how motherhood taught me not to die

notes on staying alive. cw: postpartum depression/suicidality

cw: postpartum depression/suicidality

This is the first time I’m writing about my postpartum depression. I’m not sure where to begin because, as I’m sure you can imagine, it all blurs together. Part of me can’t believe I’m even writing this, alive to tell the tale. Most of me, I suppose.

My son was born in September of 2023, on the most beautiful of fall mornings following a full harvest moon. The perfection of that day stays with me still, and will remain imprinted on my heart forever.

Man, it was beautiful. He is so beautiful.

I like to think of the day he was born as the day I was, too. In so many ways, becoming a mother changed the fabric of my being— in ways both beautiful and repellant; in mind and in body. I have yearned for motherhood for as long as I can remember. Now, 16 months in, I can attest to the absolute magic that is being a parent.

And still, difficult days have come, and the darkest of days have descended.

I distinctly remember the first time I ever had the ever-invasive thought most moms I know have experienced: I can’t do this anymore. My son was just 5 weeks old, my postpartum body had not yet fully healed, and our family was deeply entrenched in the newborn fog/sleep deprivation of it all. I was simply trying to survive, as so many new moms and parents are. Little did I know how crucial that act of trying would become.

Every early parenting book I had read had emphasized the need to establish rhythms to babies’ days and to integrate them *into* the lives of parents (not the other way around because my god, why should a newborn baby’s needs possibly be prioritized??!). While I never bought into this hogwash, I did happen to have a baby that loved and needed to get. tf. out. Understandably so— he has a mama who feels the same.

So there we were. Just two babies (I was born on his birthday, remember?) wandering around the mall at 8am on a snowy Tuesday morning. I remember that I was baby-wearing him as I walked, which was the only way I could get him to sleep in those days. I also remember feeling nothing at all.

Nothing apart from the very real, very visceral truth of “I can’t do this. I don’t want this.”

I began to cry, something not abnormal for me in those days. For that reason, amongst many others (i.e. self-judgment, high expectations, thoughts of “how could you not be grateful and happier than ever?”), I did nothing.

I just stopped in my tracks. Didn’t pick up the phone to call someone. Didn’t sit down somewhere to take stock of my feelings and surroundings. I just stopped—overcome with a feeling of complete paralysis.

How was I going to do this? How was I going to be a mom?

I stood there for 28 minutes (I remember, because I watched the local food cart open up across the way when 9am hit). I stood there crying, feeling complete dread over my life and the life I had created, and thinking of nothing more than of ways to run away from it all. I couldn’t do this. What had I done? Why had my husband chosen me? I was wrong for all of this.

Then, as if coming out of a trance, I resumed walking.

I remember thinking to myself, “Hmm. That was weird,” neglecting to fully address the immensity of the emptiness I felt in that hour. I figured, “Well, I’m walking again. That’s what matters.”

Reader, that was what mattered.

I kept walking.

Months passed after that first Emptiness Episode, which I later grew to call them. I had revisited my OB for the single postpartum visit moms get after birth (lol), passed the screening for Postpartum Depression and Anxiety without any red flags from my provider, and was cleared to resume life as normal. YAY. Everything is so normal and so fine, right?!

My son was now 3 months old, and things actually were, all things considered, fine. Sure, we had a baby who didn’t sleep and were navigating the early months of parenthood during winter in the northeast with little family around, but….things were fine.

We were happy, our son was healthy (and mostly happy-ha), and life brought us endless reasons for gratitude.

I remember thinking back to that morning at the mall during this time and resolving to the fact that I must have just dealt with a one-off of baby blues, something that shouldn’t concern me now. Like many (every?) mom navigating postpartum, my emotions were somewhat shaky and unpredictable, but breastfeeding, lack of sleep, and a high-needs baby will do that to you…right?

February came, and with it came the end of my maternity leave. Like any new mom will tell you, the transition from being at home with your baby to work is a harrowing shock to the system. I spent weeks crying my way to and from the office, knowing that someday soon this would all feel okay again. That I would soon like going into the office and being the #workingmom that I wanted to be.

What I didn’t anticipate was the metabolizing of those tears into complete ambivalence and, later, genuine hatred for myself and my life. I soon outgrew the sadness of having to leave my baby at home while I traveled 2 hours to and from my 8-hour workday, and started to feel such vitriol towards myself for what I perceived to be my relentless failure to be a mother.

I can’t count the number of times I fled my house, telling my husband that I couldn’t do it anymore, that I wasn’t fit to be a mom, and that he should just do this (parent) without me, because in my mind, he already was. I was never home, I hardly saw my son, I couldn’t help my husband while at work, and when I was home my presence was, to me, both unnecessary and detrimental.

