in such a way, such a miraculous way that I just was overcome with gratitude that not only had I made mac and cheese, I was able to accomplish a whole lot of other things. And it didn't dawn on me until the drive back, like two days later when we were driving back from the Grand Canyon back home. The it was almost exactly five years , like within a week , almost to the day of that, that really, really difficult rock bottom time and I found that to be significant. So anyway, it's . And it wasn't just by accident. There was a lot of work, a lot of support. An entire army of people, specialists, therapists, doctors, friends, family that that were so key in bringing about that recovery. But I share my story in hopes that anyone who in the thick of it , or even just happily in the thick of it, knows that you can and you will get better. And if you if you stick to it and you, you trust the process, you can get way better than you could ever imagine that the resources are there , the resources are there and it's and you're worth it. You're worth whatever it takes. So, I think that's probably a good and a good way to sum it up, so to speak. And then I think at this point, if we want to just talk about any other questions that. That I could answer or anything to add to it.

Hilary: Gosh, before I ask my questions. I've got to tell you not to discredit anybody that has been on the stories of resiliency leading up to this. But I truly think this is probably the most powerful story that we have ever heard before. And these words are going to help. So many people really, it’s so amazing. I want to take you back to the very beginning because I think one of the questions that maybe some of our listeners might have are. You mentioned that you just didn't feel quite right, and you knew you didn't feel quite right because you had had some similar experiences with baby blues, but not this extent. What are some of maybe those signs that you noticed that made you clue into that? Maybe there's something bigger here that I that I didn't realize?

Katie: Yeah , absolutely. So, I think one of the most vivid memories as far as like that recognition was so my cutest little baby. He hated being on his back. So, you know, as doctors and pediatricians, it’s kind of flips like the whole what they recommend, the recommendations change. And anyone who's had children knows that you sometimes are conscientious in trying to do the right thing . And of course , we want our babies to be safe. Plus, there's hormones raging and you're tired. It's a lot, but I've always been kind of a conscientious person and that's a good thing, it can be. It can serve you well. However, it went next level big time with this issue because he was my third kid and he if I put him on his back , he'd sleep for 20 minutes. Solid, and that was it. And then he would wake up , usually with the hiccup , which cutest thing ever, right? But whatever, whatever it was, the way that his esophagus had formed, the back was not working. So, when you have been sleep-deprived for, you know, two months and you're trying to take care of three kids. I also had a husband who had a job that required him to travel. So that was an especially difficult thing. I was extremely exhausted. And I remember just thinking, you know, for some reason, this kid loves being on his tummy. And I put him on his tummy and he'd fall asleep like that. And I was like, Oh, I'm not supposed to him on his tummy. But then he'd fall asleep and he'd sleep and he'd sleep, and so then I kind of started thinking, Well, maybe I'll just let him nap on is to me. And but then again, I'm so tired that I just started putting into bed on his tummy. And but it was like, mentally, I was it was like this catch 22, where it was like, it's better. He does need to sleep and I need some rest, but I'm not supposed to put him on his tummy like that but that's the only way he slept.

So, I remember doing that and I would put him to bed on his tummy and he'd sleep. And at that point I was I was still sleeping. I hadn't completely lost that ability because it was early on. I want to say this would have been more like somewhere between six weeks and two months postpartum when I was putting on a bed on his tummy. And I would fall asleep. And I was so used to him waking up within 20 minutes that like I remember him falling asleep and he slept, he was sleeping soundly. And like, I think an hour went by and I was asleep and I woke up and panicked and I was like, He's not OK, he's not OK. And I remember running into his room and picking him up and making sure he'd been like waking him up. Why in the world would I do that? But I didn't just do that once I would repeat it over and over, and I'd be like, OK, I guess he's OK and I'm so tired. And so, I would put him back to bed on his tummy and then I would wake up and he's not OK. He's been asleep for an hour, you know? So, I would do this over and over and over again. And I remember when I was doing it, I didn't see that as a problem, but I remember talking to someone else. I want to say it might have been my mother in law and sharing the story with her and all of a sudden as I thought, “This doesn't seem like I think I'm really not OK”, like I knew I wasn't okay, but I'm like. This is like very repetitive and it's very not logical, like he's he is OK, he's doing OK. And I remember going to the pediatrician and explaining to him, like, I'm so worried he'll only sleep on his stomach. I'm trying to put him on his back, but I'm having this issue, and I remember even the pediatrician saying, you know what? One of my kids was a stomach sleeper. If he needs to sleep on his stomach, he's going to be OK. You go ahead and put him on his stomach. But it was like my nervous system couldn't let go of the fact that, like I was doing it wrong, I was doing it wrong. I was doing it wrong, which now like in retrospect, looking back, that was kind of more the OCD, like a compulsion. It was a compulsion that I was doing. So that was one of the times I was like, Oh, wow, this is like off. This is really off. We need to do something about it. But that was and then the panic attacks. I mean, I think just that day, I went to the parade and the parade rolls up and it's so fun. It's loud in there playing music and people are throwing candy and there were balloons on floats and things like that . And for some reason , that stimulation, just like, threw me into a panic attack and was so embarrassing. It was right there in like public, you know, is a little parade and a little town. But I was just mortified and exhausted . And , you know, my husband had to drive me home. We had to leave the parade and my kids were watching me have this panic attack. But it wasn't the first I had had that day, so that was another big sign that I needed to, I really needed to find help.

