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This disconnect between what motherhood “should” feel like and what it actually feels like is perhaps the cruelest part of postpartum depression. More than just a mental health condition, you’re dealing with the shame of not feeling the way mothers are “supposed” to feel.

I sit in front of my screen as the call begins to connect, aware that this will not be an ordinary conversion -- in a matter of seconds, I will come face-to-face with a woman who took her deepest nisayon and transformed it in to a lifeline for others.

The phone rang incessantly, the ringing shattering the silence I craved. There was no stopping it; I had no choice but to pick up. “Hello, is this Sandy?” said a voice I didn’t recognize. I confirmed that it was. “You don’t know me,” the woman continued, “but my name is Miriam. I just wanted you to know that I’ve been there too, lying at the bottom of a deep, dark pit.

There is a world of difference between clinical depression and having a bad day.

My first struggle with Postpartum Depression occurred when I was still living in the United States, with my husband and three kids. I was 33 years old, and had for the previous six years been working on my Ph.D. A mere two weeks after submitting the final draft of my thesis, I gave birth to a healthy, eight-pound baby girl. She was born at home, by choice, and I was surrounded by friends and care-givers.

A new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine revealed what so many of us already know deep in our bones: mothers are not okay. Only one in four moms report “excellent” mental health. From 2016 to 2023, there’s been a 63% increase in moms reporting fair or poor mental health.