I hesitate to say that my car became my safe haven, because my life was in danger inside that vehicle. Behind the wheel, I often disassociated so severely that I felt I was looking down at my own body from above. It made me want to separate from my body.

It’s hard to describe what those moments felt like, because it was simultaneously riddled with every possible emotion and complete numbness. Above all, I began to contemplate my life, ultimately deciding that continuing it was aimless. I wanted to die, but I knew I should live.

For months, I engaged in this war. Writing this now, it’s almost impossible to articulate the degree of hopelessness I felt. So many days I would think about the cases of PPD I had read about before becoming a mom, failing to understand how dark and how dangerous the depression could be.

The only solace I felt in those days came from the knowledge that other moms had survived somehow.

While I didn’t think I would, I knew that someone somewhere had been where I was.

Weeks passed where I couldn’t look at my husband, couldn’t hold my son, had to remove myself from work, and was so bogged down by the truth of my inability to be a good mother that I lost all faculties.

I thought about how I wanted to take a knife and cut myself out of me. I thought about how I’d been praying for a truck to just hit me. I thought about death and truth and how, in some languages, they were just one letter apart.

-Melissa Broder, Milk Fed

I had never before been in a position/state where I considered my vitality everyday.

Did I want to be alive?

Why should I continue on?

Would I ever be okay again?

Aren’t they better off without me?

Over and over again.

No matter how good the good days were, I always came back to my core inadequacy. The legitimate belief that I was wrong for this and wrong for my son.

I told myself I needed to live for him, but I simultaneously felt like my presence was hurting him. That my shortcomings were destructive to the point of necessary departure.

I’d look into his eyes, seeing nothing but warmth and love and desire and purity, and would stumble deeper into my well of loathing. Then would come the shame.

Rock bottom came, and I thank my lucky stars everyday that the support system around me had the wherewithal to lend me a hand, arm, foot, and leg where I needed them. And that I had the resources to seek the help I desperately needed.

Finding myself back at my OB’s office, listening to my husband explain what we had been experiencing was the first time I was able to appropriately assess the situation. For so long, I wrote off the heaviness and severity of the despondency and melancholy that had clouded my being, because I convinced myself that I was fine. That I should be okay. That I should be grateful. That I didn’t fit the mold of what I perceived PPD to look like.

For me, it wasn’t tears and sorrow and anxiety and helplessness.

It was disassociation and withdrawal and indifference and rage and suicidality.

Fighting between the desire to die and the need to stay alive has defined my motherhood thus far. Becoming a mom has forced me to consider my mortality everyday. I am cognizant of the complexity that exists within my mind’s desire to stop it all for my own sake, and my body/heart’s desire to continue on for the sake of my husband and son.

Beyond that— what if something happens to me? What if something happens to my husband? What if something happens to my child?

I am always thinking about death. I have always been a person who thinks about death, for I have experienced more than my fair share of it. I have also been a person who thinks about life— how to grow, how to love, and how to be.

Motherhood has taught me that there is power in thinking, but that there is even greater power in acting. I read somewhere that “a mother’s heroic journey is not about how she leaves, but how she stays.” And man, is that true.

I am more alive than I have ever been. Not in spite of my confrontations with death, but because of them. Because I stay.

Thank you, motherhood, and thank you, son, for showing me the importance of being alive.

If you are here, reading this, you have chosen to stay, too. I promise you that light will come.

Just keep walking.

---

Note: I cannot express how integral it was for me to get help and medication when I needed it most. I’m thankful everyday for the most supportive, loving, and understanding partner who saw through my suffering and believed that I would make it through. I truly believe I would not be here without him, and I know many women aren’t so lucky. I share this in the hopes that it could help another new mom find the guidance or help she needs. I know all too well how isolating it can be, and how quickly things can become threatening. Maternal and postpartum care in this country is incredibly insufficient, and I wish so much was different. Moms and new parents deserve time, space, and care, and maternal mental health cannot be undermined. If you know or are someone struggling with PPD/PPA, please take this as your sign to seek or accept help.

---

Who wrote this?

Kamryn Higgins (27F) is a biracial mother, raising her son while balancing a passion for education and the written word. This intersection of motherhood, identity, and intellectual curiosity fuels her work and her life. Her academic and professional journey in politics has shaped her perspective, providing a framework for understanding power, society, and the human condition. She is a reader, devouring books that challenge and inspire; and a writer, striving to center truth and connection in storytelling. Above all, she is a feeler-- deeply invested in the world around her, moved by both its beauty and its injustice.