08/18/2026
Today just felt so heavy with the loss of Hayden Panettiere, along with the ongoing Lindsay Clancy trial. I know that Hayden’s cause of death hasn’t yet been confirmed, and it may have not had a direct link to her postpartum/mental health challenges—but it’s still devastating to lose a fellow woman who used her platform, unhesitatingly, to speak honestly about postpartum depression, birth trauma, substance use, and the overwhelming concoction of all of these hard, hard things against the backdrop of motherhood.
Her daughter, whose welfare she never stopped protecting, has lost her mother.
I know the Lindsay Clancy story is vastly different in many ways, but she was also a woman, a mother, who was extremely open and honest about her postpartum mental health struggles and cried out, repeatedly and to many people, for help.
How much longer and louder will women have to cry out before someone takes maternal mental health seriously? I have committed my professional and personal life to this work—but as many of us know, many days it feels like screaming into the void.
But there is light in the void. I’m so, so grateful every day for the help I received, for the fact that my husband and family intervened, that I found good providers who showed me the way back to myself. Being here and healthy to enjoy my sweet, beautiful girls is the blessing of my life.
But today feels heavy. And there’s so much more work to be done.
