If you’ve followed me much, maybe you’ve heard me say this already: motherhood brought me to my knees. Motherhood broke me open, and then brought me… sometimes kicking and screaming (literally)… through the muck of daily mothering to a fullness of selfhood I couldn’t have even begun to imagine at the beginning of the bumpy journey.

I was a walking list of risk factors for maternal depressive symptoms (often narrowly pigeon-holed as postpartum depression). Many hands, many ideas and much good guidance helped me navigate those baby, toddler and preschooler days… days that often seemed like molasses in their pace. (They could be pretty sticky, too, come to think of it!) Here are just two invaluable guiding concepts that saw me through. {Read about them at mothering.com}