Quiet Confession Ep. 1: Real Talk - My Quiet Confession Begins

In this raw solo mini-episode, Chelsea introduces Quiet Confessions, a new weekly mini-series where they share unfiltered updates from their own journey through parenthood, mental health challenges, and chronic illness. 

🎧 In this episode, Chelsea talks about: 

• Transitioning to a new psychiatrist and navigating complex medication management.
• The interconnected messiness of mental and physical health.
• Living with PMADs, a ruptured pituitary tumor, POTS, and the realities of being a disabled stay-at-home parent.
• How their postpartum experience never really ended—and why that matters.
• The invisible load of chronic illness and why support systems make all the difference.

This episode isn’t polished. It’s not rehearsed. But it’s real, honest, and straight from the heart—recorded on the go, just like parenthood itself.
 
💬 Chelsea says: “Quiet Confessions is gonna be my time. I don’t know how I got here from telling you I’m meeting with a psychiatrist—but I guess that’s the point.”

Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:01)
Hey, it's Chelsea and you are listening to the very first episode of Quiet Confessions, a mini episode of Quiet Connection where I share a little more of my own journey through motherhood, mental health, and everything in between. These will hopefully be released weekly and they'll just be my little musings and updates on my journey. So there it is.

I'm recording on my phone, so we're gonna see how I feel about the audio, but I want to be able to do these wherever and whenever I get a chance, which we know as moms and as parents, it's not always easy to find time for yourself. But I happen to have a little bit of time right now, so I grabbed my phone and I'm recording. This will not be very long episode because in about 20 minutes I have a

I don't know what you want to call it in an initial session with a new psychiatrist. am shifting from I have been seeing a postpartum psychiatric nurse practitioner since having my youngest. But she is transitioning into retirement and also

I am not technically postpartum anymore, although you guys know my feelings on that. I think once you have had a child, you are in the postpartum phase of your life. regardless, anyway, I am meeting with a new psychiatrist. I'm a little nervous about it, but not too much. just, my whole mental health and physical health journey,

journeys are so intertwined and they're so complicated and my medication management is a huge piece of that and it causes me a lot of anxiety and worry. So I want to make sure that this new person that I'm working with understands what my goals are. Eventually I would like to taper off of some of the medications that I'm on but I also realized that that

is pretty challenging and can be challenging and the reality may be that I may not be able to. So for anyone new here, I will do the quickest like overview of everything that's happened. have two kiddos. My oldest is nine and my youngest is going to be

in just about a month, just a little bit over a month. I had postpartum depression with my oldest for about the first year of her life. And then when I had my second, which there's a whole lot in between, but we'll get there at some point. When I had my second, I ended up having...

retained placenta, or not retained placenta maybe, I don't know, retained stuff after my C-section, ended up having a severe hemorrhage at home, had to go back to the hospital for an emergency DNC. That then led to very acute PMADS. I was diagnosed with the whole alphabet.

postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, postpartum PTSD. it was cuckoo crazy. If you want to learn more about that whole experience, you can check out my full episodes. I have a, episode in season one and I think I have an episode in, I have a bonus episode. I have a bonus episode so you can hear a little bit more. But from there, since then,

It was found in March of 2024 that I had a pituitary tumor, so brain tumor. And we found out because it ruptured and it hemorrhaged and I was bleeding into my brain. Found out that those are more common after childbirth. And really you won't know that you have it unless you go looking for it specifically. But it does explain a lot of things.

for me after I had my youngest, had put on, like, so my PMADS were incredibly acute. I was also very, very physically ill. I went on until I gained like 150 pounds. We couldn't figure out why. I still can't lose that weight for a number of reasons.

Everything in my life changed. So the pituitary tumor ruptured, yada yada. I'm now working with several teams and I am now a chronically ill slash disabled stay at home mom and I am battling symptoms and mental health stuff as well as physical stuff every single day. I'm incredibly lucky that I have the support system that I have because if I didn't,

I honestly don't know what I'd do. Right now I am in a period of being pretty unwell. I was in the ED just a week ago at this time, again for cardiac issues. But all of that is sort of tied together to like where I am now.

I never intended to be a stay at home mom permanently. I intended to be home for a year and then get back into teaching special education, but that did not happen. And now I can't work because I'm so sick all the time. And this isn't a pity party thing. This is just the reality. I'm learning the reality of being chronically ill and disabled. And it's not.

It's something that I envisioned for myself. I don't think anybody does. But because of the damage to my pituitary glands, your pituitary glands basically controls your hormone function for everything you need to live and do everything. So my thyroid doesn't really work. My pituitary glands just doesn't work. I'm on steroids, which cause their own issues and is another reason why I can't.

lose any weight. another reason is just all of the things that come with chronic illness. Also, yay, I found out I also have pots and probably have my whole life. So cool, fun. So anyway, yeah, life is cuckoo trying to keep up with a toddler and a nine year old when getting up out of your chair makes you feel like you're going to pass out or

walking up the stairs to put the kids to bed leaves you breathless or you randomly get dizzy and like tunnel vision for no reason or your heart rate climbs to 160 or 180 and your blood pressure drops and it just happens. There's nothing all you were doing was standing over the pot cooking some cooking some soup. So yeah, it's complicated and it's messy and it's my life but

This is, I guess it's word vomit, right? These are, this is what you can expect from Quiet Confessions is just me getting on talking about whatever is going on in the moment. And in this moment, it's a quick, a very quick, brief synopsis of where I am right now, what you can expect from these episodes. And hopefully you will join me for the ride. I know that.

listeners and followers have asked for some more of my story and Quiet Connection, I have said from the beginning, it's never been about me. I made the community or created the community in the podcast because I felt so alone and I never wanted anyone else to feel alone and I wanted everyone that had a story to feel empowered to tell their story if that's

the path that they chose and I'm just thankful and humbled to be a conduit for that. But quiet confessions is gonna be my time, which is kind of exciting. I don't know how I got here from telling you that I was gonna meet with a new psychiatrist, but I think it all had to do with meds. But yeah, so I'm on several medications for my mental health and for my physical health.

And that's really, really frustrating and challenging for me because they come with their own set of side effects and all that jazz. But I don't know. So I'm going to talk to this new psychiatrist. We're going to talk. Hopefully she's on board with my goals while still realizing that this is a journey that's ongoing and can't change one med without accounting for all the other meds.

I don't know, this is what, this is her job, right? This is what she's, this is what she's trained to do. So I'm going into this having, I mean, I'm a little nervous, but I'm trying to stay positive. Yeah, other than that, to be completely honest with you, I had a doctor's appointment this morning. My oldest is at school and because I had the doctor's appointment and the psychiatrist appointment,

My youngest is with my mom right now, which is, I will never ever take for granted how lucky I am to have family members who are supportive. And if you are not in that position, I see you and I am sending you so, so, so much love and the biggest hugs because that village that we're all promised, I say this in my episodes.

They don't exist most of the time and we have to build them ourselves and we'll get into it in future episodes of Quiet Confessions, but my relationship with my parents hasn't always been what it is now. But being in this phase of my life where I know I can trust my kids to be taken care of when I'm not well or when I need to take care of me is huge. So this...

I don't know. This is a short episode. said I'm going to try to keep them under 30 minutes, but this feels like a good place to wrap it up on this inaugural episode of Quiet Confessions. So yeah, I mean, that's today's truth from my side of the story. And if you're feeling what I'm feeling, just know you're never alone.