Hilary: Well, I just it's I think as women, we hear about the baby blues and postpartum depression, and you get educated to an extent when you're in the hospital, you know, letting you know of that information. But it's probably hard because everybody's experience is different. And so, what happens to one may not happen to another. And so, I love that you can share kind of some of those, those signs, because those may be signs that other people are having experiencing right now.

Jen: I also think the people around you have a different understanding of what it is, so you'll have those people that may be really supportive. But then on the other hand, you may have those people that are like, suck it up, this is your third child. You should know how to handle these things. And so, having groups of people can also make you just wonder is going on in my living. Well, whatever it may be, so. But it important to have a good support system because. I mean, we're going to need help.

Hilary: And I love that you brought that up at the very beginning because that's one thing we've talked about a lot on this podcast is being able to find that support system, that village, that group of people that you know that you can turn to and trust because parenting is hard and we can't do it on our own. And so, I love that you, you know, from the beginning, you made mention of some of these neighbors and friends where you said, I need some extra help here. And that was a big thing to do. And a lot of people have a really hard time doing that , admitting that this this is tough stuff and I'm going to need you. Yeah, there was a co-worker who you used to work here, social work. So, she had all of the information, all the right education. And her baby was probably her second was probably six or seven years old when she finally told me that she had postpartum and it was really, really hard for her. And I’m like “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have come over and helped you. “And she's like, “I just didn't want anyone to know”. I'm like. Just tell me next time and I will come over and help.

Katie: Yeah, well, and I think in that mind frame, which I think maybe a lot of women can identify with this is that we think, Oh , they're so busy, you know, they don't they don't really have the time and energy. They're probably just as tired as I am. But having been there and now, you know, being able to be in a place where I've recovered , if I knew anyone , not just like a mother, any person was in a situation where they just needed someone to sit by them because there were times when that was literally all I needed . I was just like, I just need someone to sit by me . And it was so awkward because there were people that would like offer. Can I help you with anything and could you just come over? Well, I am like, just stand by me and talk to me while I like, wash the dishes. And some people, a lot of the people who understood, right, like, absolutely. And I would say I would echo that, that like if I knew anyone just needed someone to sit by them, I wouldn't care day or night. You know, if it was inconvenient, I would drop everything and I would come and be with you just because literally every person and every mother, everyone is worth whatever it takes to get better and to be OK. It just it's worth it. So, so yeah, I would say that that reaching out and that learning. I mean, it is hard. It's one of the hardest things. But I just I hope that I can send that to some of the listeners. Just that message that if you question it like just like lean into that fear and just do it anyway, like just reach out. There's got to be somebody that that can come and just be by you for a minute, you know, for a couple of hours or whatever, just to get you through.

Jen: I just had a there is a quote by somewhere I can't remember what it was. Sometimes you have to lean into the dark or stepping into the dark to be able to see the light. And I really like that because in hard times, lots of times we do have to say I'm going to be brave, I'm going to take that next step. And it may be dark and scary. But there's a light at the end.

Katie: Yeah. And it takes that courage to just take the step and that it is like it is worth it to just do that, to reach out and ask for help.

Hilary: So, your story is filled with so many different resources, which we've talked a lot about. Out of all the things that you found that helped you were, there's certain ones that maybe helped you the most.

