A Complex Perinatal Journey: Beyond Postpartum and Movement Toward Healing & Recovery

Celeste Brinkerhoff is a certified peer support specialist and holistic health coach dedicated to assisting individuals in achieving mental and physical well-being. She offers personalized coaching services through her platform, Mentally Real, focusing on integrative and complementary approaches to mental health. 

Celeste's journey into holistic mental health was profoundly influenced by her personal experiences. Diagnosed with multiple mental health conditions at a young age, she faced challenges with traditional treatments and their side effects. A pivotal moment came after a traumatic postpartum experience, leading her to explore integrative care. Under the guidance of Dr. Scott Shannon at the Wholeness Center, she underwent comprehensive assessments that addressed root causes of her distress, including nutritional deficiencies and inflammation. This holistic approach, combined with the use of Hardy Nutritionals' Daily Essential Nutrients, played a significant role in her recovery. 

Today, Celeste is not only a thriving health coach but also serves as a Practitioner Advisor at Hardy Nutritionals. She is passionate about empowering others with the knowledge and tools that aided in her own recovery, emphasizing the importance of addressing foundational needs for long-term mental health. 

Transcript

Celeste Brinkerhoff  0:00  
One day, I decided to get some courage up, and I went over to the next door neighbor and took my daughter, and I knocked on the door and I said, Hey, my name is Celeste Brinkerhoff. I live next door and I'm struggling with my mental health. This is my daughter.

Announcer  0:18  
Welcome to perinatal and reproductive perspectives. This is a podcast where we empower birthing individuals, partners and health professionals with evidence based insights, holistic strategies and relatable stories, hosted by a healthcare expert. This podcast fosters understanding equity and growth in perinatal and reproductive health. Here's your host. Becky Morrison gleed,

Rebecca Gleed  0:50  
hello, everyone. I am so excited on this cold, crisp winter day to have Celeste Brinkerhoff, who is a certified peer support specialist and holistic health coach. Join us today. We're going to cover all sorts of territory, but welcome Celeste. Thank you for coming. Thank you, Becky. Good morning. It's so good to be with you today. Likewise, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and your story. Sure,

Celeste Brinkerhoff 1  1:20  
so I am a mother. That is the, you know, kind of the latest role that I'm most ensconced in right now. But I've journeyed with a mental health diagnosis since 18, and the mental health diagnosis I was given at the outset of high school graduation was one that is lumped under the umbrella of serious mental illness. So it was bipolar, one with schizoaffective features that I was initially diagnosed with, and that sort of came with a limiting set of options, right? The prognosis for that disorder was one I was sort of shaped by, and it affected my early adult life, and I would try the traditional treatments. My family was very supportive and helping me seek services, but I was one who really didn't respond super great to conventional psychiatric care, and I remember being 23 I was living on my own, trying to hold down my first job. I'm so depressed, and this therapist in Salt Lake City was going to try electroconvulsive therapy for me. And I thought, wow, I'm really young. I know that's not without side effects. And I just had this inclination that there was something more I could do. You know, we just kept fighting. In my family, we always informed ourselves. We read books. One early book that my mother read was called the instinct to heal, and it talks a lot about Complementary and Integrative medical approaches to mental wellness. And thank goodness she was one who always grew a garden, made sure we ate. Well, these were my early foundations, very health conscious family. So it wasn't to reach to try using lifestyle as much as I could, while in the conventional model, and both, you know, I think helped me stay alive. But eventually my family in my young 20s would go to Colorado, and I would find an integrative provider there, and he was fascinating in his philosophy. So this was Dr Scott Shannon. He was a board certified psychiatrist working with the pediatric population, and I was fortunate enough to be able to sneak into his practice. Even though I was 19, he still took me in, and I tried to unpack what my early 20s were like, and he's like, you know, Celeste, let me try what I do for people whose behavior looks like yours. And his approach was really simplistic. He used micronutrient therapies and acupuncture. And then he's like, let's let's see, as we balance, you know what in Chinese medicine is called your chi, and we feed your central nervous system and body, then let's see what you need to unpack. And so at that time, I think, about three months into treatment, under this more holistic style of treatment, I was walking with my sister on the streets of Fort Collins, and I just stopped her, and I was like, I feel normal. I could feel literally like Gears had jived, and there was suddenly flow in my body and a certain levity and brightness to my affect. And I was like, This must be what normal feels like. And so I enjoyed this stability for quite some time, which was awesome. We were able to taper off the or maybe I had actually stopped my medical turkey. That's very common with bipolar folks. So when. I saw Scott. I was off my meds of my own volition, pretty catatonically depressed, chain smoking in my parents garage, eating a lot of pita bread with ranch. That was all I craved, and I knew it was no way to live, right? So I'm just glad with his simplistic approach, I came back into my body and started to do the things a 20 year old does, like, Oh, I think I'll go to the community college, got a couple of part time jobs, and always been interested in alternative or holistic medicine. So the people I worked with there were in that space.

