Bipolar disorder affects 2-3% of the general population, and about half of the women with bipolar disorder are first diagnosed in the postpartum period. In today's episode, we talk with a mother with lived experience of bipolar 1 disorder and how it affected her journey to and through motherhood. Michelle Yang is third generation ethnic Chinese born in South Korea, and she immigrated to the U.S. when she was 9. She is a mental health advocate and writer whose writings on the intersection of Asian American identity, body image, and mental health have been featured in NBC News, CNN, InStyle, Shondaland, Reader’s Digest, HuffPost, and more. She was a former editor at InStyle and Shape. Her memoir, PHOENIX GIRL: HOW A FAT ASIAN WITH BIPOLAR FOUND LOVE is forthcoming from Fifth Avenue Press in January 2025. In our episode today, Michelle tells us the story of how she was first diagnosed with Bipolar 1 Disorder at the age of 20. We discussed how Michelle had always wanted to be a mom, but she had to grapple with her diagnosis and what that meant. She decided her bipolar disorder was not going to limit her in her ability to live her life the way she wanted to, especially once she was in a loving marriage, financially secure, and mentally well for a prolonged period of time. Michelle walks us through her process of therapy and assembling the right medical team before becoming pregnant, highlighting the challenges along the way--including some insensitive providers who told her she should just not have biological children. We talk about her medications and what it was like during pregnancy leading up to a traumatic birth. Then we talk about how she managed in postpartum when her symptoms came back, particularly with depression and guilt over not breastfeeding because she had to take care of her mental health. This is a deeply moving and thought-provoking conversation about how mental health can be both stigmatized and dramatized, but at the end of the day, people living with mental health disorders also need to know that they can still thrive with their conditions. We hope you will tune in to this beautiful discussion of triumph over stigmas. Find more of Michelle: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michelleyangwriter/Website: https://www.livingwellhappily.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michelleyangwriter Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context. Please RATE and REVIEW our show if you enjoy the episodes we bring to you! It helps others to find our show when you do. Thanks so much!

For Maternal Mental Health Month, we knew we wanted to have a discussion on medications in the perinatal period. Because as much as AAPI folks can be reluctant to do therapy, they can also be just as wary about taking medications. But sometimes medications can play an important role in recovery, just like therapy can. So we wanted to talk with an expert on the psychiatric medications used during the perinatal period to dispel myths and empower our community to learn and ask about medications with their providers. Joining us on today's episode is Dr. Niya Dhand, MD--a double fellowship-trained, double board-certified reproductive psychiatrist. Dr. Dhand went to medical school at Ohio State University and went on to complete her psychiatry residency at Cleveland Clinic. Then she did an addiction Psychiatry fellowship at Yale, where she focused specifically on treatment of addiction in women. After a tragic second trimester pregnancy loss followed by a painful battle with infertility, Dr. Dhand went back and completed a Perinatal and Reproductive Psychiatry fellowship at Northwestern University, where she received in depth education and clinical experience in treating psychiatric conditions during pre-menses, infertility and loss, pregnancy, postpartum and perimenopause. In this episode, Dr. Dhand helps us clarify information on safety of medications like SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressant/antianxiety medications in breastfeeding, during pregnancy, and in postpartum. We talk about the risk of untreated illness versus the risk that medications could bring. People often don't realize that untreated illness also carries a risk of harm to the fetus. For example, there is a small risk of miscarriage with untreated depression, but that risk is not present when you are taking an SSRI antidepressant. Dr. Dhand also talks about the two real main concerns of SSRIs during pregnancy--neonatal adaptation syndrome and persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn. She breaks down what these things mean and what the real risk actually is in numbers. (Spoiler: it's pretty small!) We talk about how and when someone might consider starting medications, whether or not SSRIs are "addicting," if Zoloft is really "the best choice" of antidepressants to start for pregnant and postpartum women. Dr. Dhand gives us a few examples of alternative therapy that have been proven to show some benefit and she gives us some resources she recommends moms can use over Google. This episode goes in depth about the data, risks, and benefits of the most common psychiatric medications we think of during the perinatal period, but it by no means covers everything. Much of this information is shared transparently not to scare, but hopefully having some knowledge of what is truly important to look out for will empower our moms in their discussions with a provider to find a good fit if medications are in the picture. Resources mentioned: Mother to Baby: https://mothertobaby.org/LactMed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK501922/ Find Dr. Niya Dhand at: Instagram: www.instagram.com/drniyadhandPSI Provider Directory Listing: https://psidirectory.com/listing/dr-niya-dhand-meridian-psychiatric.htmlDr. Dhand's Practice at Meridian Psychiatric Partners: https://meridianpsychiatricpartners.com/providers/ Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context. Please RATE and REVIEW our show if you enjoy the episodes we bring to you! It helps others to find our show when you do. Thanks so much!