Katie: Oh, that's a really good question, because all of the resources, really. Are so important. So, I want to share like two things here. Number one, I remember my dad talking about this when I was kind of in the thick of it and had tried different doctors and had tried, you know, was considering different medications and different things like that. They just the decisions felt so overwhelming because it was like, I wanted to get it right, like I wanted to find the right therapist. So sometimes that fear would almost like paralyze me because and that's part of anxieties like having a hard time making those decisions. So, I remember him explaining to me saying, like, picture yourself like you're in one of those garden mesas, you know, like you've seen him in the movies or, you know, different than they actually exist where you're walking through the hedges and you'll walk and you'll take turns and you take turns and then you'll come to a dead end. And he explained this to me. He's like, OK, I just when you hit a dead end, like, don't let that discourage you, just turn around and go another direction. And for some reason, that helped me when I would try something and it didn't work, I would think, oh yeah, I just need to like, try a different direction that it's a process. Like, there's not really a finish line because I wanted a finish line, you know, like we all in our minds, like we want a finish line, but with stuff like this, there's just not a finish line. And sometimes you'll feel better for a while and then you'll think, Wow, I like really not doing well again, what's going on? So, I would say, keep in min , you just got to keep trying on different things. And then as far as like one of the things that stands out in my mind as one of the most. So just I don't know, one of the most helpful, I think that really helped my recovery is it's a little bit different. So just each, I hope our listeners can interpret this for their own selves. So, so I don't know how to start this. But suffice it to say about when I was around the 18 month point when I said I shared that story about the first time I had felt joy with the leaves, it was around that time and I was like, I was feeling better, you know, not great and not perfect. I still had some really annoying things like light and sound sensitivity that would get my heart racing. And I would I would kind of have, like many panic episodes or just anxiety in general over simple, everyday tasks like taking my child's soccer practice, you know, driving in the car, going to the grocery store, starting the laundry, things like that. And I was functioning, but it was still very uncomfortable. And I remember feeling frustrated that my nervous system hadn't figured out that like, this isn't a logical time to be afraid. And this is, you know, it was just I just felt like it was muddled and mixed up. And that's normal. That's part of the illness. So, I remember at that time getting an email from a musical theater company, a community theater company, saying that they were holding auditions for an upcoming musical. And I, thought that's like legitimately terrifying to audition for something, and I sang, I sang for years, like before I was a mom, I was really active in, you know, high school and college in choirs. And I took I had like a vocal teacher and I studied. I studied that and I also studied English. And there was this side of myself that when I became a mom, it had kind of gone dormant. And at this point, it had been, gosh, I don't know, 10 to 12, 12 years of really not doing some of those things, but I saw that audition and I thought, hmm, I wonder if I just purposely like did something terrifying. If it would kind of just start to, like, knock my nervous system back to where it needs to be.

So that's like a silly idea. It wasn't somebody told me about. I just decided to do it. So, I signed up to go audition. And oh , it did a number on me, like the nerves were so intense and my whole body hurt for at least 24 hours after it was wild . And I kind of expected that because I had been doing that , you know , and I had had some of those experiences. But at the time , my mind hadn't gone really past the whole audition thing . It was like, if I just go audition, it will be scary and it will help me get better. But then when the cast list was posted in, my name was on it. I was like, Wait , now what? And it was very flattering. But at the same time, I had major imposter syndrome because I was like, Wait, I don't I don't do musical theater like I seen them, but I'm like, do they know that? Should I tell them? And then I thought, Well, what if I just tried? And I remember because I was still struggling with light and sound sensitivity , I was like , Well , what if I just try? What if I try and then I can’t because of the light and sounds? Anyway, so I went into it just kind of tentative. Not really sure. Plus, I had little kids and that it was a big-time commitment, but I just decided to just do it anyway. And I went in it. I it was like. It just was like all of the things I loved because I had studied Shakespeare and poetry and literature , and so it's like storytelling , but it was also music. Another thing I was passionate about and I just started moving forward and it didn't really dawn on me until, you know, five or six weeks into the process. One day I realized, Oh, I'm not sensitive to light and sound anymore. And I was like, how did that happen? And as I've learned and studied, there's something about being creative. There's this creative part of each of us that when it when we don't nurture that side of ourselves, then like our brains don't do well, our bodies don't do well. And for some reason, that changed things in a huge way, like physically major physical change. So that's kind of like an unorthodox answer. However, I think that like for me, I had to learn. Part of the part of kind of what gets us sometimes into these places of severe depression as mothers, I think sometimes is when we feel an intense expectation that we are to nurture everyone else around us. But through having that experience and seeing what it was like when I had really like not been nurturing me because I thought I was just there to nurture everyone else and saw what it did. And then when I started nurturing myself, that was when it like dawned on me that if I am here to nurture a family, you know, if that's part of my role as a mother. An important part of that family is the mother. And if I'm the nurturer, it is my job to nurture, to nurture the mother. And so, I did it.

