Postpartum Progress is a place for moms who are in a mighty struggle — whether during pregnancy, postpartum, or after a loss or an adoption — to regain their emotional health. We work so damn hard and endure so much pain to get to the point where we can fully enjoy and embrace our roles as mothers, and we work that hard for one chief reason: our babies.

I know that struggle. I’ve been there.

Some of you have been coming to Postpartum Progress for a long while. You’re on the road to recovery but it’s a long and arduous slog. Others of you have just found your way here, maybe a few days ago, maybe today. You’ve been searching for a place where somebody gets it, hoping somebody will tell you that you’re not a bad mom. That everything will be okay.

Welcome home.

Others of you are new here today and have never struggled with PPD, but you’ve struggled with something, of that I’m certain. We all do.  And thank God for the internet and social media, which has allowed so many of us to find our tribes.

I know Postpartum Progress has saved lives, because many of you have told me so. That’s an amazing thing considering it took so little effort to start this blog. I shelled out $25 bucks or so and started typing. All I had to say was, “This is what happened to me.”

Shot At LifeImagine if it took a similarly small amount of effort to save a child’s life. That simply by saying a few words you could protect a mother from a lifetime of grief.

Well, voila. You can. Right now. No credit card needed. No checks. No cash money. No Paypal. No solicitation in the mail with a pre-paid envelope. No public television phone-a-thon drive thing. No change from your pocket in a bucket at a stoplight. No money at all, not even wampum. Nothing but your words. Here. At this place where we try to save lives. Where you already have changed and even saved the lives of mothers by being part of this community and others where we speak up about mothering. About parenting. Where you have said, “This is what happened to me.” Now you can save the lives of children, too.

Your comment on this post = $20 donated to Shot@Life by anonymous donors

$20 = four life-saving vaccines for a child who wouldn’t otherwise get them (measles, pneumonia, diarrhea & polio)

You and your words = A CHILD’S LIFE SAVED

It’s that simple. Over the next few days, between now and August 31st, I need every single one of you to comment here, below, on this post. Tell us who inspires you. Or tell us why you’re here. Or tell us whether you’ve found your tribe. Or tell us that you don’t really know what to tell us but just want to save a life. Just comment, and once you do it, you’ll have made a world of difference.  It takes so little effort.

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BlogustWelcome to Blogust. I’m pleased to say that today is my day to support Shot@Life’s Blogust: Blog Relay for Good, a campaign during which 31 bloggers, one each day in August, are writing about people from our communities who have inspired us. Every comment on this post and the 30 other posts will be matched with a $20 donation (up to a maximum of $200,000). If we can get a total of 10,000 comments, we’ll save the lives of 10,000 children. A child dies every 20 seconds from a vaccine preventable disease. We can help stop this.

All of the bloggers participating (who are AMAZING, by the way) have been asked to write about someone online whose comments, whose words, inspire them. Well, y’all, that’s not a difficult one for me. It’s you, the readers of Postpartum Progress.

Every time you courageously write about your pain or confusion, your sadness or anger, your attempts to get help and struggle through, you inspire me. It doesn’t matter if you got help early or late, if you’re sailing through treatment or still trying to find the one that works, if you’re afraid to reach out, if you’ve let go of the guilt or are still pissed off that you have or had this illness, your honesty and willingness to tell it like it is has helped more women than you know. This site wouldn’t be what it is without the entire community of people that are behind it, in front of it and in the middle of it every day.

Through the end of August, just a few days away, I need at least 300 comments on this post. That’s a tall order, I know. I’m a little scared of it, frankly, given how so few comments I’ve been getting lately here. I know these days it’s hard to find the time. It’s much easier to take a millisecond to click the thumbs up on Facebook and move on to the next thing. But I need you to do it. And I know that sometimes it helps to help others when you are suffering.

Karen Walrond, from Chookooloonks, has deftly handed me the Blogust baton. After you’ve commented here, if you go to her blog and comment you can save another life. Tomorrow, I gladly pass the baton to Fadra Nally of All Things Fadra. If you go to her blog, you can save another one after that.

I’m thanking you in advance. Let’s show the other Blogust bloggers what a supportive community we can be, not just to our own cause, but to the cause of saving the lives of other mothers and babies.

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This post is inspired by Shot@Life, an initiative of the United Nations Foundation that educates, connects and empowers the championing of vaccines as one of the most cost-effective ways to save the lives of children in developing countries. You can learn more about Shot@Life by joining their email list, following them on twitter or liking them on Facebook.