Lael Gahan
“To hold two things at the same time, this love and complete joy of having this precious baby, but also not being able to love myself the way that I believe is important, [which is] an ingredient in being a good parent – scratch that, a whole parent. My yoga teaching practice really focuses on embodiment, and being able to feel at home within ourselves. Particularly during postpartum and pregnancy, it’s a precious time to strive to embody ourselves.”
Lael Gahan is the founder of Sanctuary Within, which evolved to promote safe and nurturing spaces for all bodies to explore movement and breath as a means of reclaiming their sense of self. Lael is a yoga teacher and mental health professional with a decade of experience in supporting nervous systems and facilitating self-care rituals. Lael is an expert in the art of holding space, as well as empowering students to cultivate resilience and inner wisdom. Lael embraces inclusivity and the Health At Every Size (HAES) approach, which upholds that all bodies should be respected, valued, and treated with dignity. Lael supports other educators in fostering mindful, non-judgmental environments that encourage individuals to make choices that honor their unique bodies and life experiences. Lael studied Psychology and Education at Hartwick College, and graduated from Northeastern University with an MS/CAGS in Educational and School Psychology; Lael has been a yoga teacher since 2014 and regularly trains in somatic studies as well as trauma-informed care. Lael can be reached on Instagram at @sanctuarywithin or via email: findsanctuarywithinyou@gmail.com. Lael lives with their spouse and child near Boston, MA.
This blog is made possible by a sponsorship from Sage Therapeutics. All content on this page has been curated by the Mass. PPD Fund without input from Sage Therapeutics, Inc.
September 2023 | Interviewed and edited by Jessie Colbert, Executive Director, Mass. PPD Fund
Lael Gahan (she/they) is a school psychologist and yoga instructor with a unique and beautiful story about how they came to understand their postpartum experience. As a mental health professional, Lael was ready to embrace all the feelings that came with new parenthood. But just how much of an emotional roller coaster it was, along with the demands of infant feeding and sleep, made things intensely challenging.
For Lael, getting to a better place was less about diagnosis and treatment of a Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorder (PMAD), and more about finding ways to take the time and space to care for themselves, and then spreading that message to others, including in new parent groups and through “mindful movement.”
Did you have expectations about bringing home a new baby? How did you feel during your pregnancy and going into postpartum?
I've always known I wanted to be a parent, and I became a school psychologist because I love children. I was surprised at how my body seemed to tolerate pregnancy so well. My mother had tons of nausea, and I just expected that I'd be sick. During an ultrasound, we were told that I was at risk for preterm birth or miscarriage, and I remember counting down the weeks and days until 35 weeks. After that I had some nerves about having everything ready.
I had worked with a social worker where I gave birth at Mount Auburn Hospital through pregnancy, but it felt like that lapsed once the baby was here. The midwives gave great information, but I was still unprepared me for how difficult things could be emotionally and physically after giving birth, and just how isolating it can feel. I found it so fragmenting in those first weeks to let anyone else hold our baby. My body and mind had worked so hard to make this baby and bring them home, and it felt like the only time I was getting to hold our baby was to nurse.
We live in an apartment, and we were concerned about space and all those things – just the anxiety of constantly trying to think 10 steps ahead. I eventually got on a quest to find more support, because it's a time that deserves support.
That leads into my next question. Oftentimes when a baby is on the way, there’s a lot of planning and preparing for the baby, but less for the birthing person and what their needs might be. Was that something you thought about during the pregnancy?
It was definitely something I thought of, as a mental health professional and someone in the self-care realm, teaching yoga. But I didn't realize how big my needs would be. How I could be so happy and so sad and scared at the same time. Mount Auburn has a support group that new moms can go to, but I couldn't even wrap my head around getting on a Zoom call in the first weeks. Everything felt all-encompassing. It felt really hard to care for myself. I definitely had prepared with physical things, but I wasn't quite ready for the needs I'd have emotionally.
Can you share more about your emotional and mental health journey postpartum?
I read something recently that said something like: “Postpartum is six weeks because of certain things our body is doing. [And also] postpartum is six months, postpartum is a year, postpartum is 18 years.” I hold as a personal value that it is okay to have big emotions, but I had this concept that hormones will impact me to [a certain] point, and then things would settle themselves. I've had a journey with my mental health since I was a teenager, specifically with symptoms of depression and anxiety. But in those first weeks postpartum it was really the biggest highs and lows I'd ever felt, and it extended into probably the first six months or so before things really felt like they’d balanced out.
I was so excited to have this baby, but it's really such a big job! And not that I'm completely alone in it, because I have a partner, but particularly with the needs around feeding, it just felt like so much was on my shoulders. Things like pumping – it took so long for me to wrap my head around taking time away to try to pump, so I could have milk so someone else could help. And there's all these beautiful moments intertwined in all of it. But yeah, it felt very challenging to feel like my body was the sole thing keeping our baby going.
