Hannah Harper thank you for your song! My goodness it reminded me why I do the work I do. It’s also incredible to hear your depth of wisdom at such a young age. Our stories are very different but the sentiment is very similar.

There was a season after I became a mom when the light felt dim.

Not gone.
Just dim, like a porch light flickering before I burns out.

Postpartum Depression is sneaky like that. You can be holding the very thing you prayed for and still feel like you’re drowning. You can love your children fiercely and still feel disconnected from yourself. You can smile in public and cry in the shower.

It’s hard to explain. I wasn’t just crying. I was grieving something I couldn’t name. It felt like my heart was speaking a foreign language, and I didn’t even know what country it came from.

I remember wondering,
“Why am I not stronger?”
“Why does this feel so heavy?”
“Will I ever feel good enough to be their momma?”

But here’s what I’ve learned, and what I now tell other women with no hesitation:

There is no shame in the dark. There is no judgment in the struggle. There is only an invitation to press in.

Press in to the tears.
Press in to the counseling.
Press in to the prayer.
Press in to the hard conversations.
Press in to the tiny, ordinary moments that feel like survival.

For me, pressing in birthed something I never expected. It birthed my book, Always Forever.

In the middle of exhaustion and intrusive thoughts and emotional waves I didn’t understand, I started writing words I needed to hear myself:

You are loved.
You are safe.
You are not alone.
Always.
Forever.

That book wasn’t written from strength. It was written from survival. It was written from a mother who refused to let the darkness define her story.

Just like Hannah Noelle’s song “String Cheese” came from the ache of postpartum and the sacred ordinary moments of motherhood, my pain became purpose. Her song became a declaration of who she was meant to be for her children.

Depression?
It became a doorway.

A doorway into deeper empathy. A doorway into advocacy. A doorway into telling other moms: You are not broken. You are becoming.

Taking pain and pressing in to find purpose is not easy.
It is gritty.
It is humbling.
It requires help.
It requires honesty.

But it is also holy.
Fulfilling.
Transformational.

Hey Momma, please listen:
Press in.
No shame.
No judgment.
Keep going.

Because what feels like the end of you may actually be the beginning of something that will bless others.

The darkness did not win. Real, genuine love piercing the darkest pain, caused something deeper to break through. Those moments of reckoning gave birth to light. That light was translated to love.

Love, once a foreign language, now fully known.

Always.
Forever.
Love, Stephanie Ellison