Jen: Just kudos to you for recognizing that the nurture needs to be nurtured. I over the years, that is probably all of the parenting classes and everything that I've ever done that is probably one of the hardest things for women to say, OK, I'm going to let these other things go so I can take care of me. It's like they think this is like a sign of weakness or not. I can't be a mother. I'm not a good mother if I'm taking time for myself. But, really. That is so important. Yes. And I love to nurture the nurture is so important. So, nurture halfway full or empty.

Katie: No , you can't.

Hilary: And obviously, you've talked about self-care here in this podcast many times, and I think sometimes we get the idea that self-care can happen after everything else is done on the list. right. If I can accomplish everything else, then I get to have that time to myself, and I love that you bring up, the self-care is important. Even in times that could be considered to be a crisis, right? Those are probably the times when we need self-care more than anything now. And so, being able to take that time? Oh , this is this is filled me cup. I love this, maybe just a kind of close up if I can ask, how are you doing now? And what are some of the things that you continue to do that you have learned through this journey that continue to help you?

Katie: Definitely. Yeah. So, I am doing incredibly well. I don't I don't really think about anxiety. I don't really think about a lot of the things that consumed my every waking second for, for years. And when I have that realization and I remember, it's always this wonderful realization like I every day, I don't even think about it. I feel love. I feel connected to my children. I feel connected to the people around me. I'm using my talents. You know, I've been I've been now in twelve musicals since then, oh, I know hardcore and have grown so much, I just learned to tap dance this year and I'm just doing a lot of things that I didn't know, like it's like living life the second time around. I just I'm doing well. I'm healthy. Food tastes good. One of the one of the things that, like I always get kind of tickled and excited about is how easy it is for me to sleep. I take a nap almost every day. That's something again, that like, it really took hard training to like, make myself do that to know, Yeah, the kids might go crazy. They might run in five times. They might disturb me. They might watch TV the whole time. It could be two hours, it could be 15 minutes. And to, like, sit with that uncertainty and do it anyway. And so, I do my kids know, like during the summertime, I just let him know, Hey, I'm going to be taking a nap. You know, if you need anything, you can come in at this time, they're a little older now, so they can understand that concept better than when they were little. They often did burst in the room , but I just it was that discipline of just telling myself , I'm going to do this every day because I know I do better. So, I take a nap every day. I'm still taking medication. Another thing that has done wonders for me was healing my gut health. You know, there's definitely not time during this podcast to go into that. But that has that has been really awesome is to learn how to nurture my gut with I use supplements and different things like that and nutrition. And I still go to therapy when I was really sick, it was more like every week, but once I was doing well, you know, I don't I don't go on a regular basis necessarily. But a lot of my healing, a lot of my recovery has dealt with a lot of relationships within my family. Some hard conversations have happened down the road that that I needed in order to get feeling better. And so, I just always keep therapy open. And if things pop up, if one of my kids is having a hard time with something and I don't know how to deal with it, or if I if I find myself, you know, having behaviors or thoughts that that I recognize, oh, like this is this is intense. Then I just I just put I just go to therapy and I love therapy. I do it. I recommend it for everyone. So, I think I think that includes a lot of the things that I'm still doing every day . I still purposely try to do things that scare me. My next big adventure is scaling . I'm planning to summit Mount Whitney on August 15th, so that is that's the highest peak in the contiguous U.S. it's about fourteen thousand five hundred feet. So, I'm planning to summit that and come back down in one day. That's so it's kind of like the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim, but on in a different way. And it scares me like it legitimately scares me. But I I've just learned, like the tap dancing, just different things that have scared me. I just I try to purposely stretch myself to convince my mind that I can do things that are scary, because that translates into the everyday things that scare us, like being a mom. Like, we shouldn't be scared of that, right? No, not shouldn't. I don't even want to use that word, but it is scary. It's overwhelming. It's a big thing. So, if I can scale big mountains, then I can be a mom.

Jen: Well, I think this has been one of my favorite episodes, I think. There is a mom out there, but this is going to resonate with and she's going to be, it’s going to change her life. All right. Yeah, I hope so. If she can do it, I can do it and I just think that was fabulous. So, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me. We would like to thank all of our listeners to come in today and checking out this podcast episode. We hope that you're having a great day and we will see you next week.

Thank you for listening to the Parents' Place podcast, if you would like to reach us, you can at parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can reach Jen on Facebook. Jen Daly - the Family. Place, please check out our show notes for any additional information. Our website TheFamilyPlaceUtah.org if you're interested in any of our upcoming virtual classes. We'd love to see you there.