Many of you have heard or read about Dr. Jasmine's postpartum depression story and know that insomnia was a huge piece of the story. While "postpartum insomnia" is not a true technical diagnosis, many moms have reached out to her about feeling so lost, confused, and unseen in their insomnia struggles after having a baby too -- especially after Jasmine's recent appearance on Rachael's (@heysleepybaby) podcast No One Told Us. So to kick off Maternal Mental Health Month, on today's episode, Peggy will be interviewing Jasmine to dive deeper into Jasmine's insomnia story that she hasn't shared before. We go over the scary 48-hour period where Jasmine couldn't fall asleep, the medications she tried, and the treatment modalities that helped Jasmine get better, including EMDR. We also discuss other options like CBT-I and how that can be helpful for those suffering with insomnia. We hope this episode helps those moms who have felt unseen in their insomnia struggles and perhaps highlight some potential treatment options. Maybe sharing this episode with a friend can also help explain what you're going through right now too. Each person's journey will be unique, but we get it--sleep is so important and can be so hard to come by. But there is hope and you can get well again! Resources: EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)EMDR Therapist DirectoryCBT-I (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - Insomnia)CBT-I Provider DirectoryWhy We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker, PhDNo One Told Us podcast episode that Jasmine was a guest for For those who don't know about Jasmine: Dr. Jasmine is a mom of one and a clinical pharmacist with a doctorate in Pharmacy as well as a perinatal mental health certification (PMH-C). She is a survivor of severe postpartum depression, anxiety, and insomnia and a past Peer Mentor volunteer for Postpartum Support International (PSI). As a fierce maternal mental health advocate and a second-generation Taiwanese American, she also co-hosts a podcast called Healing the Tigress, which features conversations around Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) maternal mental health. She writes on her Pearls of Jasmine newsletter, blog, and Instagram about motherhood topics, mental health de-stigmatization, and gentle parenting. Some of her writing has been featured in places like Mother.ly and Psyched Mommy, and she was interviewed for a PPD story in Women's Health magazine last fall. If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI parents who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

We are thrilled to have Allison Livingston on our podcast for today's episode to talk about her lived experience with perinatal obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and postpartum depression (PPD). Allison is a Korean-American adoptee and a mom of two. She has a B.A. in International Business and a M.A. in Early Childhood Education. Allison was a teacher for 5 years and then things shifted after she had her daughter. In this episode, we talk about Allison's journey of diagnosing her postpartum OCD. Perinatal OCD is the most misunderstood and misdiagnosed of the perinatal mental health disorders. It can affect as many as 3-5% of mothers and perinatal women have up to 2x greater risk of OCD than the general population. Many women also have comorbid depression, and Allison's OCD was not initially recognized in addition to her PPD. We talk about how Allison finally got the right diagnosis, some of the obsessions and compulsions she had, and most importantly how she recovered. Allison openly talks about taking medications for OCD and the Exposure and Response Prevention therapy she did. We talk about the difference between intrusive thoughts versus psychosis. And even though it was not an easy journey, Allison provides optimism for recovery--even going on to have a second child, which she was much more prepared for. Through learning more about her own condition and recovering, Allison is now a fierce advocate for maternal mental health. She co-facilitates the Perinatal OCD Support Group for Parents at Postpartum Support International (PSI), and she is also PSI's International Coordinator Manager. With her lived experience, she was also asked to be on the International OCD Foundation's Public Awareness subcommittee of the Perinatal OCD Task Force. We hope this episode will help others (including providers!) understand perinatal OCD more and normalize medications and therapy for treating OCD. We also want this episode to provide hope for those out there suffering with perinatal OCD; there is treatment and you can be well again! Find more of Allison here: LinkedInBlog: https://atwoq.blogspot.com/ Resources: PSI Perinatal OCD Support Group for ParentsPSI Perinatal OCD Support Groups for MomsU.S. Dept of Human & Health Services Talking PPD Campaign--Allison's VideoNOCD: https://www.treatmyocd.com/International OCD Foundation: https://iocdf.org/ If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI parents who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

