Everything You Know About Postpartum Is Wrong
For every provider who's felt the ache of offering more in a system built for less. And for every mother who knew something was wrong long before anyone believed her.
Releasing November 24, 2026 · Wiley/Jossey-Bass
The medical world treats birth as a disease and postpartum as an afterthought.
It hasn't been until recently that science has tried to understand postpartum. We finally have research on anxiety, depression, inflammation, thyroid disease, digestive problems, pelvic floor dysfunction, and dozens of other postpartum symptoms, but they are all treated as if they were separate problems.
What if we've been starting in the wrong place? What if we've been asking the wrong questions?
What if postpartum isn't a collection of disconnected symptoms to explain...
but one extraordinary physiological transformation we've forgotten how to see?
That's the question this book sets out to answer.
Who This Book Is For
This book is for you if you're a mother who:
- Was told her exhaustion, rage, or depletion was "just hormones" or "just motherhood"
- Has spent months or years trying to find her way back to herself, with no map
- Knew, somewhere underneath it all, that something was wrong, and was absolutely right
This book is for you if you're a provider who:
- Sees the gaps in postpartum care but feels boxed in by insurance, hospital policy, or a six-week checkup model
- Wants clinical frameworks grounded in physiology, not guesswork
- Is ready to lead instead of waiting for the system to catch up
Whatever brought you here, you already know something is wrong.
This book isn't here to prove it. It's here to name it, trace it, and show you the way forward.
Meet the Author
I didn't set out to challenge the way we think about postpartum.
I set out to understand what had happened to me.
After the birth of my first child, I experienced postpartum depression. With each new postpartum season that followed came new diagnoses, new symptoms, and new questions. Anxiety. Autoimmune disease. Postpartum bipolar disorder. Like so many mothers, I found myself moving from specialist to specialist, collecting explanations that never seemed to fit together.
Each provider saw one piece. No one seemed to see me as a whole woman.
What began as a search for my own healing became a fifteen-year pursuit to understand postpartum itself. I immersed myself in the research—physiology, nutrition, neuroscience, endocrinology, anthropology, psychology, history— looking for a new for the connections it what were actually hiding in plain sight.
That work eventually became the Postpartum Restoration Method™, the foundation of Postpartum University®, where I've had the privilege of training healthcare providers and supporting mothers in more than 55+ countries.
But research alone could never tell this story.
I wrote this book as poetry for rage and reverence—grounded in science, shaped by history, and written for every mother and provider who has known, somewhere deep down, that postpartum could be different.
Today, I live with my husband and our four children on our homestead in Alaska, where this work continues to be shaped not only by research, but by the everyday realities of family, community, and the mothers I have the privilege of serving.
"I had known everything about the science of birthing life. But I had forgotten the sacredness of postpartum. I had never seen it. So I walked through it alone."
Why This Book Is Different
Most postpartum books teach mothers how to survive.
This book asks why survival became the standard.
Most books separate mental health from physical health.
This one reconnects them.
Most books begin after diagnosis.
This one begins before disease.
Most books ask mothers to adapt to the system.
This one asks what the system forgot.
What's Inside
The book moves in three parts — a descent and a rise.
Part One
The Great Disconnect
From sacred to systemic.
How postpartum care was once held by community, rest, and nourishment — and the historical shift that stripped it away. You'll trace exactly how we got here: industrialization, the medicalization of birth, and a research gap so wide that postpartum remains one of the least studied stages of human physiology.
Part Two
The Myths That Are Keeping Mothers Sick
The descent. The deep middle, where we face the truth in order to rise.
Ten core myths, dismantled one by one — from "postpartum is just six weeks" to "get your body back." Each chapter traces a myth to its root wound: the erasure of the mother, the fragmentation of her body and being, the medicalization of her healing, the mistrust of her knowing, the normalization of her suffering. Each closes with a Sacred Truth.
Part Three
The Postpartum Revolution
A new model of care.
What real postpartum support actually looks like — immediate recovery, deep restoration, sustained well-being. How providers reclaim their role without waiting for permission from a system that was never built for this. And how the revolution starts with one provider, one mother, one choice at a time.
The Five Wounds This Book Names
The Erasure of the Mother
The system centers the baby. She disappears.
The Fragmentation of Her Body & Being
Mental health here, breastfeeding there, pelvic care somewhere else. No one holds her as a whole woman.
The Medicalization of Healing
Recovery reduced to pills and referrals. No ritual. No rhythm. No reverence.
The Mistrust of Her Knowing
She's told she's dramatic, hormonal, too tired to think clearly. Her truth is questioned.
The Normalization of Suffering
Exhaustion, leakage, depletion, rage, loneliness — all painted as "just part of motherhood." So she learns to endure instead of heal.
This book pulls every postpartum myth up by its roots, and shows you what's actually growing underneath.
Days Until Book Release
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This book has one goal: to change how the world understands postpartum.
That doesn't happen because one author writes a book. It happens because thousands of people decide the conversation is worth sharing. When you preorder, you're doing more than reserving a copy. You're helping bookstores stock it, publishers champion it, and new readers discover it during launch week.
If you've been waiting for postpartum to receive the attention it deserves, this is one small way to help make that happen.
Every preorder is one more person choosing to #HoldTheMother.
This Book Is Only the Beginning.
The future of postpartum care won't be changed by one author.
It will be changed by thousands of mothers, providers, families, researchers, and communities who choose to #HoldTheMother.
To see her.
To nourish her.
To support her.
To refuse to accept that surviving postpartum is the best we can offer women.
Welcome. We're glad you're here.
Preorder Now
Available wherever books are sold.
[Amazon] · [Barnes & Noble] · [Bookshop.org]
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is this book for — providers or mothers?
Both. It's written to give providers the clinical depth to change how they practice, and mothers the language and permission to trust what they already know.
Is this a parenting book?
No. This is a book about the mother — her body, her physiology, her recovery, and the system that failed to study or support either.
When does it release?
November 24, 2026, from Wiley/Jossey-Bass.
Is this book anti-medicine?
No.
This book isn't about choosing between modern medicine and holistic care. It's about asking better questions, reconnecting physiology with live experience, and expanding the way we understand postpartum recovery.
This isn't a protocol. It isn't a prescription.
It's a reckoning with the history that brought us here, the myths that keep mothers sick, and the model of care that becomes possible the moment we stop asking the postpartum body to heal inside systems that were never designed to hold it.
The body has always known how to heal. This book helps us remember what it needs.
It's time to remember.