I posted for World Mental Health Day recently, to raise awareness of mental health issues that affect parents. In doing so, I discovered the website Postpartum Progress. Today there is a new post up, tackling the topic of parenting with a mental illness. Parenting can be difficult for all of us, and is made so much more so if we struggle with some form of mental illness. Katherine Stone addresses this important topic in an excellent post. We may love our children rich and pure and perfect, but none of us can guide them through childhood untouched by life, in all its glory and pain.
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato
This is what I want to teach my kids about life and about mental illness. I hope the battle I fight with anxiety is a lesson to my children that we all have battles, numerous battles, and that it would be a mistake to expect they won’t have them too. If their battle is with mental illness, so be it. If it’s with something else, so be it. All battles count. None are better. None are worse. They simply are.”
Parenting With A Mental Illness, by Katherine Stone at Postpartum Progress.
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Thanks for reposting this Melissa – A great website that I'll be sure to pass on!
I am glad you found this resource helpful; I think it is very important, and wish it were more widely known. Pass it along!
I checked out the website and their post about how birth experience can cause PPD really hit home for me because it is what I have experienced and am still healing from emotionally. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you FMC for your comment! It is so true that our birth experiences can profoundly affect us, for years afterwards. Good luck on your healing journey; you are not alone! xo