TW: Topics of miscarriage and suicide are briefly discussed in this episode. You may recognize our next guest from a New York Times story featuring real-life women's stories on postpartum depression last summer. In this episode, we talk with Shivani Hiralal about her experiences with miscarriages, an ectopic pregnancy, a traumatic birth, and then postpartum depression. Amidst the roller coaster of emotions on her road to becoming a mother, Shivani describes moving to a new state while pregnant during the pandemic and then having to perform CPR on her husband unexpectedly while she was 35 weeks along and enduring an ICU stay for him. Through listening to her story, it highlights that there are so many things that can contribute to perinatal anxiety and mood disorders, starting from the conceiving journey. Shivani describes how being a woman of color felt like another disadvantage in getting the help she desperately sought out in the healthcare system. Additionally, you may remember in Episode 2 of Healing the Tigress, we talked with Nima Bhakta's sister, Priya Bhakta, about Nima's postpartum depression story leading to a devastating suicide ending. Shivani’s husband was a close childhood friend of Nima’s. We hear about when Shivani first met Nima and then how Nima’s story further fueled Shivani’s desire to be a fierce advocate for perinatal mental health by continuing to share her story. Shivani shares some exciting work happening at PSI soon and about the power of support groups. It can be hard as AAPI folks to consider support groups and openly share our hard moments in motherhood, but Shivani also helps destigmatize support groups and highlight how they can help. Shivani Hiralal is a South Asian mother with a background as a trained yoga and mindfulness guide. She has worked with pregnant and postpartum patients on their journeys to parenthood. Her commitment and passion for advocating for perinatal mental health led her to join Postpartum Support International (PSI) as their Marketing Strategist. Additionally, she facilitates the South Asian Support Group at PSI and is currently on track to receive her PMH-C. She hopes to continue to live her life's mission of de-stigmatizing mental health, specifically, perinatal mental health in South Asian communities and around the world. Find more of Shivani at: Instagram: www.instagram.com/shiralal25NYT Article feature: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/well/mind/postpartum-depression-mental-health.htmlPSI South Asian Support Group will be linked when it is up And if you or someone you know is having thoughts of self-harm, please call or text: 1. National Crisis and Suicide Hotline: 988 2. National Maternal Mental Health Hotline: 1-833-852-6262 (1-833-TLC-MAMA) 3. Postpartum Support International Hotline: 1-800-944-4773 Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you are in need of more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

Recently we had an episode on the decision to have just one child, but there is another side to “one and done” families who may not be this way by choice. We offer a Trigger Warning before you listen that this episode does talk about miscarriage. For this episode, we sit down with Val from @thewabisabimama to talk about her motherhood story. Val is a fourth-generation Japanese American mother, who shares the beauty of imperfections and impermanence in motherhood—the meaning behind the Japanese phrase “wabi sabi.” She also shares on her Instagram account the ways she is trying to keep her family’s cultural heritage alive and how she is creating her own family traditions with her son. In this episode, we talk with Val about how she may be one and done, but not exactly by choice. During the first half of the episode, we hear about Val’s experience with her son’s colic and her experience with postpartum depression. In the second half of the episode, we dive into the feelings of grief over a miscarriage Val had a couple years ago and is still perhaps not done grieving. The topic over this miscarriage is more complex in Val’s situation because she had actually mentally prepared to be done having kids, but then she got pregnant again and had a glimmer of hope for a brief window. After the miscarriage, Val ran more tests and then learned that secondary fertility was in the picture. Val shared with us that even though she is grateful for her son, it’s hard to be in the “one and done” group especially when she does wish to have another child. But she is trying to find and come to the peace of having a single child family. We talk about the grief and gratitude around this and about normalizing the invisible grief over miscarriages in general.  We hope this conversation might be helpful for anyone who is still grieving a miscarriage or hoping to expand their family know that they are not alone in these feelings. Find more of Val at: Instagram: www.instagram.com/thewabisabimama Other resources: Jasmine's Substack Newsletter on being "One and Won" If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI parents who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

The episode today is rich with a wide range of topics from public policy, to race and racism, to PPD/PPA/PPOCD. A heartwarming message we also get to highlight is how it’s never too late to change your career and chase your dreams.  Divya Kumar, LICSW, ScM, PMH-C is a South Asian-American psychotherapist with a public health background who specializes in perinatal mental health, trauma, and the life transitions related to pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. She is a mom of two teenagers and especially passionate about holding space for folks of color and folks who identify as first- and second-generation immigrants as they navigate the transition to parenthood and explore how race, racial identity, and culture intersect with parenting. Before becoming a therapist, Divya's work focused on connecting clinical services with public health by addressing unmet needs in direct perinatal mental healthcare and the structure and delivery of perinatal support services. Currently, she participates in initiatives to improve perinatal mental health services and systems of care at both the state and national levels. Divya is a Co-Founder of the Perinatal Mental Health Alliance for People of Color (the Alliance), Board Member of Postpartum Support International (PSI) of Massachusetts, and a Commissioner on the Ellen Story Commission for Postpartum Depression. In this conversation, we talk about how Divya was inspired to co-found the Alliance with Jabina Coleman and Desiree Israel after a fateful PSI conference, as a way to invite more providers and mothers of color to the resources that PSI had to offer. Divya also shares about her own personal postpartum journey that was rife with PMADs (PPD, PPA, PPOCD) she never got diagnosed with and finally understood years later. Divya also returned to school after realizing the work she was doing with postpartum women after becoming a mother herself was inspiring a calling to become a therapist who could work particularly with women of color. As someone who is raising multiracial, multicultural children, Divya is also highly aware of the privilege and also the racism that her kids will have to grapple with. She talks about parenting in a new generation, often “bushwhacking” or carving out our own paths because we were never shown how to value feelings and mental health as AAPI children.  This is one of the most fiery and passionate conversations we’ve had, and we hope you will enjoy it too! Find more of Divya on Instagram: www.instagram.com/bothbrownandtherapist Resources mentioned:AsAm news article: Better Luck Yesterday If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI parents who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

