Today I attended a wedding ceremony for two very good friends, and the man who was performing the ceremony talked about how to have a successful marriage. Something he said stuck with me: “All you need to do is love your spouse just a little bit more than you love yourself.” As with almost everything, I applied this to my life with postpartum depression. And I came to a conclusion I’ve actually come to many times before but have never really articulated.

When my first son was born, I was consumed with emotion, mostly good. He was a beautiful baby, perfect in every way. I loved him, and life was just as I’d always expected it to be when I became a mother. We took walks in the park, I cuddled him for hours while he slept peacefully, and I sang softly to him as I bathed him each night before bed.

I busied myself with the details of motherhood as I’d seen it portrayed in the media and by all the mothers I’d ever known who all seemed to have it so together. I cleaned and cooked, bought cute outfits with matching shoes, breastfed even though I didn’t particularly enjoy it, and arranged playdate after playdate after playdate. I was happy in the only way I knew how to be, and I thought that’s all there was.

When I started to have alarming thoughts and the hopelessness crept in, I didn’t take heed for months. I kept my head above water by floating on a lifesaver: my son. I was so involved in his life, so intent on providing for his every need, that I couldn’t begin to make time for my own feelings. I’m confident it was this devotion to my baby that saved my life. Because I was almost solely responsible for his care (my husband was in grad school at the time and often gone twelve hours of the day), I wasn’t able to retreat into myself and wallow, even though that was exactly what I wanted to do.

I truly believe serving my son gave me the strength to make it through an incredibly dark time in my life. And I mean “serve” in the sense of providing for him and giving him life, not being his servant. Although in some ways, motherhood is a little bit about submitting yourself to the will of another. In my childless past, I would have scoffed at the thought of relinquishing many of my choices to an eight-pound meatloaf. I’ve since made peace with the idea, though.

It may be an archaic notion, that putting yourself last can be exactly what you need to finally put yourself first. But like that man said today at my friends’ wedding, I loved my son just a little bit (actually, a lot) more than myself, and it was only that love that helped me through.

Full-blown PPD finally did come calling when my son was around eight months old; I don’t think it’s any coincidence that this was also the time when he started to wean himself off breastmilk, was becoming more mobile, and he didn’t need as much round-the-clock care. I had more time to myself and was able to really assess my own emotions, and what I saw wasn’t good. I loved him oh so much, but I was unfulfilled and struggling to reconcile the image of who I used to be with the woman I had become. I realized that I wasn’t doing anyone a service by spending all my time thinking about my baby.

I had to find a way to achieve balance between my needs as a woman and his needs as my child, and that period of discovery was a long process aided by therapy and medication. What I found was this: Loving him “a little bit more” was what made me want to stay around even in the face of great hardship, but loving myself enough was what gave me the strength, perspective, and wisdom to be the best mother I could be, the mother he deserves.

This journey of self-realization has been arduous and is ongoing, but it all came about because of my son–it was love and concern for him that ultimately forced me into the doctor’s office. When I went to my first appointment with a therapist after I was diagnosed with PPD, she asked if I’d ever thought of killing myself. I said, “Well, the other day, I sat at the kitchen table staring at my knives and wondered if it’d hurt to open a vein in my wrist. But I’d never be able to do it.”

When she asked me why, I said, “My son. I love him too much to leave him.” And as soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they were the honest truth. Even though the birth of my son had brought with it intense affliction, guilt, and resentment, the very same event had tethered me so firmly to the earth that I knew I’d never leave without a fight.

So I fought, and I keep on fighting.

Alexis Lesa