Rebecca Gleed  5:41  
Can you tell our audience a little bit more about what micronutrients are? Yes,

Celeste Brinkerhoff  5:47  
absolutely. So in the early 2000s the broad spectrum micronutrient formulation that was on the market was called True, help, empower plus, and it was formulated by David Hardy, and this was done up in Canada. This formula has everything from vitamin A on down to trace minerals, and it's called essential nutrients, or these. These micronutrients are things that are not like fat, protein, water, so vitamins and minerals, essentially, and the formula had started to show some promise in populations that were labeled bipolar, depression and even some postpartum psychosis back. That's why they originally designed the formula was to support someone in their community who was dealing with intrusive postpartum thoughts

Rebecca Gleed 6:43  
and speak about the Chi. Can you tell audience, our audience a little bit more about that as well?

Celeste Brinkerhoff  6:49  
Sure. So again, working with these awesome mentors and Dr Scott's training in TCM or traditional Chinese medicine, teaches us that our body has a certain electrical or energetic circuit, this chi, or life force, prana, in some schools of thought, kind of governs our sense of feeling alive and well and balanced. And it is thought, or I had heard, that people with mental health challenges can have a disturbance in what they call their Shen, and that is sort of the energy of the heart meridian. So a lot of his needling was to really support it, support governing the chi and helping my energy to land in my body and flow better in my body, and kind of what we're learning with new neuroscience and consciousness research even does show the bio field and the electrics of our nervous system are super important in how we feel and function.

Rebecca Gleed 7:56  
I hear this a lot with mindfulness being peppered into perinatal mood and anxiety disorder treatment. Are you seeing that as well? And how did how might that look in the postpartum period?

Celeste Brinkerhoff 8:09  
Oh, I love that question. Mindfulness was a really important tool, always available to me too, right? You can always choose to shift your concentration no matter what's going on outside of you. So I would use that strategy a lot, even if I was doing a household chore, I would sort of Micro Focus, try to engage my senses. It was washing the dishes, what did the dish detergent smell like? What was the temperature of the water like? And these would provide important anchor points to the shared reality. I'm sure your audience knows, or maybe some have dealt with, what trauma, psychosis or disassociation can do. And they have, they sort of create distance between a person and they're embodied or felt sense in present time. So

Celeste Brinkerhoff  9:02  
even with anxiety that launches us to the future, if, let's say, there's a mom who's thinking two, three months in advance, you can, I love that anchor point metaphor of, okay, you're folding laundry. Can you feel the material? Can you ground yourself in the here and the now?

Rebecca Gleed 9:20  
Yes, it and you know the great news is, most everybody can hear something. If you hear the baby cry, you can see something, smell something. And again, there's no economic burden to engaging your senses. You can do that right then and there.

Celeste Brinkerhoff  9:40  
I love that no economic burden, and it's always available to you exactly no provider.

Rebecca Gleed  9:48  
What a case for mindfulness. Coming back to your story you were in Colorado, take us back to kind of the next two years. So