TW: Miscarriages are briefly discussed in this episode. If you asked Shannon Eng when she was younger how many kids she wanted, she might have told you ten! She thought she wanted a lot of children, despite being an only child herself. And then she became a mother right before the world shut down for a global pandemic. The idea of having more children soon changed after Shannon went through postpartum during a time where she did not have a village for support and her mental health was often not well. Now she has decided that for her mental health's sake, one child is exactly what she wants and needs. Some of you may also know Shannon as a popular fitness nutrition specialist and Pilates instructor on social media as @caligirlgetsfit. She uses her platform now not only to share about health and wellness, but to highlight her motherhood journey and how she is an only child who is choosing to raise an only child. Shannon also recently started a newer account on Instagram called @onlynotlonelykids to focus more on single children topics. In this episode, we discuss how Shannon had 2 miscarriages before having her son, and that began to set the stage for the mental health toll motherhood would have on her. We talk about how some people don't view mental health as a "real" reason not to have more children. We talk about the mislabeled stereotypes people give to only children and some of the reasons and history behind how these unfounded assumptions came to be.  Shannon is a third and fourth generation Chinese American, but despite her family being in the U.S. for awhile, she feels they still hold onto a lot of Asian values--one of which is the cultural expectation to have many children so someone will care for the elderly. We talk about how people often think only children will be "lonely," and Shannon also gives a great analogy to the argument for "double or nothing" when it comes to having children. We hope this conversation will help normalize the choice to be one and done as well as for society to stop mislabeling only children with stereotypes that have been disproven before they really get to know them. We realize that having a choice is a privilege, but also want to acknowledge that there is no perfect family size. The best one is the one that works for your family--physically and mentally. Find more of Shannon at:Instagram:1. www.instagram.com/caligirlgetsfit2. www.instagram.com/onlynotlonelykids If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI parents who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

You may know our latest guest as the popular "Untigering" on Instagram or from her book by the same name. Iris Chen is a recovering tiger mother, parent coach, and founder of the Untigering movement. After seeing the negative effects of authoritarian parenting and unhealthy cultural expectations in her own life, Iris is now on a mission to promote mental health, peaceful parenting, and self-directed learning, especially among Asian communities. Because of our names and our ideas around the concept of the "tiger mom," we knew we had to get Iris on the podcast to have a conversation! In this episode, we talk with Iris about what she observed being an "American Born Chinese (ABC) raising Chinese Born Americans (CBA)" in China, after she lived there for 16 years. Iris has since returned to the U.S. and is continuing to raise her teenagers in ways that honor peaceful parenting and "unschooling," which we talk about as well.  We discuss how Iris got to experience a "third culture" living abroad and then in turn defining how she wanted her motherhood and parenting ideals to look. Iris goes over the pivotal moment when she realized she had to change her authoritarian ways of parenting because she realized there was actually neurobiological development at play in her children that she had to take into consideration. We also talk about how mental health and parenting can be closely tied in motherhood, and how "untigering" is not just about how we parent our children now but also how we heal from the way we were parented. Additionally, Iris talks about how we're not abandoning all ideals and traditions of our culture. Rather, we are blending our parts and seeing ourselves as bi-cultural and creating our own culture. Please join us in this rich conversation about the intersection of motherhood, parenting, Asian identity, and mental health with the inspiring Iris Chen. Find more of Iris at:Website: https://untigering.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/untigering/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/untigering Book: "Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent" If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI mothers who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

