Content warning: This story contains references to suicidal ideation and postpartum mental health struggles. If you or someone you know is struggling, you are not alone. Help is available. Please reach out to a trusted healthcare provider or call the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-9-HELP4MOMS (1-833-943-5746).
Six months after becoming a mother, I found myself on a subway platform in New York, grappling with intrusive thoughts, wondering what it took for someone to jump. I wasn’t thinking about dying or flinging myself in front of a train. I just felt so tired and defeated. The scariest part wasn’t even the thought of jumping; it was how strangely normal the question felt, like I was deciding between hot or iced coffee.
The descent was gradual. No dramatic rock-bottom moment, just a slow fade. I didn’t fall head over heels for motherhood like everyone said I would. No instant bond, no overwhelming maternal instinct. Instead, 12 weeks after they pulled my daughter out via an emergency C-section, I fled back to work.
Working from home made it easy to hide how I was barely functioning. I’d roll out of bed, open my laptop, work, close my laptop, and crawl back into bed. I didn’t want to spend time with my daughter. In fact, most days, I didn’t want to be near her. Days would blur together without a shower, me eating cereal out of a box, wearing the same clothes, and feeling numb to everything.
My husband watched me disappear. He called doctors, researched programs, and flat-out begged me to talk to someone. I was adamant that I was fine. Until that day on the platform when I realized I actually wasn’t.
Finding help—and resisting it
The Motherhood Center of New York was supposed to be my lifeline. I sat through their intake video call like a robot. Looking back, I can’t tell you a single question they asked or what I said. In fact, I can’t tell you a lot about my first six months as a mom minus some pretty disturbing anecdotes, like the time I dug through trash on a New York City sidewalk, in the middle of a heatwave, because something of sentimental value was accidentally thrown away, and I had a meltdown over it. Or the time I called a realtor in a small town to schedule viewings of “cute studio apartments.”
It took my husband giving me ultimatums before I dragged myself to the Motherhood Center’s outpatient program. Desperate to cling to the facade of normalcy, I took the remainder of my maternity leave to do so. As far as everyone knew, I was home blissfully bonding with my baby.
Walking into the Motherhood Center that first day felt like a bad joke. Reclining chairs in a circle, like some bizarre mix between therapy and a spa day. Tissues strategically placed on tables, snacks in a basket in the corner (because therapy gives you the munchies?), and blankets stacked by yoga mats. Everything screamed “feelings.” It was my worst nightmare.
Five hours. Five hours a day sitting in a circle talking about emotions. Me, the professional problem solver… reduced to this? I was screaming on the inside, plotting my exit before I even sat down.
I sat there that first day, listening to other women introduce themselves, growing more convinced with each story: I didn’t belong. These women were struggling in ways I didn’t think I was. I convinced myself I was fine.
At one point, I hid in the office kitchen, pretending to “make tea” as an excuse to escape. Another woman from the program came in and tried to make small talk. ‘First day?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘I started last week.’ What was this, prison? Were we supposed to bond over our shared sentence?
This was right before Lindsay Clancy’s story hit the news, which would bring maternal mental health struggles front and center nationally. Even that couldn’t crack my denial. I wasn’t sick. I was handling it. I was fine. What type of monster wanted to run away from their child anyway? Becoming a mother was beautiful. I was fine…
I couldn’t even wait the full five hours on that first day before I stormed up to the reception area to check myself out. Done. I didn’t want to take the spot from someone who “really needed it.”
I spent the next day drifting through Manhattan like a ghost. Financial District all the way through the north end of Central Park, hours of mindless walking. I idled down 5th Avenue and looked in shop windows. I sat on the ground in Herald Square for a good hour, in the cold. A police officer eventually asked if I was okay. Tourists snapping photos left and right, and people dressed nicely wooshing by, and I was numb to all of it. It all felt distant, like I was watching my life from the outside.
Eventually, I ended up on the Natural History Museum steps, counting pigeons. Yes, literally counting pigeons. One, two, three… twenty-seven. Wait, did that one fly away? Twenty-six? I think that’s when the absurdity of my situation truly hit me. I was a reasonably successful professional with a beautiful baby who found herself sitting outside in the middle of winter counting pigeons.
I went back to the Motherhood Center the next day. Not because I wanted to, but because I had nothing left. All that control, self-reliance, pushing through that I had always prided myself on… none of it worked anymore.
Related: Postpartum depression rates have doubled—and moms still aren’t getting the support they need
Rebuilding—together
Becoming a mother stripped me bare. My body took a beating from growing a human. It took another beating bringing that beautiful human into the world. And, absolutely no one warned me that there was a non-storybook version of what came next. The isolation, identity crisis, and thick fog that clouded everything devoured me. I wanted the cute baby snuggles and matching outfits they promised. Instead, I got this version of myself I didn’t recognize.The version that was ready to pack a bag and move to a small town straight out of a Hallmark movie.
Healing wasn’t linear. Most days in that stupid reclining chair, which I later came to find comforting and great for naps, I fought the urge to run. The fog lifted slowly. Not in some dramatic movie moment, but in tiny breaks of clarity. I started noticing the other women in the room. We weren’t just struggling alone—we were struggling together.
That realization shifted something in me. I had spent so much time believing I was the only one feeling this way, but the more I opened up, the more I saw the same exhaustion, loneliness, and quiet desperation mirrored in other moms. It wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just them. The problem wasn’t motherhood—it was isolation.
Creating BeeKyn
That’s where the whole idea for BeeKyn, an app to connect parents and kids for playdates, began. Not in some neat, wrapped-with-a-bow way. But because, in my darkest moments, I desperately needed real connection.
Once the fog started lifting, I started to see it everywhere: parents fighting the same battles. Not just the mental health stuff, but the basic human need to connect. The endless text chains about schedules, those awkward playground conversations that never turned into actual friendships, the mental load of trying to build a village while juggling everything else. People talk about needing a village, and it’s so true, but no one gives you directions to it. I knew there had to be a better way to help parents find their people, for real, in-person connection.
That’s why I created BeeKyn—a way for parents to connect, not just through a screen, but in real life.
Two babies and more therapy sessions than I can count later, I’m not the same person who stood on that platform or counted pigeons on museum steps. The things I used to see as weakness—asking for help, being vulnerable, admitting I couldn’t do it all— turned out to be newly found superpowers. I went from trying to bury my postpartum experience to actually shouting it from the rooftops to anyone and everyone who would listen.
Sometimes our darkest chapters lead us somewhere unexpected. Somewhere messy. And somewhere beautiful. Not because the pain was worth it, but because we choose to make something meaningful from it. I’m still figuring out who I am as a mother. I’m also still processing my postpartum experience. But I’m so incredibly grateful for where it has led me.
Related: Groundbreaking blood test could revolutionize how postpartum depression is diagnosed AND treated
To the mom in the darkness right now
If you’re reading this, feeling hollow, wondering if you’ll ever recognize yourself again—I see you.
All those feelings swirling inside you? They’re real. They’re valid. The ones shame tries to silence, and the ones that wake you at 3 in the morning whispering and taunting you that you’re not cut out for motherhood—I know them too. So many of us do, even if we don’t talk about it.
You’re not broken. You’re just trying to navigate one of life’s biggest transitions without a map. (Forget GPS, you don’t even have one of those old folded maps from the gas station.)
It’s okay to struggle. It’s okay to need and ask for help. And, yes, it’s absolutely okay to not love every single moment of motherhood.You deserve to be here for all of it—the messy, the beautiful, and every complicated moment in between. You’ve got this, mama.
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