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Last week, an article on Today.com elicited a collective “THIS” from women across the web thanks to its frank take on an under-discussed but very real mental health challenge: stay-at-home mom depression. The essay—written by Megan Powell, the 32-year-old mother of five behind blog Momma’s Tired—nailed the day-to-day reality for many SAHMs: balancing the vast task of raising children and running a household while simultaneously fending off comments about how it must be so nice and relaxing to not have to go to work.

As a stay-at-home mom for 10 years and counting, I too felt a surge of vindication reading Powell’s essay. Not going to a traditional job every day in favor of full-time parenting is no walk in the park (as any mother or father who’s ever stayed home with the kids even for a day can imagine). Anyone willing to stand up and say that deserves a standing ovation from the one in five U.S. parents who stay home full-time (and, lets be honest, from the everyone else, too). But for some women, there exists a deeper sense of distress that can plague those whose daily routines revolve solely around the kids. “It’s like cabin fever after a few days, except it’s your life every day,” says Danielle Moeslein, a 30-year-old stay-at-home mom in Missouri.

Powell’s essay put a name to that panicky, helpless feeling that sets in when you start to believe that you exist only to help others exist. Or feel like you might want to be doing something more but can’t talk about it because you’re “lucky” to have the option of not working. Or when every small thing in your life feels like a struggle—from brushing your teeth (see: toddler climbing up your leg), to trying to cook a meal for yourself (oh wait, the baby is hungry right now and feeding her is more important), to even getting dressed (why bother?).

Just like postpartum depression may be triggered by external factors—a major life change, a shift in hormones—stay-at-home mom depression is often the result of big, often stressful changes in your life. “Stress exacerbates any condition, mental health or otherwise,” says Melinda Paige, PhD, a professor of clinical mental health counseling at Argosy University in Atlanta. And stay-at-home mom life is rife with triggers. Isolation, loss of purpose or identity and lack of social interaction can all play a role in the development of depression.

In other words, being home alone with demanding young children for what seems like an eternity may not always be the most ideal situation for prime mental health.

Despite all the strides we’ve made in talking about mental health, depression is still stigmatized as a personal failure. That pressure feels particularly frustrating for a lot of stay-at-home moms, myself included, who fall into the roles less by choice and more by circumstance. Moeslein, for instance, tells Glamour that she never planned to stay home, but after her son was born with medical complications as a result of a bladder condition, sending him to daycare wasn’t an option. She had no idea what she was getting into, but she didn’t have any other choice.

During her seven years as a SAHM, the mother of three struggles on and off with the same depression that plagued her in college. “As a mom, especially as a mom who stays at home and suffers from depression, you just don’t have that time to take care of yourself because you’re so busy taking care of your family,” she says. “You do it because you don’t have a choice.”

“I told myself that so many other women would kill to be home with their kids all day, so I bottled up my feelings in fear of seeming ungrateful.”

Even for women who never suffered from depression, the transition to at-home parent may be especially hard for mothers who had careers before having children. The loss of the identity and self-worth a woman’s career provided to her is a form of loss, which is a trigger, says Susan Silver, a psychotherapist in Illinois. “When we think about loss, we usually think about death or divorce, but any major change can be a source of depression.”

Complicating matters is the fact that depression is often overlooked among SAHMs because not going to work every day is viewed as a privileged choice. It’s lucky. That often means moms who struggle may feel like they don’t have the right to speak out. “I told myself that so many other women would kill to be home with their kids all day, so I bottled up my feelings for fear of seeming ungrateful,” says Pamela Gillett, 30, a former stay-at-home mom of two from Michigan, who went back to part-time to cope.

Compounding the pressure that many at-home moms put on themselves to not feel ungrateful is the message that if you’re at home and unhappy, you have only yourself to blame. Common advice given to at-home moms—get up early so you can have “me” time or exercise at home—send the message that if you only worked a little harder, you wouldn’t be so miserable.

“Women often don’t feel they deserve [help]. Or they think something is wrong with them and that they’ve failed in some way if they have to go to somebody else for help.”