TW: We do discuss suicidal thoughts and miscarriage in this episode. Even though Healing the Tigress is about maternal mental health, we cannot have these conversations with just moms. Men, dads, partners all play a role in the healing process as well, and they themselves also deserve the same support and care for their own mental health as they step into parenthood. Their mental health ties in closely with maternal mental health too. So we really wanted to feature a male voice on our podcast, and who better to talk with than J.S. Park —a Korean American hospital chaplain from Florida. J.S. Park has a MDiv and a BA in Psychology. He is a published author (The Voices We Carry) with another book on the way in a few months, a viral blogger/influencer, and a father to a 3-year-old daughter with a second child on the way next month! For eight years, he has been an interfaith chaplain at a 1000+ bed hospital that is designated a Level 1 Trauma Center. His role includes grief counseling, attending every death, every trauma and Code Blue, staff care, and supporting end-of-life care. He also served for three years as a chaplain at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the homeless on the east coast. Together we sit down and talk about how J.S. did not think he wanted children at first, for fear of passing down his generational traumas. Eventually he did decide to have children, and unfortunately, his wife experienced severe postpartum depression. We talk about their journey to getting her help at the beginning and height of the pandemic. J.S. also admits that he himself also ended up having depression and anxiety after burning out from being the sole caregiver of his wife and his daughter, who they were concerned had other health problems. We talk openly about taking antidepressants and going to therapy and couples’ therapy. We also discuss his views on “grief anxiety,” as a person who constantly sees death at work. There are many instances of grieving in motherhood/parenthood, and J.S. talks with us about how this grief ties in with social and cultural forces too. This conversation is rich with thought-provoking ideas that challenge our stigmas against Asian males, dads, mental health, generational trauma, grief, and more. Please take a listen to this wonderful discussion with J.S. Park, dubbed the “grief catcher” or “therapriest,” and we hope you’ll enjoy listening to our first (but not last!) male guest! Find more of J.S. Park at: Instagram: @jspark3000Website: https://jsparkblog.com/Book: The Voices We Carry Pre-Orders for Next Book: As Long As You Need If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI mothers who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

Please help us welcome our first international guest! Tisha Kachhapati, MBPsS, MBACP, is a Nepalese American psychodynamic counselor now living abroad and based in the United Kingdom for the past decade. She is what we would consider an ex-pat, but as we discuss, she mentions that because she is a person of color, people often call her an “immigrant” instead. In this episode, Tisha describes her experience giving birth in the UK and the traumatic birth that followed, which left her getting an emergency C-section and barely conscious enough to realize a Code Blue had been called. Tisha tells us how it felt like the mother was forgotten after the baby was delivered and how her postpartum depression and anxiety weren’t as apparent until 8 months later because she seemed so high functioning. Even when she asked her general practitioner for antidepressants, she was dismissed and told she just needed to “go on a holiday.” Eventually, Tisha took the antidepressants and got better. But when her son was two, Tisha was trying to ask her GP if they had more help for maternal mental health to offer her. She was turned away and told there was nothing they could offer her. Tisha was shocked. But she turned that disappointment into her personal fuel to change her career completely and pursue a degree in psychodynamic counseling. Please tune in to this inspiration story from a mum across the pond. We think you’ll find it relatable, enlightening, and funny, as Tisha’s humor and wonderful British accent really shine through. And the bigger message is that perinatal mood and anxiety disorders do not discriminate; many of the same themes and societal stigmas and shortcomings are the same in the UK as they are in the US. Find more of Tisha at: Instagram: @tmktherapy Website: www.tmktherapy.com If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI mothers who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you need more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

We took a short break while Jasmine was studying for her PMH-C test, but now that she has taken it and passed (yay!), we wanted to throw in one last bonus episode for 2023. Pull up a chair and grab a mug of hot cocoa (or your drink of choice) to listen in on an open, completely unedited conversation between Peggy and Jasmine, reflecting on how this experience of starting Healing the Tigress has been.  Find out what surprised us most after starting this podcast, what our favorite moments of the past 3 months have been, and even some confessions and realizations from our high school days! We inadvertently (briefly) recap all of the episodes from this year--what did they mean to us and what were the emotions behind some of them. Jasmine also shares a little bit about just what "PMH-C" really is and how it can be helpful for those seeking help with perinatal mental health. We end by teasing a little bit about the kinds of guests we have coming up in the next year! And then if you haven't seen our fun holiday giveaway yet, there's still a few more days to enter on our IG page! Check it out over at www.instagram.com/healingthetigress. We'll be back from the holidays around mid January, so look out for us then! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for supporting us on this journey. We can't wait to share our upcoming guests with everyone. Happy Holidays! See you in 2024!

