The Healing Chapter: Finding My Way Back to Myself After Birth

Healing is one of those words people toss around lightly, like it’s a straight line you can just step onto and follow until things feel “normal” again. But healing after birth — especially after NICU trauma, postpartum depression, anxiety, and months of survival mode — doesn’t move in a straight line. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t inspirational. It isn’t tied up with a bow.

For me, healing was messy.Slow.Non-linear.A loop of steps forward, steps back, pauses, breakdowns, breakthroughs, and long stretches where nothing seemed to change at all.

And honestly?

For a long time, I didn’t even realize I needed healing.

Postpartum depression and anxiety don’t always look like the “checklist”

I didn’t have the classic TV-version symptoms.I wasn’t crying every day. I wasn’t outwardly angry. I wasn’t withdrawn in the way people expect.

My postpartum depression looked like:

• numbness

• detachment

• feeling like I was watching my life from outside myself

• going through motions without feeling connected to any of them

• guilt that stuck to me like a second skin

• fear that something bad would happen at any moment

• putting everyone else’s needs above my own until my body shut down

  
  

My anxiety was quieter — but heavy.

It showed up in my breath, in my shoulders, in the constant worry that Meadow was fragile, breakable, one moment away from crisis. It made every feeding, every cough, every swallow feel like a test I might fail.

People kept telling me I was “strong.”

But I didn’t feel strong. I felt like I was barely keeping myself upright.

Therapy wasn’t a magical fix — but it was a turning point

When I finally walked into therapy, I didn’t have some big speech prepared. I didn’t even know how to say what I felt. I just knew I couldn’t keep carrying it alone.

Therapy gave me a place to unravel.

A place to say the parts of my story I was scared to admit out loud:

“I didn’t feel connected after she was born.”

“I feel guilty all the time.”

“I don’t know if I’m doing this right.”

“I feel like I failed her somehow.”

“I’m scared something will go wrong again.”

Instead of judgment, I got space.

Instead of “you’re fine,” I got language for what I was experiencing.

Instead of shame, I got compassion — and permission to feel everything I’d been stuffing down.

Healing started there, in the quiet moments where I let myself be honest.

Strength-building didn’t happen in big moments — it happened in the tiny ones

People think strength comes from huge breakthroughs, but for me, strength showed up in subtle ways:

• washing bottles after another long night

• asking someone for help — even once

• taking Meadow to therapy appointments

• showing up to every swallow study, even when I dreaded the results

• celebrating tiny victories

• letting myself cry without apologizing

• giving myself grace on the days I felt like I had nothing left

Strength wasn’t loud.It was steady.

The first moments of real softness returning

I didn’t reconnect with Meadow instantly. It wasn’t like the clouds parted and suddenly everything made sense. But slowly — so slowly — something softened.

The first time she looked at me and smiled with her whole face.

The first time she squeezed my finger intentionally.

The first time she nuzzled into my chest because she felt safe.

The first time I felt calm instead of terrified during a feeding.

The first time I realized I was laughing again — really laughing.

Those moments stitched us together in a way I didn’t know I was missing.

The love was always there.

The connection took time.

And that is okay.

Healing changed me — and it shaped the doula I became

My healing didn’t make me “stronger” in a cliché way.

It made me:

• gentler

• slower

• more present

• less judgmental

• more patient

• more aware of how trauma lives in the body

• more attuned to the quiet things people don’t say out loud

  
  

I learned that people can look “fine” on the outside and still be drowning inside.

I learned that birth affects the whole family, not just the birthing person.

I learned that bonding sometimes takes time — and there's no shame in that.

I learned that healing requires support, community, and truth.

All of this is why I show up the way I do now as a doula.

I don’t rush stories.

I don’t judge the complicated emotions.

I don’t push people to feel grateful or positive before they’re ready.

I don’t pretend birth is always empowering.

I hold space for what’s real — because someone needed to do that for me.

And now I get to be that person for others.

Healing is ongoing — and that doesn’t mean you’re broken

I’m still healing.

Not in a painful way, but in a human way. The kind where you look back and realize how far you’ve come — and how much of you was rebuilt in the process.

Healing didn’t erase what happened.

It gave it meaning.

It made me softer with myself, stronger in my truth, and more connected to the work I love.

And that softness — that hard-earned strength — is what I bring into every birth space now.