At the height of some of my own depressive episodes as a SAHM, I can remember crying while pushing my daughter outside in her little baby swing, telling myself over and over that I should be happy just to be with her, or crying when, yet again, that I had to drag four little kids with me to get my teeth cleaned because finding a reliable sitter is not as easy as all of those “helpful” articles make it out to be. Not being able to voice my own misery or find the help that I knew I needed only served to make me feel like even more of a failure as a mom.

The reality is, the very structure of stay-at-home mothering can make a woman prone to depression even more susceptible. “As a person, you need conversation, you need human interaction, you need stimuli that as a SAHM you don’t get on a daily basis,” Moeslein says. “That’s something nobody talked to me about before I had kids.” Modern family dynamics are getting worse at supporting this, Silver says—extended family members like cousins are less likely to live nearby and grandparents are more likely to be working and living their own active lives. Those key forms of social communities once available to SAHMs aren’t always there anymore. The systemic struggles that SAHMs face are also a very real part of the problem—from the way we treat mothers postpartum (spend 15 minutes with a doctor checking in on your health after giving birth and hope that covers it!), to the lack of paid maternity leave. The message to moms is clear: you’re on your own, lady.

Over a quarter of all mothers in the U.S. don’t work outside the home, according to recent survey data—why has it taken so long to to acknowledge the mental health challenges we’re faced with?

Putting a name to the phenomenon of stay-at-home mom depression helps legitimize it. It’s a rallying cry for any mom who has ever felt this way. For 10 years, I have believed that I am just not “good” at being a SAHM. I’ve told myself, over and over, that while staying home may not be the best thing for me, it’s the best thing for our family right now—so I’d better learn to deal with it. I’ve convinced myself that all the other at-home moms out there are waking up excited about yet another day at home with kids, while I sometimes wake up wanting to cry.

I’m certainly not alone in this. “I always thought I was just having a bad day,” says Kara Collins, 31, a mom of four boys in Maryland. She’s tried medications and communicating more openly with her husband about her struggles but still feels like she’s living in “survival mode.” The term “stat-at-home mom depression” was new to her, but putting a name to the feelings she’s struggling with has helped her feel like she can start to move forward and face them. “I need to find my identity outside of motherhood,” Collins says. “I’m hoping to start a school program which I think will help me dig myself out of this darkness.”

Like Collins, most moms—working or not—are generally aware of what they should do to get the help they need, like talk to their doctor, socialize with other adults, and find interests that fulfill them. But whether they have the energy or ability to actually do those things is another story. “Women often don’t feel they deserve [help], or they think something is wrong with them and that they’ve failed in some way if they have to go to somebody else for help,” Silver says. But by being more open about how it is possible to struggle with stay-at-home depression and love your kids more than life itself, hopefully women and healthcare providers will be able to bridge the gap to help stay-at-home mothers feel more acknowledged and cared for in the future.

Simply hearing the term “stay-at-home mom depression” has helped me validate how I’ve felt over the past decade. It’s not me that’s the problem. Or my kids. Or even my partner not understanding. The truth is, there is a very real lack of knowledge about the realities of women staying home—especially those women who may already be prone to depression. For those of us in the trenches, we can help by being more honest about our own experiences, modeling truths for future generations of mothers, and being kind to ourselves as we figure out how make staying at home work better for everyone.

Photo: Getty Images

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We meet 12 months into her gubernatorial bid, but Gwen Graham has not tired of the political rigmarole.

Graham proffers a firm handshake. She peppers me with questions—and listens with such attention to the answers that I feel like she’s prepared to be quizzed. In a deep blue pantsuit, with her warm attitude, she exudes the same calm command that the best CEOs and leaders (and moms) do. And like the most successful of the women who assume those positions (hip to the realities of what it means to be female in public), Gwen Graham is prepared to tick off her (extensive) credentials.

A prominent gubernatorial candidate in Florida, Graham was born in the state she seeks to represent. She has lent her talents to three progressive presidential candidates and worked in her local school district. In 2014, she ran for a seat in the United States House of Representatives and won it, becoming one of the few Democrats nationwide to beat an incumbent Republican that November.

