I’ve known Meagan Francis virtually for a couple years now I think, but finally got to meet her in person a few months ago at the Blissdom conference. We hung out several times, and I have to say she was one of my most favorite people I met. She’s smart and witty, a happy mom, and does a mean karaoke version of Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach.” Her great new book, The Happiest Mom: 10 Secrets to Enjoying Motherhood, has just been published, and I’m happy to have her here today as a guest. This post from her is a great perspective for moms with postpartum depression.

I will do a random drawing of commenters to this post, and will send the winner a copy of her new book, so be sure to comment!

The year after my second son was born does not go down as a particularly happy time for me. I’m not sure if it would qualify as postpartum depression, as it was mostly situational: Isaac was a difficult, needy baby; we had moved to a third-floor apartment in an ugly Minnesota suburb — in the middle of winter; my mother had died unexpectedly when Isaac was just six weeks old, I didn’t know anyone in the area, my husband worked long hours … oh, and my major source of recreation was wandering around the local Wal-Mart with two kids.

Technically depressed or not, one thing I do know for sure is that I was miserable. I wanted desperately to be a good mom, and had huge plans for the kind of perfect, patient, loving, crafty, all-natural parent I wanted to be. But actually trying to be that perfect mom was so exhausting it was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning. Every day, I’d fail to live up to my own expectations, and the more I failed, the worse I felt, and the worse I felt, the less I felt capable of and the less energy I could muster up. By February, I was staring at my computer screen most of the day with the shades drawn and the apartment a complete pit. I remember crying almost every night that month and the next, apologizing to my two-year-old son Jacob, and promising him I’d do better the next day.

I got lucky — the weather got better, Isaac stopped crying so much, eventually I made friends and moved, and the clouds lifted. But the thing that helped me the most took me a while to gradually learn: Aim Low and Go Slow.

This was a hard lesson for me to learn. I have high standards and lofty principles. And the way to reach them, I figured, was to put my head down and trudge through whatever got in my way.

But eventually I learned something that had seemed counter-intuitive. Sometimes trying harder doesn’t actually get you where you’re going any faster. It just tires you out and makes it that much harder to rally again when you fall down. If you are already suffering from postpartum depression or a postpartum mood disorder, the last think you need is to make things even harder on yourself by setting your sights too high and then feeling deflated when you don’t meet your expectations.

Aiming low and going slow isn’t about giving up or saying “eh, whatever!” to your role as a mom. Instead, it’s about making small, incremental progress instead of trying to do everything, perfectly, right now. If your goals are manageable (today I will get out of bed and load the dishwasher … eventually) instead of pie-in-the-sky (today I will clean my entire house top to bottom, run three miles and take the baby on a two-hour shopping excursion!), you are so much more likely to reach them. And when you reach your goals, a great thing happens: you feel like a success, not a failure; which gives you a little boost of energy and lets you knock down the next little goal.

You can aim low and go slow and still reach for big dreams; it’s all about being the trusty turtle rather than the hare (who sure gets off to an impressive start, but who I always picture tripping over his own big feet and hobbling off to the sidelines.)

Another important lesson I learned during my difficult early days as a mom is to “Keep It Real.” Box up that fantasy mom you’ve been trying to mold yourself into, and instead strive to just be the best version you can be today of the mom you actually are (for me, it turns out, the mom I actually am is not particularly crafty).

Maybe you’re the mom who tells great jokes, who’s always available for a snuggle, who works hard to fund that college savings fund, who always knows the right thing to say or who always apologizes when she says the wrong thing. We can’t all do everything well, and there are a lot of ways to be a great mom. For me the path to happier motherhood required me to get in touch with who I really am, and accept her as good enough.

I know that when you’re dealing with postpartum depression or anxiety, it’s never as easy as clicking your heels together and deciding “today I’m going to be happy!” But I do know this: you deserve to be happy, mama, whatever it is you have to do to get there. Say it until you believe it, because knowing you’re worthy of a happy life is the first step toward getting there.

The mom you are is good enough. In fact, she’s just the mom your kids need. So embrace her, make her job as easy as you can, and give her a lot of understanding, encouragement, leeway and help along the way.

Meagan Francis