The Best Postpartum Advice I Didn’t Expect

The best thing that happened to me this most recent postpartum wasn’t a supplement, a system, or a “game-changing” routine I would later forget to keep up with. It was something my Italian, no-bullshit aunt said to me while I was very much postpartum — tired, hormonal, and trying to be responsible about my mental health.

At some point, almost casually, I floated the thought: What if I get postpartum anxiety again? I wasn’t panicking. I was just mentally opening the tab, the way so many of us do when we’re trying to stay one step ahead of our own bodies.

She didn’t flinch or ask follow-up questions or suggest we keep an eye on it. She just looked at me and said, “Stop thinking about that. You don’t have that.” And somehow, that was the end of it. No checklist. No monitoring. No circling back later. Just certainty.

And honestly, it worked. I didn’t get postpartum anxiety — or maybe I did briefly, in a way that passed before it could turn into a storyline I carried around with me. Either way, it didn’t become something I worried myself into.

I thought about this again recently while watching Marcello Hernandez’s new Netflix special, where he jokes that he has ADHD, except his mom told him he didn’t, so he didn’t. End of discussion. No label spiral. Life just kept moving.

It made me wonder if, in our very real and necessary effort to name and normalize mental health, we’ve also lost a bit of trust in ourselves — the ability to feel off without assuming it’s permanent, to have a hard week without forecasting a hard year, to let certain things pass through us instead of defining us.

This isn’t anti-therapy or anti-awareness. It’s just a simpler question about balance: whether everything needs a name right away, or whether some things need time, rest, and maybe a little less attention. In this case, it was someone I trust looking at me, completely unfazed, saying, “You’re fine,” and me choosing not to argue.