Dear Reader,

August 12, 2026

The Lindsay Clancy trial is bringing up a lot of feelings for me, and I know it’s doing the same for a lot of other women.

If you have ever experienced postpartum depression, you know the kind of worry, fear, anxiety, frustration, and confusion that can live inside your mind and body. You know what it’s like to not completely recognize yourself. To know something is wrong but not always know how to explain it. To desperately need help while also feeling ashamed that you need it.

I have experienced postpartum mental health struggles after all three of my pregnancies.

And while each postpartum experience looked different, there was one thing that remained painfully familiar: needing support and instead feeling like my struggles were an inconvenience.

My first two children have the same father. My third child has a different father. These were different pregnancies, different relationships, different periods of my life, and different postpartum experiences.

But I learned something through all three of them:

Who you have beside you when you are struggling matters.

If you went through postpartum with someone who supported you, congratulations. I genuinely mean that. I’m truly happy for you.

But me and a lot of other women didn’t get that.

My postpartum has shown up differently throughout my motherhood.

It has shown up during midnight feedings when my brain seemed to completely shut down.

It has shown up as anxiety so severe that I convinced myself I was dying from a heart attack and spent night after night going to emergency rooms because, in those moments, I genuinely believed I was dying.

It has shown up as panic.

Fear.

Confusion.

Anger.

Bitterness.

And exhaustion that went so much deeper than simply being tired.

And instead of always having partners who understood that I was struggling, I experienced my need for help becoming an argument.

I experienced being called a terrible mother.

I experienced being called unstable because I needed help at night.

I experienced a partner becoming so frustrated about having to get up with our baby that he shook her.

I experienced needing help and being made to feel guilty for needing it.

When you experience that kind of fear over and over again without feeling safe or supported, eventually something inside of you changes.

Anxiety turns into panic. Panic turns into frustration. Frustration turns into anger and bitterness because every time you reach for somebody to help pull you out of the water, you somehow end up having to defend why you were drowning in the first place.

Then came my third pregnancy and postpartum period.

That chapter brought an entirely different level of survival.

I was physically sick.

Within roughly nine months, I required three surgeries.

Eight weeks postpartum, I was arrested after my spouse accused me of trying to hit him—something I have always maintained I did not do.

DSS became involved because of that arrest.

I went to therapy and psychiatry appointments trying to understand everything happening around me while professionals were helping me understand the abuse I was experiencing and reassuring me that what I was feeling did not mean I was crazy.

Eventually, after everything my body had already endured, I underwent a total hysterectomy.

I will never carry another child.

And two weeks after that surgery, I had to sit in a courtroom while the father of my youngest child used my PTSD and postpartum mental health against me and portrayed me as unstable.

Think about that.

I was two weeks out from having an organ removed from my body, sitting in a courtroom defending my ability to be a mother while my mental health was being used as evidence against me.

And life didn’t stop so I could recover.

I still had three children who needed me.

I still had bills.

I still had to figure out how I was going to support them.

I still had court.

I still had accusations to defend myself against.

And separately, I have dealt with the father of my older children telling me I don’t deserve custody of my children simply because I asked him to pay the child support already ordered by a court.

Different fathers.

Different relationships.

Different postpartum experiences.

But somehow, again and again, my mental health became ammunition.

There was never a moment where life stopped and said, “You’ve been through enough. Let somebody else carry something for a while.”

I just kept carrying it.

That has been my experience of motherhood.

I don’t feel like I was ever given a soft motherhood.

I wasn’t given the motherhood where I could simply recover after having a baby and focus on nurturing my children. I wasn’t given the space to fall apart knowing someone else would hold things together until I could stand again.

I have lived in survival mode throughout so much of motherhood.

Always trying to make the right decisions for myself and my children while sometimes being handed really crappy choices.

And somewhere along the way, my mental health stopped being something people cared about and became something people could use against me.

My postpartum became a weapon.

My PTSD became a weapon.

My anxiety became a weapon.

My reactions to being hurt became a weapon.

