By Holly Fisher
A week after I attended the second annual Warrior Mom Conference, the message a church was about how good leaders handle “threshold moments.” Most threshold moments are some blend of exciting and scary – college graduation, a new job, getting married. But some of our threshold moments are painful.
The question, then, is how do we handle those painful times? Are we buried by the pain or do we bury the pain? Or do we use that painful period to create a platform and an opportunity to help others crossing a similar painful threshold.
Having a baby certainly qualifies as a threshold moment – both exciting and a little frightening. For a large number of moms, we go through another threshold – a painful one that comes in the form of a postpartum mood disorder.
For the longest time, I both buried the pain of postpartum depression and was buried by the pain. Ultimately, I asked for help, recovered and found that I could turn the pain into a platform, helping the thousands upon thousands of mothers who have a postpartum mood disorder.
So how incredibly moving to see close to 200 other women who have also chosen to rise above the pain of PPD and decide to use their darkest time to help others through theirs.
The Warrior Mom Conference is hosted by Postpartum Progress, a national nonprofit “working to vastly improve awareness of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders like postpartum depression, and to provide peer leadership and support for the women who have them.”
I attended along with three other board members of Postpartum Support Charleston. It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with similar organizations around the country, fellow PPD advocates and moms who had survived the toughest situation motherhood can throw at them.
I was particularly thrilled to hear about research being done that could dramatically impact PPD treatment. Finally, this illness is being given the attention it deserves. And it was heartening to hear about the efforts all over the globe to end the stigma of PPD.
Our board members returned with plenty of great ideas on how we can continue to help moms and families here in the Charleston area. We know what it’s like to go through the pain of PPD. We care, we see you and we support you.
Holly is a PPD survivor and former president of the Postpartum Support Charleston board.
Look for social media posts about the conference via #WarriorMomCon