Celeste Brinkerhoff  9:57  
I'm enjoying stability. I'm working. Working with really amazing mentors who do things like acupuncture and cranial sacral therapy. So I'm receiving these alternative services. I'm furthering my education, engaged in healthy relationships. So life's going well. My partner, at the time, he had lost his father, so he choose, chose to move because of family logistics, and that changed my trajectory. I I chose to come back to Utah and go to college and distance, heartache, breakups, these things are played a role, and I fell back into the system, if you will. I wound up seeing the psychiatrist on campus. And the moment I walk in and share my labels, which I think is important, I share that I'm labeled bipolar one biscuit to effective features, instantly walking out with four prescriptions. And, wow, yeah. And really, that was a girl who's depressed because of a heartbreak. Four prescriptions. Do I need that? I don't know. Is that what standard model of care dictates for someone with my label, maybe a little bit of both, right? But needless to say, those four meds and being in school, being heartbroken, I just started to experience a downward spiral, and then I would wind up conceiving my child in that place where it was not functioning. Well, it's heavily medicated. And, you know, sort of the ecosystem of my body was, was under a lot of duress. Was really, really skinny, kind of experiencing medication induced relationship to food, eating disorder, if you will. I was indeed eating. I looked like skele, a skeleton, and I had had a bunch of autoimmune symptoms before conception that I was trying to figure out. And, you know, just sort of was what I consider my rocky ride here on the Wasatch Front, into motherhood. And I don't know how much you want to journey into that, all the questions that came up of like, how do I do this? Right? I wasn't somebody who probably should have kids. It's not likely to go well,

Rebecca Gleed 12:24  
I think you highlight something two. Two things I want to point out for our listeners is the complexity of you know, often our journey into the perinatal period. And also, for those who don't know, the perinatal period covers conception up to one year postpartum. And so that's something else I'm hearing of. It's not just having the baby, it's those years beforehand, the years, you know, the early first trimester. And it's a can be a very complex process, not just medically, but you're talking about the immune system, relationships. What are supports? What model are you using to conceptualize what you might need to be healthy and functioning? So if you if you want to go into the journey of pregnancy, and that's postpartum, I think our audience would would benefit from that. Sure.

Celeste Brinkerhoff  13:23  
Becky and again, thank you for being able to hold space while I share a little bit about what was actually quite scary, because I knew my body was inflamed and undernourished, some medical mysteries, really, and not to mention the relational dynamics were complex. Economic situation was not ideal, and the psychiatric nurse practitioner was not aware of how to support someone from the current medication regime into conception. And of course, I wasn't thinking about having a family, so I hadn't been doing a lot to create a healthier ecosystem for a baby to grow. Yeah, and he's like, you're going to need to stop all these meds, because they're not safe for a baby. And that was a chemical cascade that my body wasn't prepared for. And then you think about neurogenesis for my infant that shaped her drug withdrawal, legal drug withdrawal shaped that first trimester. And, you know, being somebody who always reads a lot and researches that really heightened my anxiety, because I knew there was stuff out of my control that I couldn't stop for her, like, I couldn't change that she was going to have to go through this abrupt drug withdrawal. I didn't know what to do, aside from, keep breathing, show up, try to eat, right? You know, like, try to get information. My midwife, bless her heart. She was amazing. And mood disorder was. And her focus, but she was on that pregnancy hotline calling to find out what safe drug she could put me on, because the psych MP had pulled out, and she's here trying to catch this hot mess that is me heading into conception. And she did a great job. We would use medications here and there, things like Zoloft, boost bar and, you know, lots of great pep talks. She was my champion, and my family wrapped around me a lot, and they helped insulate from a lot of the relational turbulence and things that I'm not proud of and I wish were different, but in the journey of of evolving and trying to take the reins back over my mental health. You know, we pulled out all the stops, therapy, support groups, um, and I was encouraged to engage in help seeking behavior, and I'm lucky that that was available in my community, and I had a family who could help facilitate and encourage that.

Rebecca Gleed 16:04  
I just think your story will resonate with so many individuals in that we often live with the shoulda, woulda, coulda, I wish I was more resource, or I knew this, or I had done this in a different way, and it often turns into this mom guilt, right? How often do we hear that? And then I'm also hearing some space around who are the champions? I mean, that midwife, she that sounds phenomenal, and I think we can all relate with that too. Of we've had that champion in our life who didn't, maybe they didn't have that formal role, but we remember them, and they will forever be in our memory during this perinatal period where we are very vulnerable, yeah, and we don't they. It doesn't come with a handbook, and then also to give space to this new longitudinal data, which is coming out more and more around medication. And also the commitment to reproductive psychiatry, that's a new thing. Even in the DC metro area, there's only a handful of reproductive psychiatrists, but those are specially trained psychiatrists. But I want to pivot back to something's coming up for you right now. Oh,

Celeste Brinkerhoff  17:31  
just how valuable that role you know, Annie played, because she would look me in the eyes, and I was so anxious that my baby would have a defect, a neural tube defect, because I knew about too much, right? And I was just researching, and I'm like, Annie, she's going to this is this is just not going to go well. She would grab my hands, look me in the eyes. You got this? You could do anything. You got this.

