Part 2: When Joy & Grief Collide

There’s nothing quite like the arrival of your first baby to really shake life up.

When Edison was born, I expected joy, love, and the sense of finally stepping into my “real” adult life. What came alongside those beautiful feelings was something I hadn’t expected at all: postnatal depression. Nobody had prepared me for how much becoming a mum would impact my mental health.

I felt like a total failure in those early months. I was exhausted, ashamed, and convinced everyone else was coping better than me.

Slowly, with time and a lot of professional support, I began to find my feet again and settle into a new rhythm.

"I expected joy, love and the sense of finally stepping into my "real" adult life."

When I fell pregnant again, I thought this was my chance at a “do-over.” A chance to be the mother I’d always wanted to be and finally get it right.

Maddie’s birth was beautiful. She was a ray of sunshine from the moment she entered the world. Both of my children were, but with Maddie I felt the love and joy I had struggled to connect with the first time.

For the first time in a long time, I felt complete.

And then, just three weeks later, my brother Joe passed away.

I was in pieces. The timing was brutal. Joy and grief collided in ways I still struggle to put into words. I was raising a newborn and a toddler while grieving the loss of the person whose essence had shaped my life, whose presence was woven through every part of it.

To experience your deepest loss and your greatest joy almost simultaneously is a confusion I will never forget. So I did what I had to do.

I survived, barely.

"Joy and grief collided in ways I still struggle to put into words."

That first year nearly broke me. When I look back at photos, I don’t remember half of them being taken. I was there physically, but mentally I had completely disassociated.

Eventually, all of that pain and confusion caught up with me, and it broke me once and for all.

I had a complete breakdown that ended in a suicide attempt. Those words are incredibly hard to write, but I share them because they matter. That moment was my rock bottom, a one only a very close few people knew about. Yet it also became the catalyst for everything that came after.

Hitting rock bottom forced me to make choices I never thought I would.

Scary choices, but also freeing ones. Choices that would change my life.

👉 Next time, I’ll share how choosing scary over safe became the turning point in reclaiming my life and creating Scribbles of Sanity.