You're still doing everything. The feeds, the appointments, the mental load that nobody else seems to see. From the outside, you look like you're managing. From the inside, something has shifted, and you can't quite name it.
Some of you have searched specifically for postnatal anxiety or postnatal depression — and there are pages for those (anxiety here, PND here).
This page is for the rest of it. The bit that doesn't have a tidy clinical name. The bit where you don't feel like yourself anymore but couldn't fill out a questionnaire about it. The bit where motherhood has changed you in ways you didn't expect and can't quite articulate. The bit where you sometimes feel guilty for missing who you used to be.
All of that counts. None of it is wrong with you. You don't need a diagnosis to deserve someone sitting with you while you figure out what's going on.
I'm originally from Salento, in southern Italy. I moved to Australia and rebuilt an identity from scratch — new language, new climate, new everything. I thought that was the hardest reshaping I'd do.
Then I had a baby. Nothing about my migration prepared me for the way motherhood would dismantle me again. I know what it is to lose an identity. I know what it is to slowly meet a new one. I'm not going to rush you through it.
I sit especially well with women who are far from family. Migrant mothers. Australian mothers whose families are physically nearby but not actually available. Mothers in regional towns. Mothers raising babies in cities full of acquaintances and very few real friends. Whatever the shape of your isolation, I've sat with versions of it before.
I'm not going to assign you homework. I'm not going to give you a five-step programme. The work of figuring out who you are now is not the kind of work that fits in worksheets. It's slower than that, and stranger.
Sessions are conversation. Space to say the things you can't say to your mothers' group. Space to admit you envy the friend without kids. Space to mourn the version of yourself who used to make plans without checking three apps. Space to laugh, sometimes, because motherhood is genuinely absurd and you're allowed to laugh about it in here.
Online via Google Meet. From your couch. With the baby asleep on you, or playing on the floor, or in the next room. You don't have to perform composure. You don't have to get yourself together before we start.
You don't need to be depressed to come and talk. Plenty of the women I sit with don't meet the diagnostic criteria for anything in particular — they just feel different from themselves, and the difference has been going on long enough that ignoring it isn't working anymore. That's a perfectly good reason to start. You don't have to earn counselling by being unwell enough.
I won't lie to you — the version of you that existed before motherhood isn't coming back exactly as she was. Pretending she will is part of what keeps women stuck. What you can do, slowly, is meet the new version of yourself that's forming, and figure out which parts of the old you you'd like to bring forward. Some of the old you was holding patterns that don't fit anymore. Some of her was beautiful and is worth keeping. Most of the work is figuring out which is which.
Welcome to motherhood. The guilt is almost universal — and almost never proportionate to whatever you're feeling guilty about. We can work with the guilt. We can also work, more usefully, with the underlying belief that wanting something for yourself is a betrayal of the baby. Spoiler: it isn't. A mother who tends to herself is, on average, a more steady mother. The guilt knows that. The guilt also lies a lot.
Yes. Sessions are online via Google Meet. The baby is welcome. Asleep, awake, breastfeeding, fussing — it's all fine. You don't need to find childcare to come and talk to me.
Most women I see start weekly, and ease to fortnightly once we've found a rhythm. Some stay weekly for months. Some come monthly from the start. There's no fixed minimum. The shape of the work is yours to lead.
The mental load is one thing. The much harder thing is that you don't recognise the woman doing the carrying anymore. This is for the women who feel like they've gone missing.
There's a word for the way motherhood undoes and remakes you. It's called matrescence. Almost nobody is told what it means until they're already in the middle of it.
Let's figure out who, slowly, in your own time. Start with a free fifteen minutes.
Book a free fifteen minutes