But it’s her tenure on the cutthroat PTA that she seems most proud of when we sit down earlier this month. “I was the president!” she tells me. She leans forward and whispers, like she has a secret. “Some people think that’s the hardest job I’ve ever had.”

For over a decade, Graham was a PTA mom, a band mom, a school pick-up and let-me-look-at-that-homework mom. Until she had her first child—up to the minute, in fact, given that she went into labor at her desk—she’d worked at Andrews Kurth, a law firm in Washington, D.C. But with an hours-old infant in her arms, she decided to become a full-time parent. It was a “position,” as she puts it, that she held while she raised two more children.

When she did return to the workforce, it wasn’t law that drew her back; it was politics. In 2003, with her children grown, she became an advisor on her father’s presidential bid. (She is the daughter of former Florida Gov. Bob Graham.) When he dropped out of that race, she volunteered her services to candidates Howard Dean and eventual nominee John Kerry. After a stint with her school district in Tallahassee, Graham decided to run for office with her own name on the ticket, much to the bewilderment of most people she knew. It was 2014, one of the grimmest election seasons for new Democrats nationwide.

“I’m a mom, first and foremost,” she insists. But the time she spent at home wasn’t a complete break with her career. As she tells it, it was a kind of leadership bootcamp. She’d become an expert dealmaker, a person both able to stand on principle and prepared to compromise. She knew how to balance interests that sometimes competed for attention and resources. She’d come to feel like she’d mastered one of the secret skills motherhood—the ability to be in several places at once.

PHOTO: Gwen Graham.

Graham and her daughter, Sarah.

“It was an asset,” she concludes. And in 2014, the constituents who elected her seemed to feel the same. Her success meant, perhaps, that the public didn’t need to “see past” a woman’s choice to become a stay-at-home mom. It was motherhood as a bona fide for public service, and Graham isn’t alone in her intention to tout it.

All across the United States, mothers of small children, some of whom work from home or not at all, have decided to run for office to noticeable effect, despite studies that show that some voters don’t believe women with children can balance their public and personal responsibilities. (On the heels of the 2016 presidential race, the Barbara Lee Family Foundation released a report in which researchers found that voters still express deep concerns over how women candidates with small children would fare in elected positions.) The task ahead of them is formidable: re-enter the workforce in a position that doesn’t offer flexible hours or any kind of a structure that lets staff work from home—instead, these women will be on the trail, as candidates for public office.

But whatever the odds, these moms want in. “Maybe there’s a little bit of an initial obstacle to overcome,” allows Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List. But mothers who run for office, she continues, have a unique perspective to share in political races. Motherhood can be a boon to female candidates because it gives them an authoritative voice on all the issues that matter most this election season: health care, education, the opioid crisis, student loans.

These are women who’ve taken their kids to hospitals, lost children to violence and addiction, served in the armed forces or supported spouses who did. From the women who compelled us not to drink and drive, to the ones who want to overhaul gun laws, mothers command moral attention. And “relatable,” that exhausted, but still essential buzzword in politics, is a descriptor mothers earn with relative ease, Schriock explains. “These women have the lived experiences that families and communities in their districts and states care about. You just can’t overlook that.”

For Kristina Lodovisi, a candidate for the Michigan State Senate and a combat veteran, her children—three and one, along with a 10-year-old stepdaughter—are central to her pitch to voters. When she meets with people in her district, she explains how it was her armed forces experience that prepared her for motherhood, and her time at home with her children that drove her into this race. In Afghanistan, she tells them she learned to wake up in the middle of the night, to make decisions fast, to prioritize. With little children, she realized what it means to be a role model, and moreover, what it means to be an advocate.

PHOTO: Kristina Lodovisi

Kristina Lodovisi and her children.

Hers are transferable skills, and she didn’t have to hone them in the traditional political machine. “It helps, I think, to come at this from a different perspective,” Lodovisi adds when I reach her over the phone. “A lot of these career politicians, other moms don’t feel aligned with them.” When she looks around her district, she sees women like her, who want a better education for their children, more resources, fewer potholes. It’s a simple calculus, familiar to listeners of bedtime stories nationwide: “It’s up to moms to save the world.”