A lot of AAPI parents these days are breaking generational cycles by parenting differently. You may know KJ Althoff as "Gentle Healing Mom" on Instagram, and in today's episode, we have the honor to hear her share her story for the very first time about her Filipino background and how it plays a role in her childhood traumas and motherhood journey today. In this episode, KJ graciously opens up to us about how she was actually brought up to suppress her Filipino heritage to fit in with her American peers when she moved to the U.S. at a young age from the Philippines with her mother. She grew up with a white father who adopted her, but it took years to come to terms with her true identity as 100% Filipina. KJ discusses with us how she realized a lot of her childhood trauma contributed to her triggers in motherhood, and hence, she started a journey of self-healing to parent her child differently than how she was raised, as well as re-parenting herself. Over the course of learning how to parent in a way that felt right to her, KJ has built a community of over 100k followers on Instagram (@gentlehealingmom) sharing about her personal gentle parenting journey as well as healing from childhood wounds. She has a master's degree in mental health counseling and is also a certified parenting coach, as well as Director of Content for Big Life Journal. KJ and her husband Adam have been married for 7 years. They have a 6-year-old son who is the reason KJ began her gentle and conscious parenting journey more than 3 years ago. KJ also discusses with us the difference between gentle parenting and conscious parenting, which we think is important to distinguish. Please join us in this deeply personal and hugely relatable episode about parenting. Books recommended by KJ: Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent and RespectMy Body! What I Say Goes!My Body Belongs to Me from My Head to My Toes I Said No! A Kid-to-kid Guide to Keeping Private Parts Private You can find more of KJ at: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gentlehealingmom/ (@gentlehealingmom) Big Life Journal: https://www.instagram.com/biglifejournal/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gentlehealingmom Website: https://gentlehealingmom.com/ If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and follow our show! We would also love a rating and review to help our show become more visible to other AAPI parents who would benefit. Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you are in need of more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

Leah Kim has been a long-time writer and champion of mental health, narrating her personal stories and essays so poignantly about her childhood trauma, growing up a daughter of a mentally unwell mother, and then battling postpartum depression (PPD), anxiety, panic disorder, and PTSD when she became a mother. We were so fortunate to sit down with Leah to dive deeper into her long-term experience with mental health in this episode. Leah is a second-generation Korean American, born in Chicago and raised in the Bay Area. But she has traveled worldwide and may be better known for her admirable career as Nike's former Global Yoga Ambassador for 10 years. She is currently a mother of two, a blogger, and a podcast host herself for Voices on the Side. She is also a writer with a book in the works! Because Leah grew up around her mother who was mentally unwell for as long as she could remember, she tried to set herself up to be as mentally well as possible before she became a mother. Leah thought that being a yoga and mindfulness expert meant that she would be able to think her way out of any darkness. She had a firm belief that she should be able to have a "natural" birth to fit her narrative as Nike's Yoga Ambassador. But 9 years ago, when her birth plan for her first child went south, she was not prepared for the traumatic aftermath. In this episode, we talk about what she describes as "years long PPD after my first child," including how she first realized she actually needed more help when she started getting anxiety and panic attacks. These panic attacks didn't start until her son was 1.5 years old and finally led her to seek out therapy and help. We talk about how we cannot put a timeline on mental health and that PPD can go on longer than a year.  If you are someone who has had PPD for longer than a year or experienced panic disorder or C-PTSD, you may resonate deeply with this episode. But even if you have not, Leah touches on a lot of themes of mental health challenges that many new moms go through. Back when she had her first child, social media had not been such a safe space to talk openly about things like PPD, but Leah was one of the few AAPI voices on maternal mental health back then and continues to be now. Please tune in and listen for yourself to Leah, who was the inspiration to Jasmine (one of our Healing the Tigress cohosts) for realizing how important having an AAPI voice in this space really was to her. Resources mentioned: This is Not What I Expected: Overcoming Postpartum Depression by Karen Kleiman, MSW, LCSW Find Leah at: IG: @leahsoojinkim Podcast: Voices on the SideBlog: https://www.on-motherhood.com/ Please share with a friend if you found this helpful, and we always welcome ratings and reviews to help us increase visibility for our AAPI community in the maternal mental health space. Thank you! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you are in need of more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

