My husband Frank Callis wrote the following piece for me a few weeks ago. It’s about hope and it’s from his perspective — the perspective of a dad who has been through his wife’s postpartum mental illness and come out on the other side. Happy Father’s Day to my sweet and wonderful husband who is so supportive of my work and so supportive of women with postpartum depression.

If there is one idea that I would like new mothers to hold onto, it would be that there is hope.

Recently, I sat at my desk looking at pictures of my wife standing in front of the U.S. Capitol in DC with Senator Menendez and others celebrating passage of the MOTHERS Act. It led me to recall a different time — a time when she was hysterical, malnourished, sleep-deprived and so racked with postpartum OCD that she could not carry our son down a flight of stairs for fear of dropping him, give him a bath for fear of him drowning, or allow herself to go to sleep for fear of him not waking up. And now here she is in this photo, a small part of something so important. And what’s more, the night she came back from that event in DC, I watched her drive up our street and I saw an 8-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl go bounding down the sidewalk, running into her arms, so happy she’d come back from her trip. And I saw her beaming with happiness to see them too.

If you are in a dark place, and trust me we were in a very dark place for a while, know there is hope.

Make sure to seek medical advice early and keep an open mind. Know that improvement is incremental, but you will get better. There is no silver bullet for recovery — you’ve got to reach out to and work with your doctor — but you will get better. Just put one foot in front of the other each day and change will come.

Don’t accept anything less than full support from your husband and family. If they can’t get with the program, have your doctor give them a stern talking to. Surround yourself with as many supportive people as you can (even if they’re online, like here at Postpartum Progress)

And pay attention to all the women who have beaten and are beating PPD every day. Eight years ago, my wife started a voyage from a woman afraid, sitting in the dark crying, to the woman who returned home from DC, caught her 4-year-old up in her arms and swung her around with joy. That voyage started with one thought: I have hope that I will get better.

She did. You will too. You can do this.