Lindsey Disch: A Letter to My Daughter

Photos: Stephanie C. Olsen

Lindsey Disch survived postpartum depression that took from her newborn daughter for nearly a year after birth. In this letter to her daughter, Lindsey finds the words that she couldn’t say while battling the darkness. She survived! And now she’s talking.

My sweet girl,

You are two years old now—curious, sturdy, radiant in the way only a child who feels safe and loved can be. You run toward me without hesitation. You trust that I will catch you. You believe, with your whole body, that I am here.

There was a time when I could not be.

When you were born, something in me broke that I did not yet have language for. I was sick in a way that hid behind smiles and silence, in a way that stole my ability to show up even while I loved you completely. There were moments when I looked at you and wished I could feel what I was expected to feel–joy, ease, confidence–but instead felt numb or terrified. Not because of who you were, but because depression had taken over my nervous system. I wanted to be calm when you cried, to trust my instincts, to respond without fear. I often couldn’t. Sometimes I froze, or panicked, or needed help when I thought I should be able to do it on my own. I missed pieces of those early days in ways I still grieve. Ordinary moments–rocking you, bathing you, watching you sleep–were often clouded by the noise in my mind. I was doing the motions of motherhood while fighting thoughts that told me I wasn’t enough, that you deserved better, that I was somehow broken. These thoughts were not true–but they were loud, and they took so much of my strength. My body was present, but my mind was often somewhere else, overwhelmed by fear, sadness, and a constant sense that I was failing you. 

But I loved you completely. This “thing” that found me when I broke, the thing that I can’t name, was to blame. It took me from myself and from you for a season that felt endless while I was inside it.

I want to be very clear about something you should never have to untangle on your own:

My absence was not a lack of love.

It was illness.

And it was real.

There are many moments in your first year that I want to relive. But I can’t and I grieve for them. I always will. And still, my love did not disappear just because I couldn’t express it the way I wanted for you to experience it. 

Even when I was gone in the ways that matter (that mattered to me) I was loving you fiercely in the ways I still could.

My recovery was slow. It was not linear. It asked more of me than anything ever has. 

I survived! 

I survived because you exist in this world and I want to be a mother who stayed.

I am here now! I am present! 

I laugh with you. You are my favorite person and watching you grow is my greatest joy. I am learning motherhood again, this time from a place of health and presence. I won’t lose any more moments. I promise you this: I will always keep choosing treatment, honesty, and support over silence. I will always speak my truth to you.

If you struggle—after birth, over loss, with love, or life—I hope you remember this chapter of your life not as a source of fear, but as evidence. Evidence that even devastating darkness can be treated. That asking for help is not a weakness. That women (mothers!) are not broken when they suffer—we are human.

I hope the world you grow up in knows more than the world I entered motherhood in. I hope clinicians are trained better, families are educated sooner, and mothers are believed faster. If sharing our story helps even one woman stay, seek care, or survive, then this pain becomes part of a larger healing.

You did not lose a mother.

You gained one who fought her way back.

I love you beyond language. I loved you even when I could not show it. And I will spend the rest of my life showing you now.

Always,

Your mom