Trigger Warning: This episode discusses Pregnancy Loss and Termination For Medical Reasons “The Sun shone brightest the day you returned to the sky,” writes Katrina dela Cruz to her son, Zeo Thomas, who was 19 weeks in the womb when she lost him. It happened to be Summer Solstice that day. Not long after, she unexpectedly had a miscarriage of another baby, Solis Vida, and bled over Zeo’s due date. And despite all of heartbreak, Katrina still finds ways to hold onto joy after these pregnancy losses. To end Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, we are honored to sit down and speak with Katrina about how her unique experience of motherhood and loss over the past 2 years have heightened her intuition and transformed the way in which she holds space in her own practice as a therapist. Katrina dela Cruz is a licensed mental health professional (LCSW), psychotherapist, spiritual coach, counselor, and the mother of two Spirit babies. She worked with patients in hospitals for over a decade, including in care for maternal mental health on OB/GYN and L&D units, before beginning her private practice, where she integrates Western psychological theory with energy work, sound healing, plant spiritism, and ancestral healing traditions. Katrina is also a HOPEtober Ambassador for RTZ Hope--a national non-profit organization that provides holistic support, resources, and community for all people who have experience pregnancy and infant loss. She is Filipino American and proud to be 100% Ilocano (indigenous to Ilocos, the northernmost region of the Philippines). She discusses with us how Filipinos are known for their optimism but how discussing something as tragic as miscarriage and loss can feel unnatural in her community. 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage but many will suffer in silence. We hope this episode will leave listeners with a better awareness of pregnancy loss and how to better support families going through this extremely difficult time. Resources and Links mentioned: RTZ Hope: https://rtzhope.org/Katrina's HOPEtober Ambassador page: https://rtzhope.org/2023-hopetober-ambassadors/2023/katrina-delacruzMaternal Mental Health Now Courageous Conversations registration (Free on 11/9/23): https://maternalmentalhealthnow.networkforgood.com/events/63292-courageous-conversations-pregnancy-and-infant-lossPostpartum Support International Loss and Grief Support: https://www.postpartum.net/get-help/loss-grief-in-pregnancy-postpartum/  Find Katrina at: Website: www.firemoonmedicines.com IG: @firemoonmedicines Please share with a friend if you found this helpful, and we always welcome ratings and reviews to help us increase visibility for our AAPI community in the maternal mental health space. Thank you! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you are in need of more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

What happens when you’re a mental health professional who knows more than enough about postpartum depression and you embark on your own postpartum journey—only to discover that there’s a whole world of postpartum anxiety you’ve never seen? In today’s episode, our Healing the Tigress cohost, Peggy, shares her story about how she was blindsided by postpartum anxiety amidst a pandemic. She dives into how she felt the social pressures to sleep train in order to be a “perfect” mother and the journey through learning the value of being a Good Enough Mother. Peggy also explains how becoming a mother enlightened her understanding of being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and how rediscovering her own intuition led her to see there are other ways to respond to your baby that may not be what the dominant Western culture imposes. She was reminded that there are centuries of traditions and cultures around the world that embrace a different way of responsive parenting that may not be the norm in Western society. As she gave herself permission to parent her new baby from her own intuition and cultural lens, she finally found relief from her postpartum anxiety. She also discovered a therapist who was a better cultural fit to honor how she wanted to parent. If you have ever had doubts about sleep training or are unsure about how postpartum anxiety might look, this will be a great episode for you to tune into! Books: Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans by Michaeleen Doucleff Parenting Without Borders: Surprising Lessons Parents Around the World Can Teach Us by Christine Gross-Loh, PhD The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N Aron, PhD Social media recommendations Instagram - @HeySleepyBaby La Leche League International resource: The Safe Sleep Seven Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you are in need of more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

"It takes a village," we're often told about motherhood. But what happens when you're a single teen mom who had to move out of the home she grew up in while pregnant and even your (Asian) church community isolated your parents? Add on top of that the Asian mentality of "saving face" and there's a whole other complex layer that everything is stacked against you going into new motherhood. That is what Tiffany Cheung talks with us about in this episode. Together, we discuss all the obstacles Tiffany faced when starting off motherhood. Tiffany tells us how she was never told about postpartum depression in any of her OB/GYN visits, and one day a Google search led her to discover that PPD was likely what she had and that she needed help. We talk about how Tiffany realized she had to leave her abusive relationship, how she lived off food stamps while being in school, and how she healed from the depression and turned it into fuel to care for her daughter. We even get to hear how she eventually became immensely successful by founding her own business during the pandemic. Tiffany is a second-generation Asian American entrepreneur known as The Business Activation Coach, a manifestation expert, published author, and podcast host of the Social Reset Podcast. She is deeply passionate about connecting women of color to their soul gifts, and building a business that is rooted in sharing their magic. Tiffany cares deeply about helping her students break generational curses and alchemizing them into legacies of wealth, abundance and magic. You can find more of Tiffany at the following places:  Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/tiffanycheung.co Website: www.tiffanycheung.co Podcast: Search= Social Reset Podcast If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI mothers who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in!  Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you are in need of more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