Rebecca Gleed 17:53  
Oh, thank goodness for the Annies in the world. Yes, absolutely. And

Celeste Brinkerhoff  17:57  
when my daughter was born to me very healthy and normal. And you know, her scalp and everything was intact and like, wow, how such a trip. And you know, she had to hold space for all that anxiety. And she did it no judgment. Just was there like a rock. And I would encourage all your moms and listeners out there that, you know, if somebody's bringing judgment or things like that, they you know, try not to take it personal and keep looking for that right person on your medical care team that can remind you of what's right in your experience, and definitely bring family members or your support Network to appointments, if you can think that really helped my ex. Just to have a little more perspective,

Rebecca Gleed 18:47  
I think you point to something so important of how do you feel? Are you heard? Are when you ask for something, not only are you heard, but is it? Are you tended to by your provider? And you have a right to choose your provider. If something doesn't feel right, or, you know, you go in and have a few microaggressions happen, you can choose to go somewhere else,

Celeste Brinkerhoff  19:11  
exactly. And I think that's part of what led me to peer support, was there were definitely experiences in my mental healthcare journey that were less than empowering and sometimes really harmful, and I wanted to create a sense of normalcy and lend my voice to hey, here's what can go right, and here's how it can feel really supportive and amazing. Here's how you can get your health back, no matter what they say, or at least a modicum of a better quality of life, and here's what to look out for. So that's kind of what you know my journey would would shape and motivate me to stop hiding and pretending I didn't have mental health struggles, and just say, Okay, this is what's going to be my coaching niche, because I studied health coaching well before postpartum challenge. Was, and I kind of probably knew like lifestyle would be a key role, or play a key role in surviving myself.

Celeste Brinkerhoff  20:12  
It sounds empowered if I can use if that word resonates and something that stood out to me and when I this happened pretty quickly that I noticed about you is your story is so compelling and and all in caps, you somehow were able to refocus and create this recovery, and then not just for yourself, but to so many other people, and that really, truly stands out. And so I would love to hear more about the here and the now. I You're talking to community leaders. You are getting information out there, one on one with peer support, I would love to hear just all of all of the work that you're doing. Thank

Celeste Brinkerhoff  21:07  
you. Becky, it is very surreal, because if you would have asked me eight years ago where I thought I'd wind up I was holding on by my fingernails to survive the day. And I still couldn't believe I had an infant, you know, depending on me. So I was in shock at this initiation into motherhood. So if you would have asked me if I would be in spaces like talking to prominent leaders within healthcare and social support, I've been like, No way that's not for me. I'm going to be, you know, like I thought I would play out the worst statistics of what you hear when you get these labels. But was

Rebecca Gleed  21:55  
that the voice from the 17 year old you of that prognosis you talked about in the beginning? Like, did that

Celeste Brinkerhoff  22:01  
that always played a role, absolutely. And I thought, I think it was a sort of self fulfilling thing, not that I wanted it to be, because I've always had this inner fighter who would say, just dig deep, you know, and kind of counter that inner critic. But of course, I didn't feel like I was worthy of that white picket fence dream

Rebecca Gleed  22:22  
and the power that we hold as providers, whatever role we're playing, I think, is important, and this highlights of what we share right to someone vulnerable, or that 17 year old Celeste or, you know, that can be carried into the Future. And we need to be very vigilant and aware of what we say and right this prognosis or treatment plan and right as do no harm, as do

