Postpartum Depression - Overnight Sensation

Excerpted from
Behind the Smile: My Journey Out of Postpartum Depression
By Marie Osmond, Marcia Wilkie, Judith Moore, M.D.

Entertainers who are described as "overnight sensations" have one thing in common: Their success was anywhere between five and twenty-five years in the making. They become the current sensation because they were able to take a talent and refine it into a craft with years and years of practice. In "Something Good," a song from The Sound of Music, the character Maria sings, "Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could." I believe this applies to almost every tiling we go through day to day, both good and bad. It all comes from something. Every thought, habit, belief, and choice is the result of everything that has gone before. I have come to realize that how you face the moment at hand, whether it's good news, bad news, a situation out of control, or, in my case, postpartum depression (which ended up being all of the above), is determined by the accumulation of the countless "somethings" that make up your past. An overnight sensation, something that gets our attention by arriving fully formed from out of nowhere, is pretty rare.

My postpartum depression was "sensational for me because I sensed it in every area of my life. It wasn't "overnight," however. The normal hormonal changes I experienced, as most women do, after giving birth tipped the apple cart for mc, but the depression that resulted had been in the making for years. My PPD wasn't the result of a one time physical imbalance. Once the debilitating physical symptoms of it were under control with the help of the treatments Dr. Judith Moore describes later in this book, to fully recover I found I had to look at my complete state of being, not just physical, but every aspect.

I tell my children about the balance of our human elements: physical, social, mental, and spiritual, by comparing it to the four legs of a chair. One of the legs on your chair can become weak and break, and, chances are, you will still be able to keep yourself upright by balancing your weight over the other three legs. But if one leg breaks and the other legs of the chair arc so weak they just give way, you will find yourself on the floor. I fell so hard it was clear that the legs of my chair had been crumbling beneath me for years. I just didn't know it. (Hey, Orkin man, I think I've got a little termite problem!) The breaking of the "physical" leg only exposed the weakness in other parts of my life.

Recently, I talked with a woman who feels she has lived with postpartum depression for two years. She received help to balance her hormones shortly after the depression began, but the feelings of despair did not lift. She realized that she would have to work at fixing the other areas of her life, the other legs of her chair, if she was ever going to heal fully. But she was afraid. She knew she would have to look deeply into everything she had tried to hide, dismiss, or push away because it was too painful to acknowledge.

I too was hesitant to acknowledge that I had problems. Like many women I know, I thought I could handle, by myself, whatever happened in one way or another. After all, women arc caretakers by nature. We know how to fix things. I didn't need help... I was the one who gave help. It took the loss of what I consider to be one of the most important parts of my existence, giving, to finally admit that I was not fixing this problem.

For me, life feels purposeless if I can't be of service to other human beings. I have the strongest sense of myself when I am interacting with others and when I can help someone else to enjoy life more. Our whole world seems to work this way. The economic system is built on supply and demand. One produces what the other needs to live fully, down to the most basic needs. Even our ecosystem demonstrates this: the rain feeds the earth, the earth the trees, the trees the air. Crisis only occurs when the demand outweighs the supply.

My children were the reason I knew my life was in crisis. My last valuable resource, being able to give, was completely depleted. In my most devastating moments of postpartum depression, I found I had nothing left to give to the ones who needed me the most. I had to stop and save my sell'.

It wasn't simple. Sunk deep in depression, I found when I tried to throw myself a lifeline that I didn't have a self or even a life I could identify as my own. I was an accumulation of "somethings" that were no longer working for me: ideas, thoughts, and habits that I had absorbed and allowed to develop through past experiences. I had to ask if it was worth it to me to find myself. And where did I start?

The biblical commandment says to "love thy neighbor as thy self." It doesn't say to "love thy neighbor more than thyself." This comes from the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions. You can't give love or be of help to anyone else unless you have a self to use as a source. I couldn't ignore that it says to love oneself, either. I knew I would have to separate from the things in my past that were fueling the depression and find a way to love myself enough to be able to claim, 'This is my life and I need to take care of it."

Until recently, I couldn't even fathom the courage it would take for me to say those words and mean it. First, according to my personal belief system, it felt like it was a selfish statement... as if I were only concerned with myself. Second, and perhaps even more frightening, it would mean that I was responsible for everything that had happened or would happen in my life, the past, the present, and especially the future choices I would make.

To get out of PPD, I first had to look at how I got into it. Few of us have histories that were intended to be harmful to us. (Though I do personally know people who grew up in horrendous situations. I am not discounting that reality.) But for all of us, what we absorbed through our daily environment played a part in the development of our selves.

It's not my intention to complain about my past. It was filled with great experiences and close and loving bonds with my parents and my brothers. I've never been a person who felt the need to talk about my hardships because no one's life, despite outward appearances, is problem free. But I've been told many times that I am perceived as having had a picture-perfect life. I guess it was assumed that if I had a problem, someone would take care of it for me, rescue me, or at the very least pay my way out of it. I believe it's pointless to speak of problems unless it's to make people aware of an issue that needs attention. I want to give some of my background because I believe it is part of what made me a candidate for postpartum depression. Though I certainly grew up under a unique set of circumstances, I don't believe the scenario will feel foreign to other women with postpartum depression. I have often felt that the stories women who have gone through depression have shared with me parallel my own upbringing and young adult life in many ways.