I've been writing this blog for six and a half years now. That's a long time. As you might imagine, I've had ups and downs along the way. Times when I would run out of energy, or times when things going on in my personal life just made it difficult to write. At those times, if you were visiting here often, you might have noticed that I seemed to simply drop off the radar screen for a while. No posts. No word. Just silence.

Ilyene Barsky, the founder of The Center for Postpartum Adjustment, noticed. She always noticed. She would send me an email: "Are you okay? What's going on? Where are you?" She was the only person who ever reached out to me at those times. Ilyene was like a fairy godmother, swooping in if she sensed all was not well, making sure I hadn't disappeared forever. It was like she knew before I did how important it was to keep Postpartum Progress going. Her emails had this way of nudging me back into working and out of whatever funk or writing drought I had been in.

She died yesterday. God bless you Ilyene for all you did for women with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, and for all you did to keep me going in those early years. I have to wonder whether Postpartum Progress would still exist if not for your kindness.

— Katherine

For more on Ilyene, see:

On the Loss of A Postpartum Pioneer: Ilyene Barsky (from My Postpartum Voice)

Ilyene (from the Postpartum Stress Center)