Everything became evidence that something was wrong with me while so little attention was given to what was happening to me.

And that is exactly why the Lindsay Clancy trial is hitting me so hard.

Because I have sympathy for a woman who is on trial for the deaths of her three children and for allegedly trying to take her own life afterward.

I know some people will read that and immediately become angry.

But sympathy does not mean those three children don’t matter. They absolutely matter. Their deaths are devastating.

It means I understand how complicated postpartum mental health can become, especially when we are trying to reconstruct what was happening inside a home from the outside.

And the more I have followed this trial, the more questions I have.

I have become deeply skeptical of the narrative being presented, and I have serious questions about whether we are hearing the entire story. I know my own experiences affect how I interpret this case, and what I believe happened is my interpretation—not a proven fact.

But there is a reason this case hits such a deep nerve for me.

Because I know what it feels like to say:

That is not what happened.

Eight weeks postpartum, I sat crying to a female police officer trying to explain that I believed I was being framed. I tried to explain what was happening to me.

Nobody stopped and asked whether this postpartum woman needed help.

I went to jail.

I bled through four jail uniforms.

Months later, after everything my body had already endured, I underwent a total hysterectomy.

So when I watch another woman’s postpartum mental health being dissected in a courtroom, I don’t watch it from a distance.

I watch it through the eyes of a woman who knows what it feels like to have her mental health brought into a courtroom and used to tell a story about who she is.

I know systems can fail.

I know accusations can change someone’s entire life.

I know postpartum mental illness can be misunderstood.

I know trauma responses can be shown without anyone bothering to talk about the trauma that came before them.

And I know how easily someone can point at your reaction while completely ignoring everything that happened before you reacted.

Then somehow, after everything, women are expected not to be angry.

Don’t yell.

Don’t panic.

Don’t cry too much.

Don’t become bitter.

Don’t react.

Don’t fall apart.

Because if you do, someone can point at you and say:

See? She’s unstable.

But what happened before she became “unstable”?

What happened before she started screaming?

What happened before the panic attacks?

What happened before the anger?

What happened before she stopped functioning?

Was she sleeping?

Was she being helped?

Was she safe?

Was somebody getting up with the baby?

Was somebody listening when she said she wasn’t okay?

Was she being abused?

Was she sick?

Was she terrified?

Was she begging somebody to help her while everyone around her kept telling her she should be able to handle it?

Because maybe instead of constantly asking what is wrong with struggling postpartum women, we need to start asking:

What happened to her?

What was happening inside that house when nobody else was watching?

What was happening while she was supposed to be recovering?

Who was protecting her while she was protecting everyone else?

Who was taking care of the mother?

Because postpartum women do not need their mental health turned into evidence against their character.

They need sleep.

They need safety.

They need medical care.

They need compassion.

They need someone to believe them when they say they aren’t okay.

They need partners who don’t punish them for needing help.

They need professionals who listen before deciding who they are.

They need systems that understand trauma, abuse, mental illness, motherhood, and human behavior are complicated.

And they need to know that asking for help today will not become the weapon someone uses against them tomorrow.

That is what this trial is bringing up for me.

It isn’t just about one woman sitting in a courtroom.

It’s about every woman who has ever struggled postpartum and was treated like an inconvenience instead of someone who needed help.

Every woman whose trauma response was talked about more than the trauma itself.

Every woman who begged someone to listen and wasn’t believed.

Every woman who had her mental health weaponized against her.

And every mother who had to survive one of the most vulnerable periods of her life while simultaneously defending herself against the people who were supposed to be helping her through it.

I’m angry about what happened to me.

I’m allowed to be.

My anger does not erase my motherhood.

My PTSD does not erase my motherhood.

My postpartum struggles do not erase my motherhood.

And my worst moments do not erase every single moment I kept going when I had absolutely nothing left.

I wasn’t given a soft motherhood.

I was given survival mode.

And somehow, through three pregnancies, three postpartum experiences, different chapters of my life, and more battles than I ever imagined motherhood would bring me—

I survived. Because GOD!

Love always,

Kelsey