
How Long Will Recovery Take?
How long will it take to recover from pandemic burnout, early parenting fatigue, or Covid? A massage therapist weighs in on what recovery looks like, and what you need to pay attention to.
How long will it take to recover from pandemic burnout, early parenting fatigue, or Covid? A massage therapist weighs in on what recovery looks like, and what you need to pay attention to.
My first child was born on Mothers’ Day, 2016, the day before our anniversary. It blew me open, ripped my birth canal vagina more than I would have liked, and turned so much of my life upside down. So many of you are about to become mothers for the first, second, third time. You’re doing it in the middle of a pandemic, in the midst of changing rules and ideas, amidst a sea of changing information. Motherhood, in many ways, feels like a pandemic. The strange thing about the last four months is this eerie sense I have that this already feels familiar. I’ve been here before. We’ve been here before.
Over the first forty days, women need to recover and heal. How can we accept the slowness of this process? Here’s one key tool that helped me do that.
What happens to a child whose world is shattered, who loses her family and foundation in an instant? How does a person whose formative years are shaped by trauma and violence recover, let alone create a beautiful family and community of healing? The brave, wise, and beautiful Iman Gatti shares her journey of how the deep, decades-long work of healing her own trauma ultimately led her to helping other women heal themselves.
Postpartum rest challenges me to learn and grow in ways that make me uncomfortable. I’m not great at resting. Snudge, a word like Hygge that tells us to remain quiet and rest, is my goal for the postpartum period. But it’s not always easy for me to do.
Kimberly Ann joins me to talk about the experience of childbirth and the crucial postpartum period, when time to heal is a necessity, not a luxury.