I Started A Substack (And Not Just Because My Psychiatrist Said "People Need to Hear This" Then Suggested I Wean Off The Prozac)

I never thought I would ever have kids. I know that isn’t really a unique thing to say, but it goes much deeper than a desire for independence—I had phobia-level fears of the act of giving birth itself. While I was pregnant and an anxious, obsessive, terrified mess, I once reached out to my mother in The Philippines through text, desperate for some semblance of comfort or reassurance, to which she responded, “You were always scared. When you were little, you told everyone that you’re never going to have a baby! LOL!” Imagine me, a little girl who refused every doll and only played with stuffed animals, who never wanted to play the mom but always wanted to play Macho Man’s Miss Elizabeth, warning all the other little girls, “You have to push a big head through a small hole!” How does someone so little get there? I did once remember a past life in which I had several miscarriages due to an injured pelvis from a a bus accident, but perhaps I was just on molly in Ojai.

Henry Ford Hospital, 1932 by Frida Kahlo

My anxiety through pregnancy manifested into over-researching and over-preparing. I worked out every day, did pelvic floor therapy, used a pelvic floor wand, did hypnobirthing meditations every night, posted on message boards, went to online support groups, bothered moms who barely knew me on Instagram, read the books, took the classes, went to an immersion weekend, drank the teas, ate the dates, walked the curbs, blah blah blah blah blah.

So when my birth experience was far worse than I could ever imagine, I felt betrayed. By whom, I don’t know. Fate? The Universe? My “angels, guides, and ancestors” who I specifically requested be there for me? Maybe I just felt stupid that I actually thought I could have any control in the outcome. You’d think I’d know better by now, with all the dumb work I’d done to try to learn that lesson.

If this were any other trauma at any other point in my life, I would probably eat some weed gummies, cry a lot, sleep 14 hours a day, eat something terrible, binge-watch something terrible, double up on sessions with my therapist, then ultimately write a script about it all and be fine. Instead, I had to go straight into the hardest thing I would ever do in my life—

The newborn trenches.

Before becoming a mother, I had always imagined this phase in the same way you see in the movies, or a commercial for insurance or coffee or mattresses or something—a crying baby, pee-pee and poo-poo, sleepless nights, spit-up on pajamas that have been worn for a week—the comedy and Katherine Heigl of it all!

I have not seen this movie from 2010; I just googled “Katherine Heigl plays a new mom”.

But in reality, it went beyond this. I had terrible, unmanageable anxiety. I was breaking down and crying several times a day. I wasn’t sleeping or eating. I was in physical pain. And I was practically isolated. My husband and I, both introverts/loners/it’s probably just childhood trauma, had zero emotional support or community and were so broken down, we could barely be there for each other. And I should mention that I had become a mother right in between losing the two mother figures in my life. I had never felt so alone and unseen. (Should I pitch this to Katherine?)

From the day I gave birth, to about four and a half months later, life felt impossible. I thought I had made a mistake. I thought my life was over. I actually thought that society had tricked me into joining actual Hell, bringing me down with them into their misery, because they were also tricked, and everyone was a liar, and I was a dumbass for falling for it. (Did you know that a woman’s brain and hormones change significantly from giving birth and don’t go back to normal for three years?)

I’m going to fast forward to the point of this essay. I started asking for help. I started making connections. I started getting out of the house. And running. And dancing. At six months, it got so much easier. And then it got… fun? And then it turned into… the best thing to ever happen to me, ever? And now at eight months, I finally get it? I get why people do this? I mean, it’s still hard. It’s the hardest. I still can’t believe I had ever said I’m “tired” before having a baby. That wasn’t tired. This is tired. But I have never felt a love like this before. I get it now.

And I’m not sharing this to trick anyone. And I know this is just the beginning and I know I have no idea. I know.

But I think what I really wanted to share is that I’ve gotten to the place where I see the purpose of this experience, the gift:

This was the only thing that would break me down, destroy me, and kill me enough so that there was absolutely nothing of me left, so that I would have to remember who I actually, authentically am, what it is I really want, and what actually matters to me the most. It was the only thing that would ever make me really let go of the old me of trying to be what I think others want me to be, wanting to be liked, wanting to fit in, being ruled by old, false stories I’ve told myself about myself. Nothing could have ever bust through all of the stuff that was ingrained in me and probably goes back for generations before me. Nothing, except for this. (Remember when I thought healing from trauma or recovering from addiction or leaving a toxic relationship was the hardest thing ever? HA.)

Kali, the Hindu goddess of death, destruction, motherhood, and liberation.

Because of this experience, I get to remember what lights me up, I get to remember what fulfills me, and I get to choose to use the very little time and energy I have to devote to that. I get to choose the people I want in my life, the people I feel genuinely connected to. I get to choose what I want to create. I get to be myself.

And I think what I really really wanted to share is the reminder that the challenges, the darkness, the times of the unknown, are always serving us in some way. We don’t have to know why and we don’t have to like it, but it serves a purpose. You don’t even have to see that while you’re in it. In fact, don’t. Go feel your feelings. But one day, it may all make sense. If you let it.

So anyway, I have been swearing to myself for years that I would never start a Substack. I would tell myself everyone has one/why should I have one/I’m too old/I’m nobody/no one cares/I’m embarrassing, etc., etc. But I think I’m tired of depriving myself of things that I want to do and things that would bring me joy. I have just died and very recently come back again and I just want to be happy and writing vulnerably makes me happy, so here I am. Thanks for your support. And if you hate this, I actually get it. I was once you. So I get it.

Anyway… do you ever see two birds on a power line, and hope that it’s your mom and dad, but know it’s not your mom and dad, and you want to cry, but you can’t because of the Prozac? Me neither.