We definitely fell into a rhythm closer to the eight-week mark, where our baby started sleeping more through the night. But then my biggest struggles came when sleep regressions started happening a couple of months later. That was also something I didn't really have my head wrapped around, sort of these cyclical [times of] coming back to needing to help our baby sleep. Without sleep my mental health definitely experiences more challenges, that’s [true] for a lot of people. Sleep is important.
It felt like such an isolating experience. To hold two things at the same time, this love and complete joy of having this precious person, but also not being able to love myself the way that I believe is important, [which is] an ingredient in being a good parent – scratch that, a whole parent. My yoga teaching practice really focuses on embodiment, and being able to feel at home within ourselves. And it's such a unique experience to have yourself be a home for another being. It had felt easier to care for myself when the baby was within me. I managed to shower every day [postpartum], but beyond that, as far as self-care, things like my yoga practice, it felt so challenging to make space for anything other than keeping a baby alive.
As somebody who had faced depression and anxiety before, in all those other instances, wherever I'd hit sort of a low, or a point where I knew I needed more support, I was really able to just focus on myself. [Now] I didn't feel like I could make space for a break from parenting. Eventually there were pockets of that, like arranging with my partner to take a half-hour here or an hour there. It took a while to accept that, even if the baby cries, in order for me to parent, I have to have time to care for myself.
Did taking the time and space for yourself get easier over time? When and how did you start to feel better?
First Connections became a really great resource around when the baby was six months or so. I started going to both a new moms’ group and their Emotional Wellbeing After Baby group, they called it “EWAB.” I went to EWAB weekly until our baby was one, and it was so huge for me. Having other folks who are really feeling the same sorts of challenges allowed for this amazing container. And part of that group is a little bit of meditation and grounding. So even if that was the only time during that day that I had that practice, it was really precious to me. And especially to have the option through Zoom, to not have to leave [the house].
So that was a big point where things started to feel different. And also my partner and I really made sure to kind of carve out time for me. I've always been a person that thrived on structure, and we kind of had to build our own structure. The self-care mantra that I preach for others is: “You can't serve from an empty bowl”. Well, this bowl needs to be filled! And that's how I'll be able to do my best for my baby.
Can you share more about how your yoga practice fits into all this?
I was a dancer starting at age two and through college. Yoga came for me at a point in my mid-20s when I was struggling with mental health, and it became this medicine, both a practice for my body and [my] mind-body-spirit integration. And very quickly after finding yoga as a practice, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. And that was almost 10 years ago.
Yoga really became this container for a lot of the other pieces of my personal and professional values. Just really believing that all bodies are great bodies. And that, especially for survivors of different things, especially of trauma, that this mind-body-spirit integration can be such a valuable tool for moving through things that feel really hard.
There’s this term “embodiment” that came into my sphere a few years ago, before pregnancy. And I grasp that as what I want to practice and what I want to teach: this ability to feel at home within ourselves. It also influenced the name for my practice, Sanctuary Within. Particularly during postpartum and during pregnancy, it’s a precious time to strive to embody ourselves, to think about our values and what we want to hold and what we want to let go. My teaching practice, it's yoga but it's also embracing the power of other methods for somatic and nervous system support, and really looking at all the pieces. There is such power in allowing for that space for ourselves. And really refining our self-care tools.
That’s beautiful, thank you for sharing. As you look back on what a challenging time you had postpartum, are there things you wish you or others had done differently?
I'm a big believer that things kind of happen as they should, and that perhaps now I'm stronger and connected to the right resources. Maybe I would have motivated myself to get to a support group earlier, even during pregnancy. A group practice really embraces connection, which I feel is a cornerstone of healing. I'm at a point now where things feel so different, and I want to try to facilitate more and more healing opportunities like that for folks.
Do you think of yourself as a “survivor” of a postpartum mood disorder?
It's valuable to have diagnoses to be able to seek treatment, but I tend to think more holistically. I believe that our journeys in understanding ourselves have no clear end. I definitely had postpartum depression and anxiety. But one of my values is that we have emotions, and if we try to block emotions — energetically — that can result in us not giving them the space they need and can cause more harm. I resign to continue to be on a journey of figuring out how to make space for myself, because it can change. I think every new parent deserves support as they transition through all the changes.
Do you have any last recommendations for other parents about how to take care of themselves postpartum?
I believe in the power of rituals. Find at least one space in your day that can be alone time. And some days that will need to be simplified - showering or going for a walk can be really therapeutic! And then having a group practice of some sort, if time and space allow. Even folks who aren’t experienced in traditional talk therapy may really find value in a new parent or therapeutic group where others can hold space for what is coming up. For those furthering their exploration of “mindful movement,” it is important to work with someone who knows what postpartum bodies and minds are going through.