Hello and welcome!
My name is Stephanie Cortese, and this space has been in the works for some time now. I am so excited and nervous- so, here we go:)
I am a mama of two beautiful babies, 5 and 3. I have worked in the educational field for just over 10 years. I have completed my masters degree, and I had my first article published this past year, with EdCan Network.
Now- those are some of the official accolades that I take great pride in. However, in the titles that are not deemed as credible, I have and continue to struggle with anxiety and depression. I was officially diagnosed with postpartum after my son was born. This compounded my emotional confusion, because we tried to get pregnant for a year, went through the emotional twirl of fertility treatments, followed by the heartbreak of a miscarriage, all before my son was conceived. I was reacquainted to the term postpartum again, after my daughter was born just two years later. Depression has been a life long journey that I can now say, I have come to own, made great strides in trying to understand, and will continue to seek treatments and strategies to overcome. Further to my own struggles, my partner was diagnosed with adult ADHD and OCD about 10 years ago. The relief and challenges that the diagnosis had brought was complex to say the very least. We have had front row seats to the roller coaster of trying to find the right medications, the right therapists, the right job and lifestyle, the right diet, all while trying to manage his own anxiety and mental health, and raising our two kids and two dogs. Though we haven’t found all the right ‘fits’ yet, we continue to try.
In the process of making sense of things, and to this day, still trying to create a ‘normal’ that works for us, I wanted to seek out support for what we were experiencing, both individually and together. We sought out knowledge and information, as much as we could. We sought out community, to try and connect our challenges and experiences. But I just couldn’t find what I needed. So, I stopped seeking it, and started creating it.