Trigger Warning: This episode will discuss maternal suicide. On today's episode, we are sitting down with Priya Bhakta, the sister of Nima Bhakta, who died by suicide on July 24, 2020. Nima was a new mother suffering with postpartum depression (PPD) and unfortunately lost the battle when her son was just over half a year old. Priya graciously talked with us about Nima's background and described how her vibrant, loving sister changed almost as soon as she became a mother. In talking about the events leading up to Nima's passing, we hope to shed light on how PPD can be so insidious and help destigmatize the maternal mental health discussion in the Indian American community and beyond in our AAPI communities. Priya talks about how Nima's husband and the rest of her family came together and decided they needed to honor Nima by spreading her whole story to break the stigma in their communities. They have already seen some of the positive effects on other families because of this. We hope this conversation will also be a source of light to honor Nima and help others realize they are not alone. There is help out there, and talking about mental health is the first step. Accepting help is the second. If you would like to connect more with Priya or learn more about Nima's story and legacy, here are a few ways: Email: priyabbhakta@gmail.com Instagram: @breakthestigma4nima You can also check out the social media hashtag movement of #BreakTheStigma4Nima Maternal Mental Health in the AAPI Community (Pearls of Jasmine Newsletter): https://pearlsofjasmine.substack.com/p/002-maternal-mental-health-in-the And if you or someone you know is having thoughts of self-harm, please call or text: 1. National Crisis and Suicide Hotline: 988 2. National Maternal Mental Health Hotline: 1-833-852-6262 (1-833-TLC-MAMA) 3. Postpartum Support International Hotline: 1-800-944-4773 Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you are in need of more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

You may have heard of Dr. Jasmine’s story of severe PPD and PPA on her blog or her Instagram— Pearls of Jasmine. She is one of the co-hosts of this podcast, a clinical pharmacist, perinatal mental health certified, mom of one, and a second-generation Taiwanese American. This episode dives deeper into the cultural layers and intersection of her identities that may have played a role in contributing to that PPD and PPA. Jasmine shares about her pregnancy and childbirth experience with her Ayurvedic doula and her modified Chinese “confinement period” where mothers are expected to stay home and rest for a month while nourishing with a special diet after delivering a baby. We also talk about breastfeeding pressures, the difficulty of finding language to even talk about depression, and the effects of combining Eastern and Western medicine from her pharmacist standpoint. We hope that anyone listening to this episode will feel seen when it comes to the balance of finding your identity in motherhood while also straddling Eastern and Western medicine and traditions. There is a type of guilt that second-generation AAPI might feel in trying to honor their heritage but also just trying to stay afloat while navigating new motherhood (and possibly a perinatal mood disorder) in a Western world. You can find more of Jasmine at the following places: Instagram: instagram.com/pearlsofjasmine  Newsletter: pearlsofjasmine.substack.com Blog: pearlsofjasmine.com (Read her full story under “My PPD Story”) Jasmine also highly recommends the non-profit Postpartum Support International (PSI) and their myriad of free resources. She was a PSI Peer Mentor Volunteer in 2020 and continues to attend trainings and panels they provide. She was even a panelist this year on "Coloring the Conversation," a monthly web series hosted by the Perinatal Mental Health Alliance for People of Color, a program within PSI. If you enjoy our podcast and our mission to shine light on conversations and stories of AAPI mothers, please take a moment to leave us a review! Reviews help us become more visible and we really want this podcast to reach more AAPI mothers who may need it. You may also follow us @healingthetigress on Instagram and TikTok. Thank you for tuning in! Note: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers' own. This podcast is not a replacement for therapy or professional/medical advice. If you are in need of more support or advice, please reach out to your own medical professional who can answer your questions with your individual medical history and background in context.

Welcome to our pilot episode of Healing the Tigress! This episode introduces your hosts: Peggy, a licensed clinical social worker, and Jasmine, a clinical pharmacist. Both Peggy and Jasmine are second-generation Taiwanese-American mothers who are survivors of postpartum depression and anxiety and have a passion for making AAPI voices heard, especially around maternal mental health stories. We also have a background in high school journalism back in the days, so this podcast is a new way to report stories. Peggy and Jasmine feel that the AAPI community needs to speak up more about their mental health, particularly the moms, so that it is not so stigmatized. We hope hearing these stories will help a struggling mother open up or reach out for support over her mental health and feel less alone in her journey. In this episode, you will learn how we came together to work on this project and what our goals are for this podcast. If you want to learn more about our podcast, please follow our Instagram page @healingthetigress. You can also find more of Jasmine's writing on Instagram at @pearlsofjasmine, her newsletter at pearlsofjasmine.substack.com, and her blog at pearlsofjasmine.com. Some of her writing has been featured on pages like Mother.ly, Psyched Mommy, Love What Matters, and more. Thank you so much for your support, and it would help us out tremendously if you left us a review or shared this podcast with a friend!