I saw this post on my friend and PPD survivor Morgan's blog, The 818, and loved it so much I had to have it for Postpartum Progress. Only Morgan could figure out a way to connect postpartum depression to Buffy the Vampire Slayer! I'm so happy she has allowed me to repost it here, cause I love, love, love it. And her.

Buffy the Vampire Slayeris a really good movie. And I’m not talking about that silly TV spin-off that came a few years later withBooth from Bonesand the chick with two first names. {Oh, yeah I TOTALLY went there.}

Anyway. GOING MENTAL.I remember the first time I heard the Buffster say it to rufus in my fave movie circa ’92. ”What are you mental?”

Well, first of all ~ I’ve always been a collector of words and phrases. Someone says some clever turn of phrase in mypresence, and *click* it’s there forever. To be mulled over and tweaked with, and probably show up in some screenplay I write somewhere. {So, Monty Python/Helen Childress/Francesca Lia Bloch/Nora Ephron/John Hughes/The Entire Writing Staff of My So-Called Life — think of it as flattery, not highway robbery, okay?}But I digress. LIKE ALWAYS.Which is kind of a nice segue into the point of what made me sit down to post, on this, the eve of myFIRST DAY AS THE QUEEN OF ALL THINGS ENTERTAINMENT ATBLOGHER.COM.

{Okay, you know I have a thing for the grandiose. But itismy first day as the official Section Editor of Entertainment on the site…whichWHOOOO HOOOO!!!!I have been working my patoot off and keeping that info under my hat for months to able to make that announcement. I’m pretty over the moon psyched and the team atBlogHeris nothing short of incredible.And uh…if you have a pop culture blog I should be reading,PLEASE LET ME KNOW. And if you swing by there late this evening, you should be able to see my vertical all up and running a little early…}

Anyway…the point of this ramble is actually about Mental illness if you can believe all that.

Back when Buffy The Vampire Slayer was my fave movie(you know Hilary Swank is in that movie pre-fame, right? Also look for a young David Arquette)MENTAL was like theworst possible thing a person could be.Vampires? Whatever. Really old creepy dudes who might be mental? Now that was some scary shit. Because as a writer, with my mind as my greatest resource,GOING MENTAL?Being trapped in your brain in some alternate universe and not being sane enough to know it? THAT was the scariest thing I could possibly imagine as an 11-year-old Bowler Hat wearing Valley Girl who took the nickname “Buffy” as a compliment.

But, as you may know…I have now gone completely mental, and I’ve survived it. I was thinking about it all afternoon, and I just want you guys to know that there are way worse things in this world than a little bit of cuckoo. Cuckoo is mostly curable. Or treatable, you know? Just like everything else. So I don’t know why we’re all so afraid of it. I’ve broken ribs, and had appendixes removed, and I even got scurvy once.

People made fun of me when I told them I had scurvy. Not a single damn person laughed when I said I was struggling with Postpartum Depression and Anxiety. Because it’s not funny. It fucking sucks. It should be the best time of your life, and instead it totally totally sucks. Worse than any sucking I’d ever experience before. It sucks so bad, my husband isn’t sure that he can do it again. That we can do it again. That we can expand our family again. And that’s confusing because we love our baby. He LOVES our baby. And it breaks my heart, because I want a whole gaggle of little babies. Because even though I’m still on my road back to me? Still on my road back to my self and my humor and my style and everything about me that made me special, I think I’d do it again in a heartbeat. In a few years. So like, a million heart beats. But I’d do it again. Because what’s a little crazy when you get this at the end of it?