Celeste Brinkerhoff  22:52  
no harm, and thank you for that, because the etymology of labels and madness for women is such a loaded gun, and it can also challenge further recovery in my journey, these labels were things that would be used against me in the most vulnerable ways to, you know, make me think I had to put up with things that were less than wonderful to use Jane's words, you know. And I think that in the work I've done, like, with the huntsman Mental Health Institute on their grand challenge to combat stigma, I learned like, wow, yeah, I was carrying the mark of stigma since 17, and skeptical of what I could do or achieve, or should people trust me to be a mom, because I've lost my mind at some point, you know, like, all these questions I'd have to contend with. And I think that the people like Andy who just see me like, oh gosh, Celeste, you're just look at you. You're a mom and grabbing my hand and making my journey human, and not pathologizing the suffering or anxiety, but just rather dignifying my experience, that does a lot to help a person show up, and I want to maybe touch on this, because I don't think turning points toward recovery and sharing on a broader stage would have happened if it weren't for people being brave also, and people in my social circle I'll never Forget a particularly difficult time I had discharged from the hospital my daughter's probably two, and my partner at the time was working out of state to try to create more revenue for the household because of the medical challenges crippling my ability to work, and I was alone and trying to adapt to a new anti psychotic. And I was terrified of my own hallucinations. And I remember watching my kid and we try to turn the TV on for comfort, and I was just sort of bracing myself against hallucinations. And I thought, Gosh, this, this has the potential to go really badly for me. And my kid, my family was close by, but I didn't always share with them everything I was struggling with, but one day, I decided to get some courage up, and I went over to the next door neighbor and took my daughter, and I knocked on the door, and I said, Hey, my name is Celeste Brinkerhoff. I live next door and I'm struggling with my mental health. This is my daughter, you know, because I thought it was kind of shit that mental illness doesn't deserve a casserole, right? Like we rally around cancer, and mental health is the latest health epidemic of our time. And I just thought, you know, Joyce knew who I was, and she wasn't afraid. And my daughter could have this ally, and something looks weird, you know, neighbors, you probably should say something. Do the visiting. Whatever it is. It's a health condition, right? So I'm really proud of myself that I had wisdom enough to go and, like, introduce myself, because I think that started to dismantle walls of stigma or trepidation that people may have. And Becky, I was really sick. I mean, I had headphones on. I was hallucinating for the better part of the day. And my family would come and they would see, wow, my daughter's got a full diaper. And this is, this is really bad, and I would have seven hospitalizations in that postpartum period, which interrupts the attachment I can do with her. And I really thought that, you know what, I'm not going to be silenced and stuffed over here in the margins quietly sick in my house. It's not okay. My daughter will not do well if we're isolated with this sickness alone. So those moments were that neighbor choice dignified us, and would reach over, visit over the fence with my kid, she would have high tea for us, like normalizing who I was, humanizing I'm just a mom, and my journey is a little bit rockier right now, but she didn't. There was no fear. There was nothing but just like, oh, pleased to meet you. And I think that that's what we can do for each other in our communities, if we dare talk and speak up. And if you're a woman out there or a new new parent, you can let people know what you're really going through. Because if we don't know the nature of the struggle, how can somebody know to stick, you know, stick their head in the door and make sure things are okay. Think a lot of these mental health challenges can be preventive and risk mitigated, if we dare. You know, let people in on the nature of what these diseases can do.

Rebecca Gleed  27:45  
I am speechless over here. It's hard to not feel not just goosebumps, but emotional, because I don't just see Joyce and Annie as heroes. But I also see a mom who is doing everything that she can, headphones and all. And for those who don't understand hallucinations, they can be absolutely terrifying, especially if, if you have that reality testing, that right? You don't this is not a pleasant experience. And to have the bravery to go and knock on Joyce's door, and I, I think this needs to be a poster or a t shirt, but mental illness, perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, is casserole worthy. And, you know, especially out west, for those who don't know that, the meaning of the casserole, it's warm and it's hearty and it's sorry, it has, it has some meaning, and it it is deserving of the casserole.

Celeste Brinkerhoff  28:59  
Yeah, these sick homes, right? When ACE scores are so high, and what gives a child an ACE score, having a parent with a mental illness, having a parent with a substance use disorder, coming from a broken home, these were what the kids were going through. My daughter has two bigger sisters, not my biological kids, but the silence is where this metastasizes. Yes,

Rebecca Gleed 29:21  
yes. So how do you talked about the huntsman Institute of you know, breaking the stigma and breaking the silence. How? How do we do that collectively?

Celeste Brinkerhoff  29:33  
Well, I think I always was lucky. I would find myself in the right place in time to be able to sign up for this thing I didn't know about, like this Initiative to Combat stigma, and I find myself in the room sitting next to the policy maker, running my mouth, because what else am I going to do podcasting? Right?

