Gemma Hartley

Getting pregnant after postpartum depression may have stolen a lot from me, but it gave me a lot more.

There is a time to be prudent and fair to “many sides” of an issue, but dealing with Nazis is not that time.

It wasn’t the name I would have picked — not originally, at least — but as days turned into weeks, it grew on me.

Clearly, it does not take long for my over-ambition to turn me from a vision of perfection into a train wreck you can't look away from. Behold, my first week of school splendor, versus my second week of school ineptitude.

When my son was little, I used to let him win board games a lot.

I felt unique in my passion for martial arts, my affinity for Call of Duty, my go-with-the-flow attitude toward boyish adventures. I wanted to be “one of the guys,” while still retaining the distinction of my sexuality. I longed to be the quintessential cool girl — desirable yet approachable. But in retrospect, all that really amounted to internalized misogyny.

It probably isn’t the sort of parenting moment that is supposed to make a mother proud — the hitting, growling, and otherwise uncivilized decorum... But I couldn’t help feeling a deep satisfaction with my daughter.

When my son was a baby, I used my husband as a second set of hands. He was my co-parent, the other caretaker... I was no longer viewing him as my partner, but rather as an aide to attaining the next level of mothering. Even though my husband never called me out on my behavior, I slowly but surely hung up my need for perfection. Because if being a great mother means being a crappy wife, I don't want any part of it.

The real reason I’m worried about sending my kids to school is that I’m going to be alone. For the first time in nearly a decade. And that’s scary.

I wish I had realized there was no such thing as being too young to have mental health issues. That there was nothing shameful about postpartum struggles.