I met Brittany when we lived on Whipp Road.

Brittany and her husband Micah, lived on the same street, in the same style house, but we didn’t even know it.

One day Josh was taking Ollie for a run when he saw Micah mowing the lawn.

They recognized each other.

It turned out that Josh worked with Micah and Brittany.

 It felt like we should be friends.

So they brought over Troni’s New York Style pizza and Brittany taught us all how to eat it:

folded in half with grease dripping down hands onto plates for dipping.

Sometime after pizza night, Brittany and Micah started trying to have kids and eventually got pregnant.

We were thrilled.

 Dade was born last July and has been blowing up my Facebook feed with eyelashes and smiles ever since.

This January when Dade turned 6 months old, Brittany asked me to photograph their family.

She also asked if I could share her story.

 So Brittany talked and I took notes.

She spilled words onto paper at 3am and emailed them to me.

We messaged each other back and forth on Facebook.

For years Brittany had fought against infertility and now she was fighting another battle against postpartum depression.

She told me why she was compelled to share her story.

Most of the moms she had talked to struggled with some form of postpartum depression.

These moms were not strangers or even acquaintances, but lifelong friends and close family members.

She never knew they had postpartum depression until after she was dealing with it herself.

Brittany wanted to give them a voice.

Before the session we tried to visualize images that would show what postpartum feels like.

I googled postpartum depression and found pictures of moms holding babies looking out windows.

It felt forced, melodramatic, fake.

That’s when we realized we didn’t have to visualize anything.

We would do the session like any other family getting their pictures taken.

Maybe the best way to show the loneliness and shame,

the stigma of postpartum depression, was to pretend that it didn’t exist.

Here’s Brittany’s story, in her own words:

look closely…

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

This is a baby I pined for. 

Longed for, cried for, begged for.

How he looked at me, with pure love and wonder…it made me sad.

I felt nothing. Empty, still, distant.

His sounds made me shiver with fear.

The shaking started. Eating stopped. And I fell into a deep silence.

Suddenly I had no clue how to care for a baby.

Micah who had never changed a diaper, did it all.

In those moments where I needed him most, it was so clear. He loved me.

I needed help.

I spent weeks feverishly reaching out to every mother I knew,

every support group I could find and any doctor that would see me. 

I asked them all the same 4 words.

Will I get better?

I did everything.

Vitamins, essential oils, working out, acupuncture, therapy, medicine and eventually I was hospitalized.

I had postpartum depression.

I thought for sure I was done for, I was crazy.

Turns out I was the opposite.

Hospitalization was an amazing experience. 

It didn’t heal me, but it got me on the road to becoming better.

I met so many normal people who were just struggling…I was too.

I’m not sure why mothers don’t share their stories.

I felt like this sickness was a hidden truth. 

Why didn’t they tell me? 

I knew I’d be overwhelmed. Tired, dirty but happy. I was not.

I thought you either felt happy or wanted to hurt your child. 

No clue there was a huge spectrum in between.

I am mostly better, and the parts that aren’t might just be the new me.

A new Brittany, a mother.

Don’t stay silent!

Comment and share your stories below…