Celeste Brinkerhoff 29:55  
So I've always found myself in the way of opportunity, and I think that. Holding space for one another to listen and to ask questions is very important, and then providing each other that that sort of reflection of like, I'm not going to see you as somebody I should fear or further marginalize, but rather, the opportunity for for Joyce was like, let's just be neighbors. Let's be neighbors. And and it created normancy and oxygen into that sick home because somebody knew. And maybe that's enough, you know, you poke the hole in this thing, this family secret that people sweep under rugs. And I just, I want to call the BS on that and say, What good does that do? We can see the writing on the wall. Utah has some really high statistics for mental health struggles impacting our youth, and then women in the eight years, and then men struggle. And something that really stood out to me that Jane said, and she's the founder of Postpartum Support International, got to spend a lovely afternoon with her, but amazing she was just kind of pointing out like the trauma and the vicarious trauma that families can go through. Yes, and I don't think that even my ex understood how terrifying it was when he couldn't reach me because I was lost down an avenue in my mind, and I don't think his professionals really knew how to ask the right questions to see if he had received appropriate support for that level of trauma, when the kids too, and That's something I can't take back or change, but I can only hope that through more conversations, these kids are given language to understand it's a disease process that was that they were seeing. And I think it's unfortunate for my peers, where, you know our Achilles heel might be our central nervous system, of course, that presents behaviorally, right? It's not a visible illness.

Rebecca Gleed  32:04  
I think you highlight something so important. And to quickly move backward into you, talked about ACEs. For those listeners who don't know what the ACES is, is it's adverse childhood experiences, and this is basically a scoring around what you experience in childhood, and this can be predictive of, you know, your trauma experience. And so I think what you're highlighting is, what are the protective factors against that you know that scoring, which can be the Annie's, the choices, you know, breaking silence, calming your nervous system, finding the providers that you know are good fit for you and can be collaborative and allied the organizations such as Postpartum Support international that more systemically you can be part of. What a beautiful message. Yes,

Celeste Brinkerhoff  33:00  
thank you for speaking to protective factors. Because if we as communities reimagine how to introduce these to families that are at risk because they've lived generations of high a scores, for example, we can do preventative measures and early intervention, and we can break these cycles, and that's what my journey is about. And I want to leave my daughter not a legacy of madness and stigma and silence, but like, Hey, here's how we cut our way out of the woods and then getting her supports and understanding that certain things may have shaped her. And likely I did, you know, I was shaped a certain way by things. What does it look like to put protective factors in place? We know already, like, regardless of a score in pregnancy, nutritional status goes down, mom's vitamin C drops these babies, they need a lot of building blocks to develop in a healthy and balanced way. So for me, as a health coach, I always like to say something, you can't control, right? You can't control what pedagogy you were born into and the legacy that your family had, but you can't control a bit of how you eat, providers you seek, and how you will use your body, mind, spirit to better. Be lady yourself up this rigorous mountain.

Rebecca Gleed  34:31  
I love that. Well, maybe we move into that of if someone is going to be working with you, and I don't know, are you able to see folks outside of Utah, you can through coaching that anyone can access your

Celeste Brinkerhoff  34:44  
services. Yes, because my Holistic Health Coaching is, is a national certificate I can engage in, you know, health coaching, and I like to do the niche of mental health, because sometimes I think you get an early. Diagnosis or something that feels limiting, maybe you give up on yourself a little like I did, and I sure want to try to eat better or move I was just like a bit resigned. So the motivation for mentally real, which is my project, is just to say, yep, these are your real chronic health challenges. How can we build coping skills around those? How can we educate your loved ones and your support network to do what we can right, to reduce the inflammation in the body and build that sort of scaffolding to have a more adaptive experience?

Rebecca Gleed  35:40  
I love, I love that idea of the intersection between the mind and the body, and it sounds like you use a very person centered, individualized approach to coaching. So folks can expect that if you work with Celeste, that this will be right, an allied, collaborative experience. What else should we let listeners know about the holistic coaching?

Celeste Brinkerhoff 36:06  
Yeah, thank you for saying that. I do value the person centered journey, so they're going to be a big driver in their recovery journey, right? And we'll take it down whatever avenue of wellness they might like to we. I believe we have many dimensions of wellness, so with that approach, we'll hope to create a sort of treatment plan or recovery plan that helps them better self advocate with their healthcare team.

