Pregnancy is an incredible and transformative journey filled with joy, anticipation, and excitement. While the process of bringing forth new life can be beautiful and happy, as we know, it can also be a struggle for many women. It's a time of significant emotional, physical, and life changes, which can be exciting, but also bring along uncomfortable emotions and challenges to the mother’s mental health. From anxiety and depression to overwhelming stress, the wellbeing of both the mother and the developing baby can be impacted.  All too many mothers push aside their own mental health, focu ..read more

Military families are no strangers to sacrifice. They kiss their service members goodbye for long deployments and live through frequent moves, leaving behind familiar places, friends, and family. Relocating every few years can especially take an emotional toll on children, disrupting their sense of stability and security while creating logistical and practical challenges for parents.  Children going through multiple relocations may experience: Loss of friends and social support, having to say goodbye to friends and the familiar routines of their lives. This can be a difficult and emotio ..read more

Grief is a universal human experience, one that touches all of us at some point in our lives. It is the complex and deeply personal response to loss and, though it is something everyone experiences, each person's path is unique. Rather than being a linear process with a definitive end, grief is a lifelong journey that weaves its way into the very fabric of our lives. Whether grief is triggered by the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or the loss of a job, the complex mix of emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations can be extremely uncomfortable. While we might wish to be thr ..read more

Pregnancy is such a special time in life. There’s the glowing sense of abundance that somehow outweighs the uncomfortable body changes, the feeling of connection to new life, and the eager anticipation of meeting baby for the first time. No matter how labor and delivery unfolded, whether with ease and as planned or requiring emergency intervention, the postpartum period is often a different story.  For many new moms, the stress of caring for a newborn coupled with hormonal changes after childbirth, possible history of depression or anxiety, and a general lack of social support can lead to ..read more

Online therapy has become a new normal for therapists and clients alike. Once viewed with skepticism, the format has taken off in the wake of the global pandemic and an increasing need among people to access mental health services.  It’s particularly useful for women living with postpartum depression and anxiety, both of which are serious mental health conditions that can affect women after childbirth. They are characterized by a range of emotional and physical symptoms that interfere with a woman's ability to care for herself and her new baby. While these diagnoses sometimes get lumped t ..read more

Tricare, the health insurance program that provides coverage to active duty and retired military members, their families, and survivors, covers a variety of benefits, including mental health care. This includes online therapy, a great option for those who live in rural areas like Panama City or Ocala have schedules that don’t accommodate traditional in-person therapy, or military families who relocate often.  Instead of having to start over a new therapist every time your service member is relocated, you may have the option to continue to work with that therapist if they are licensed in ..read more

We talk about it as moms all the time, and our friends likely warned us about it before we had kids of our own. Your relationship with your partner will probably struggle in the months and years after you grow your family by adding a child. And yes, the day-to-day grind of raising small humans can be exhausting and seemingly all-consuming of your energy. So, your connection with your partner gets put on a back burner, assuming this season of life will pass and someday you’ll be able to pick up where you left off with your Number One.  The truth is that this is not just a season. There is ..read more

The saying goes that when one person in a family is serving in the military, the whole family serves with them. The toll of military life can bear heavily on the service member’s partner and their children as well as extended family who lean in to hold the burden of frequent relocations, extended deployments, solo parenting, and sheer isolation.  While it’s difficult on the partner and co-parent in these situations, it can be easy to forget how unsettling things can be for children. Maybe it seems like a no-brainer but we often assume kids are handling things fine because we don’t see ov ..read more

How often have you heard or read about the importance of maintaining your relationship with your partner after having kids? And sure, it makes sense. You shared a deep connection and life before children entered the picture but now, it’s exhausting to even get through the tasks of the day without having to worry about cultivating your relationship. Shouldn’t it just be fine on auto-pilot for a while you get through this stage of parenting?  The reality is that it’s not just this stage of parenting you need to get through. Raising kids is at least an 18 year commitment and there’s no way a ..read more

People often use the terms “anxiety attack” and “panic attack” interchangeably but in reality, they are very different. If you have experienced the debilitating intensity of a panic attack, you’re familiar with the distress one can cause and the lingering worry that accompanies it’s passing.  While anxiety has roots in future-oriented worry and manifests as a more low-level distress of extended duration, panic attacks are acute, coming on quickly and often without specific reason. Everyone experiences their own unique cluster of symptoms during a panic attack including both physical and e ..read more