Most Monday evenings, I play my disengaged mother card, turn on Dora, and surf Twitter while we eat dinner. It’s not that I’m so addicted I can’t set it aside for an hour. It’s that Monday night is when #ppdchat happens.
I discovered this community fairly early on in my mama-tweeting days (which is to say January of this year) and it’s incredible. I’m never surprised at the support strangers are willing to provide each other, but there is something about this community that is extra special.
One thing in particular that makes it so is the way the hash tag pops up outside the chat. Sometimes it’s used to draw the PPD community’s attention to a recent blog post. Sometimes it’s used to share a moment in the life of a PPD mom. And sometimes it’s a rallying cry.
That happened the other day when I saw a post from a mom of three, whose newest is about three weeks old. She’s having a rough time and her blog post was clearly a brain dump of desperation and a cry for help at the same time. I commented and then tweeted it using the #ppdchat hash tag and encouraged others to have her back. And they did.
Within minutes, several other people had commented. It was retweeted a number of times too. It made my heart swell to see moms who know what it’s like jumping in to provide a little virtual support. I could just imagine her reaction to getting a bunch of new comments on a post that was a couple of days old. At the end of the night I looked at the blog again and she had commented. She, clearly, was overwhelmed by the support. Sometimes all it takes to survive another day is knowing you’re not the only one who feels that way.
Mission accomplished. (And then today, the very lovely Leighann from Multitasking Mumma took up the call and posted another, quite heartbreaking, post from this same blogger. The love is spreading.)
I love the strength in that hash tag, but the real power comes from the chat itself. Led by Lauren from My Postpartum Voice, it happens twice on Mondays. Sometimes I feel like I need it. Sometimes I feel like it’s just a nice little prop of support. And sometimes I start tweeting away and end up crying.
This past Monday, we got into a discussion about being perfect and both how hard that is and how hard it is to let it go. I struggle with that every day. Not in attempting to be perfect, because lord knows I’m good at avoiding all sorts of things I should do, but beating myself up because I’m not. I really need to embrace the idea of “good enough”. (What is good enough, anyway?)
There were three of us that really got into this line of thinking and we all admitted to it being an issue. Then one very beautiful mama tweeted this:
“I’ve been where you are, to the point of thinking that if I can’t be perfect I should die.”
Oh, honey. I’ve been there. Am there still, sometimes. More often than I care to admit, actually. I know that place – every street, every alley, every park bench. I moved in a couple of years ago and when I realized all my mail was being forwarded I tried to get out. But I can’t. I’m still a year-round resident and I can’t seem to figure out how to get home.
Now, lest anyone freak out, I’m not actually suicidal. But I’m going to be frank: sometimes, still, I don’t know what the point of this whole life thing is.
But at the end of every #ppdchat, Lauren tweets this:
“Don’t forget that help is only a tweet away these days – you are not alone in this. #ppdchat”
Which is, sometimes, the most helpful tweet of all. Because being where I am, in What’s the Point World, can be a scary place to be. I have talked to very, very few people about this. Two, maybe. And while I think they understand, it’s not the same as knowing I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I’ve heard other PPD survivors say that “X” (which is usually something beyond their normal support system) saved their lives. I’ve never been that close to the edge, but if I were I know that X = #ppdchat for me. I might not need it to save my life, but it’s definitely saving my sanity.
[I cheated a little bit and wrote about my favourite hash tag. That’s allowed, right?!]