From the women who compelled us not to drink and drive, to the ones who want to overhaul gun laws, mothers command moral attention.

Lindsy Judd didn’t have quite so grand a scale in mind when she started to take her kids out for walks in Reno, Nevada, where she is now vying to be county commissioner. She just wanted somewhere to sit. In an effort to clean up downtown Reno, the city had just passed new laws to fend off loiterers and trash accumulation. As a result, when Judd needed a rest, there were “zero benches, not one.” She decided to look into it, and the more she learned about the ordinances that had been approved, the angrier she became. A city, she explains, should be built with real people in mind. She started to feel like her representatives didn’t have a keen sense of what women like her needed. Or for that matter, what their children needed. A progressive, she started to drop into local Democratic Party confabs, but was disappointed to find that no one else had children with them. Her kids are one and three; they’re loud. More than once, Judd remembers, volunteers would shush them in the halls.

PHOTO: Lindsy Judd

Lindsy Judd and her son.

“It’s hard,” she admits. “You don’t want to be a disturbance, but at the same time, shouldn’t Democrats want people in their twenties and thirties in the room?” The more time Judd spent with local officials, the more she’d have to call her own mother to have her pick up the kids. There was nowhere for them to sit. The room was too hot or crowded. People wanted them to quiet. She wasn’t offended, exactly. Just bemused. How could the people she voted for be so out of touch with middle-class families? No wonder so few of them seemed concerned about the crisis in access to childcare. The issue didn’t even touch them. She mulled it over: What if she ran? “I realized I wanted to be a representative for people who felt like they couldn’t participate, like there was nowhere for them in the room.”

Both Lodovisi and Judd have attended VoteRunLead summits, all-day events that train women to run for office. The last time VoteRunLead held a national session, 41 percent of attendees were moms. The sessions impressed upon Judd in particular that if she wanted to win, she’d need to be honest about the challenges of full-time motherhood. It’s true, Judd concludes, that she has to endure different and more personal queries than her opponents. She’s noticed that people are more skeptical. They want her to prove that she’s up to the responsibilities of this office. But Judd isn’t fazed: “It means I research a lot more to compensate. I tend to pull out more facts and statistics. I like to surprise them with just how much I know.”

But the hurdles that full-time moms have to clear in elections aren’t just political. As Lodovisi knows, the simple coordination (not to mention the financial responsibilities) of childcare becomes a serious impediment. A recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) decision could ease at least that burden.

Earlier this month, the commission ruled that a congressional candidate in New York could use campaign funds to cover the cost of childcare for her two children. Over two dozen members of Congress and Hillary Clinton had written letters to support the petition, in which Liuba Grechen Shirley contended to the FEC that her childcare-related expenses were the direct consequence of her bid for elected office. After the FEC approved her bid, she said she wanted to see the decision drive more mothers, especially those that are responsible for the care of small children, to run for office. Our government, she said, is “desperately” in need of women “who understand firsthand what it’s like to balance a checkbook while raising children.”

https://twitter.com/liuba4congress/status/994589568136556544

Gwen Graham’s children are older, but scores of her supporters are still in the throes of new motherhood. A few months back, a woman came over to meet her at an event in Fort Lauderdale. She wanted to tell Graham that she was and remains a Republican, but that she intended to vote for Graham in the gubernatorial race. (To reach it, Graham will first have to win a competitive primary contest in late August.) The woman, a stay-at-home mom herself, was tired of the current political deadlock and repelled by the message it sent her kids—that to get ahead, they should shut down people who don’t agree with them. She told Graham she saw her vote as a teachable moment; “that in this next election, we will elect people who are committed, who want to break through this negative environment.” Graham, who declares she has “a genetic predisposition for optimism” and boasted of her daughter’s impressive position in the school band (drum major, thank you very much), promised the woman she shared her aims.

“Well,” the woman said, “then I can’t wait to vote for the first female governor of Florida.”

Header photo credit: Stocksy

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