# @feministscience on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DccnceBDYx1
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/69977345-feministscience-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/5eb1c72c0b.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-08-25T02:57:08.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Feminist Science (@feministscience) — https://gondola.cc/feministscience

## Caption

#postpartumdepression and women's #mentalhealth needs more support and attention. 

In the 1960s my grandmother (who had undiagnosed ADHD wasn’t diagnosed until age 70!) had severe PPD and attempted suicide twice. After the second attempt, she lost custody for 2 years and some family members repeatedly frame it to this day as her abandoning them.

Ironically, we are still close with the foster family they lived with who are lovely people. Still traumatic for the kids being separated from their parents, but it provided them a safe, stable environment while their parents sought mental health treatment and counselling. 

They still had weekly visitation with their parents. My grandmother was able to get a part-time job during that period which also helped her recover.

During those 2 years, she missed a lot of milestones in her kids life—first days of schools, holidays, first baby tooth missing (she still has notices and update letters & photos about this—the foster family was wonderful about documenting these years) and it’s hard to miss 2 years of your kids' lives, but all things considered, especially it being the #1960s, (she's only a few years younger than #sylviaplath) things worked out well. 

They reunited and lived together for the remainder of their childhoods, and re-integrated into the extended family. She was a great mom, packed lunches, cooked meals, walked them to school, attended PTA meetings and worked. She told me decades later she tried really hard to be the 'perfect mom'. 

BUT she always and still carries guilt for decades trying to appease her kids especially the eldest who had the strongest memories of foster care and carried so much guilt. 

She was very much viewed by the extended family as broken and ‘wrong’, psychotic, awful. Not as a struggling 27 year Catholic woman overwhelmed, broke, with undiagnosed mental health issues.
(she's still alive)

#ppd #feministscience

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## Tags

feministscience, 1960s, postpartumdepression, mentalhealth, ppd, sylviaplath

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