The Month of May was Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month.

What is maternal mental health?Maternal mental health refers to the emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing of women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the period that follows.

It encompasses the full spectrum of a woman’s mental experience as she navigates the physical and relational demands that come with reproductive life, including conditions like depression, anxiety, and trauma that can emerge or intensify during this season.

But maternal mental health is broader than the postpartum window. It includes how women cope with infertility, pregnancy loss, and the grief that accompanies a body that does not respond the way it was expected to.

It includes the psychological toll of chronic reproductive illness, the conditions that shape a woman’s relationship with her body long before pregnancy, and long after.

There is a dimension of maternal and women’s mental health that rarely gets named directly. Not the baby blues. Not postpartum anxiety.Something more invisible. The mental load. Eve Rodsky’s Fair Play research documented what many women already know in their bodies: the invisible labour of managing a household, a family, a relationship, the endless cognitive task of holding everything in your head so nothing falls through the gaps. Now add a chronic gynecological condition to that equation.

Add endometriosis. Add adenomyosis. Add fibroids. Suddenly, the mental load isn’t just domestic. It’s compounded.*It’s tracking appointments and test results *Preparing for specialist consultations. *Researching treatments while managing pain. *Explaining your symptoms  again and again. *Monitoring your cycle, your triggers & your flares. *Managing others’ discomfort with your condition while managing your own & doing all of this while your body is already in pain.

This is what I call chronic illness-related mental load and it is one of the most under-addressed dimensions of chronic gynecological illness.

It doesn’t appear on any symptom checklist. It isn’t discussed at most appointments.But it is exhausting, it is real, and left unaddressed, it amplifies both physical symptoms and grief.

The cognitive weight of managing a chronic condition is not a personality trait. It is not anxiety. It is not overthinking. It is the predictable result of living in a system that asks women to endure, to organize, to advocate, and to keep functioning, even when their bodies are in pain. It is the mental load of survival.

If you are carrying this,  you are not imagining it and you are not alone.

#MaternalMentalHealth #EndometriosisAdvocacy #AdenomyosisAdvocacy #FibroidsAdvocacy#AcheCompass