Postpartum OCD is a really challenging diagnosis to navigate. The road to recovery is not an easy one. From my own experience, it took me a year to recover with weekly therapy and medication. Before getting treatment, I felt hopeless and that this was my new life now. I didn’t think I could ever be normal again, but slowly and surely, week by week, I started getting my life back. At the time, I didn’t know that having postpartum OCD was actually the best thing to ever happen to me. Sometimes the hardest moments in our lives can actually bring about the most positive changes.

Surviving postpartum OCD gave me the courage to make changes in my life that I would have never considered otherwise. I learned more about myself in that year of therapy than I had in my 28 years of life. Growing up I was always the girl that would do anything to please others. I desperately wanted everyone around me to approve of any and all life decisions. If someone had a doubt of my choice, I would immediately change it, often at the expense of my own happiness. Living that way was really hard, and I felt miserable a lot of the time. Trying to please everyone in my life was not sustainable, and I had to learn that the hard way. Now, I am much better at making choices for my life that are best for my family AND me regardless of how others feel.

Another aspect of my life that was changed for the better was my career. I spent my whole life working to become a teacher, and unfortunately it was not what I thought it was going to be when I got my own classroom. As a teacher, I felt completely disposable, easily replaced, and like I was not valued for the extremely hard work I put into my job each and every day. I was miserable. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the kids. That was not the problem. Truly, I did feel disposable, and that was an awful feeling. By the time my pregnancy rolled out, I had been googling everyday “what can I do with a teaching degree?” I desperately wanted out, but I had no idea how to do that.

In my year of therapy, I spent much of that time going back and forth on if I would go back to the classroom. Ultimately, I decided not to, and that was the best decision I ever made. I was so worried about disappointing others, and “wasting” my degree. It turns out, I now still use that degree everyday. Because of that life change, I was able to go on to create my blog to help moms, join the PSI-WV Board, write my book, and start my job at the WV Perinatal Partnership. I am so much happier now than I ever was as a teacher or in my old life. Surviving a diagnosis as challenging as postpartum OCD was really hard for me during the moment, but truly was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. I will never regret that happening to me.