Celeste Brinkerhoff  36:34  
Yeah, and I think we're just seeing and you tell me otherwise, the real value of incorporating other models and modalities outside of this medical model of you know, even adjunctively, massage or reproductive acupuncture, nutrition, Exercise relationships. How healthy are your relationships, the importance to that beyond just medication and therapy, I'm obviously a proponent of therapy, and I see the value in other holistic approaches.

Rebecca Gleed  37:14  
Oh yes, absolutely Becky. I think that the multimodal approach, like research is showing, is a lot more efficacious and brings a better quality of life for my peers. And I do think there's therapy has been a part of my journey since the beginning, and I'm so grateful for it, but I think these holistic strategies having better nutritional status, all of that has helped deepen my therapeutic capacity and given me more resilience. I

Celeste Brinkerhoff 37:43  
love that the deep, and it can be a deep inner it can help it work even better than it already is,

Rebecca Gleed 37:50  
right? I don't think I would have been ready to change certain relational dynamics if I hadn't felt physically strong enough and spiritually, mentally strong enough. Took it took seven times to change my circumstances, and that that

Celeste Brinkerhoff  38:06  
energy to do, yeah, and then tell us a little bit more about the peer support specialist,

Rebecca Gleed 38:13  
yeah. So I was so empowered what, what I learned at the wholeness center in 2019 when I journeyed back to Doctor Scott's care, when I was falling through the cracks in the Standard Model postpartum. And they're like, these are all things that are like, below the neck Celeste, you can fix this in your kitchen, probably. And I was like, Really, okay, so it's just looking for a certification or a way that would help me reach others, and Utah's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse had the peer support training, so you needed to get a sponsor letter. And I found a couple people who endorsed me pursuing that. And we were super broke at the time. I didn't know if I'd have gas money to get down to the class just driving a car with a wrecked in front end. But I was determined, and so I drove through snow. Did it. I did it. And they gave each peer a chance to share their story. And everybody in that room, I saw them as such incredible survivors. And God, this is, this is pretty great. Let's see what peers can do for each other, and that that sort of opened the door for me to truly own, that my passion for health advocacy centered around the mental health in particular, and that's when I formed, you know, mentally real, and figured out how to get involved with Hardy Nutritionals, because their broad spectrum micronutrient had been a very important pillar in recovering my physical and mental health. And I was like, alright, let's figure out how we can keep sharing. Because this was a near miss and

Celeste Brinkerhoff 39:54  
near miss, Yep, I've heard that one too many times.

Rebecca Gleed  39:58  
I bet you have. Hmm, it's a razor's edge. Yes.

Celeste Brinkerhoff  40:02  
What advice would you give a mom in 2025 navigating the current system? What words would you offer?

Rebecca Gleed 40:13  
I would say, take your time to catch your breath if you can, because it is a complex modern world, and maybe the food supply isn't as nutrient dense as it once was. Please do everything you can as you embark on these different stages of your life's journey to fortify yourself from the mind to the body to the Spirit. I think those three things will keep you sane or as sane as possible, reach out, ask questions. I'd love to share all the different strategies I've used, and I think it's also important to stay curious and self advocate.

Celeste Brinkerhoff 40:54  
Stay curious advocate. I love that. Where can people find you?

Celeste Brinkerhoff 40:59  
Yeah, thank you for that question. I'm on LinkedIn. And also, if they go to my website, www dot I am mentally real.com they can book a free discovery call, and we can chat about my different programs to see if we might be a fit for coaching. And if you're a clinician out there and you might like to help my peers with the holistic model, let's chat, and I will share sort of the complimentary and integrative approaches that might complement what you're doing in clinical practice.

Rebecca Gleed 41:31  
I am so excited for you know folks to find you to learn more and to benefit from all of your services. So thank you so much for being here today. This is Celeste Brinkerhoff, a peer support specialist and a holistic health coach. Thank you again and again. I'm so excited for individuals to benefit from not just your story, but from how you've been able to create meaning. Thank you.

Celeste Brinkerhoff  41:59  
Becky, pleasure to talk with you today.

Speaker 2  42:03  
If you would like to learn more about how we can help, visit our website at perinatal reproductive wellness.com and while you are there, check out the latest edition of our book, employed motherhood. We also invite you to follow us on social media at employed motherhood. Finally, if you enjoyed listening to the show, please subscribe and rate it. Thank you. You.