We appreciate the courage Jill Dabrowski showed in sharing the story of her postpartum depression on The Mighty, and we wanted to share the excerpt below and encourage our readers to click the provided link to read the full text. What Jill experienced affects more women than you might imagine, and it’s healthy to bring it out into the light and remove stigmas from it. If you recognize yourself or someone you love in this article and you live in the greater Cleveland area, we hope you’ll reach out.
I gripped the wheel as I inched across the ice-caked road, my knuckles nearly the color of the falling snow. My thoughts bounced recklessly through my sleep-deprived brain.
What if I slide off the side of this bridge? How will I save them all? How can I get them all out? Who left me in charge of three children? How do I even have three kids? I don’t know how to do this. What if I am ruining them all?
Behind me, my 6-year-old son was chattering away about his day at kindergarten as his 5-week-old sister screamed like a baby Velociraptor on one side of him and her twin brother slept serenely on the other. I barely heard him talking. The heat hissed through the vents, a steady wave of false comfort.
The boy could probably swim, but the water would be so cold it would be hard to move. Would we be trapped beneath the ice of the frozen Mississippi River that had seemingly slowed to a halt below us? And my babies. My teeny, tiny babies. They aren’t even close to 10 pounds yet, I recalled, as though that arbitrary weight would somehow keep them safer in the icy blackness of the churning river below.How quickly could I undo not just one car seat, but two, in the subzero swirl of stunning darkness?
I was terrified — barely breathing, tears rolling down my cheeks.
That late January afternoon, I wondered how I could possibly be responsible for three children. I thought there was no way I could save them. I wondered if this was all some sort of mistake. And I deliberated the best possible ways to shield them from my anxiety-riddled mind.
Was I ever concerned about hurting my children? Never.
But I was unsure of how I could attend to their needs and be the mother they all deserved.
Every word and movement and thought felt like an affront. I was failing at the most important thing in my world — being a mom.