EP #152 Building A Local Lifeline For Maternal Mental Health

Postpartum depression doesn’t always look like sadness. Sometimes it shows up as intrusive thoughts, isolation, and the terrifying feeling that you’re failing at the very moment you’re supposed to be “glowing.” We’re joined by Veronica Jones, founder of Unspoken Mothers, a Fredericksburg-area nonprofit created to raise awareness around maternal mental health and connect parents to real, local help.

Veronica takes us back to 2020, when she had her first child during COVID and didn’t realize she was experiencing postpartum depression. She shares what finally pushed her to talk to her doctor, how she found her way back through intentional daily choices, and why she later wrote The Part They Left Out using the journal entries she wrote while she was in the darkest part of it. It’s an honest conversation about what mothers often keep unspoken and why naming postpartum anxiety and depression early can change everything.

We also dig into the practical support Unspoken Mothers is building right now: the annual Maternal Mental Health 5K in downtown Fredericksburg at Old Mill Park (May 9), the Unspoken Mothers Initiative that helps moms access partner resources like therapists and movement-based healing, and the Unspoken Mothers Cafe pop-up at the YMCA in Caroline where parents can breathe, connect, and reset. If you care about maternal mental health, local nonprofits, and building stronger community support in Fredericksburg VA, this one will stick with you.

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Veronica Jones

Unspoken Mothers

unspokenmothers.com

unspokenmothersinfo@gmail.com

Transcript

Speaker: 0:01

This is the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Dori Stewart. Welcome back to another episode of the FXBG Neighbors Podcast, where we share the stories of our favorite local brands. I have a special guest joining me today. We've got Veronica Jones with us, and she is with Unspoken Mothers. Veronica, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited about it. I've been looking forward to it. Amazing. Well, I've been looking forward to it too. I'm very curious. Share with us, what is Unspoken Mothers? yeah so we are a 501C3 nonprofit organization um that I founded in november of twenty twenty four and it's all about raising awareness um around maternal mental health so that's what we do we kind of started off um small and we just do like a 5K every year which actually I shouldn't call it small because it's it's big it's a big event um and now we're expanding our resources we now have an Unspoken Mother's Cafe at the why so It's all about awareness, all about providing resources and really supporting those new mamas out there. Amazing. I love this so much. So talk to me a little bit about so you you raise money for the organization and you're providing services or talk to me a little bit at how you're getting the awareness out that side of it. Yeah. So a lot of it has to do a lot of the awareness right now comes from the 5K. So we try to make it as big as possible. We raise the funds and then we have what we just implemented this year, the Unspoken Mothers Initiative. And that is a fund where mothers who might not have the resources they need to get the help that they need. If they need assistance, they can come to me. And if they qualify, we can connect them with one of our partners. So we have resources such as therapists. We have postpartum CrossFit, dance therapy. Like we have so many different ways of, I guess, trying to get yourself better from maternal mental health. Yeah. And it's something that affects so many more people than you realize. And so it's such a needed, a needed organization. I'd love to learn your backstory. Tell me, how did you get into this? What made you start this? Yeah, so it goes back to my first child. He was born in twenty twenty COVID times. And so I was suffering with a postpartum depression, which I did not know at the time. I just thought I was going crazy, like I was having very intrusive thoughts. It was like it was really bad. So it got so bad that I went to the doctor and I was telling him, thank goodness I had such an amazing OBGYN. But I went to him and I told him what my symptoms were. And he was like, oh, you sound like you have postpartum depression. Very normal. Hormones aren't together, like all the things. Right. So I was able I think I went through it for about six months. And after six months, I was able to get myself out of it. He prescribed me some medication, which I decided not to take. I was trying to. get out of it myself. And I say, I will say that I cheated a little bit because I have a sister as a therapist. So she was able to like talk me through certain things. I got up, I took a shower, got ready, went outside. You know, I was very intentional about certain things until the point where I was like, okay, I feel better. Like I, the intrusive thoughts are gone. I'm feeling so much better. So I knew I had overcome it. Um, but then at that point I was very upset that I didn't know what postpartum depression was. I had never heard of it. Um, you know, I was a first time mom. I didn't know anything about like postpartum anxiety, none of that stuff. And I was like, how is this possible? Right? Like, I mean, there's gotta be so many other women that are going through this that don't know what's going on with them, you know? And I, I want to be the one to help say like, it's normal. So, um, while I was going through it, I was writing journal entries and I ended up writing a book called The Part They Left Out. And I put in my actual journal entries that I wrote while I was suffering with postpartum depression. And so that was my way of kind of like starting the awareness. um and then after that i started going i partnered with another organization and we started just doing like very simple walks with bombs and hanging out and stuff like that and then in november of twenty twenty four i was like okay i want this to be a big deal because now it's become a topic in twenty twenty four it was a topic in twenty twenty five it really started becoming a topic maternal mental health And so I founded the organization and now we are coming up on our second annual maternal mental health 5K we've implemented the Unspoken Mother's Cafe, and I'm trying to do everything possible to raise awareness. Amazing. Amazing. I really love that you published your journal entries. That's so cool. And I mean, So many mothers I imagine reading that are like, she's speaking my language, like she is going through what I or went through what I'm going through. So that's really powerful. I just love that you did that. yeah yeah it was um honestly i i will say it here i have not been able to read the book yet um and i think you know i had a second child in and um i told myself like once i feel a hundred percent again i i'm going to get through the book but it is it's hard you know and so i tell people i'm like This is a short read, but it's powerful. And I get mothers pinging me and calling me all the time saying, like, I am so glad that I'm not the only one, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That is powerful. I love that. And I imagine... having a baby during COVID. I imagine that. I mean, that was an isolating time for anyone, let alone someone who just had a baby and is going through postpartum depression. I can't imagine that. I mean, wow. I mean, I'm glad you got help. I'm glad you had your sister there for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So talk to me about the upcoming event that you have going on. Tell us all about it, how people can get involved. Yeah, I'm very excited about it. So we have our Maternal Mental Health 5K It's at the same place as last year. So we do it in downtown Fredericksburg. It's at Old Mill Park. And the way I explain it is because people hear maternal mental health in the event, right? And they maybe think like it's like a sad situation. That is not this. So this is about celebrating survivors. It's about spreading awareness. It's about celebrating the survivors that are there that don't even know that they're going to be survivors, right? But just really, I like saying to cause a ruckus in this town, especially in the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania and Caroline areas. I think it's very important that we continue speaking about maternal mental health issues. Um, so it's fun though. We, we go, we do the 5K along the Canal path, which if you're from here, you know, it's a beautiful scenic walk. And then you come back, um, you can have a beer, a mimosa, a wine, juice, water, whatever you want. We have a DJ, we have games, we have vendors, food trucks. It's so much fun. It's a lot of fun. And it's on May night this year. Amazing. It does sound like a good time. It is. I love that. And so if people want to sign up, you have a website where they can go? I do. So you can go to unspokenmothers.com and you will see the 5K registration banner there. And also tomorrow is the deadline to be guaranteed a t-shirt and the swag bag with goodies. So April twenty fourth is the deadline to register to get those in. But we sell tickets all the way up until like nine a.m. the day of. Oh, amazing. Yeah. And then tell us about you mentioned a cafe. What is that all about? Yeah, so I partnered with the YMCA in Caroline and we've created a space and the space is the Unspoken Mothers Cafe. And it's set up just like that. It's a pop up. So it's like it kind of resembles like a market. And so women come in, actually not even just women, it's parents in general. You can come in, drop your children off or not, but you can drop your children off at the child time at the YMCA for three hours. you come mingle with other parents you could sit there and just mind your own business and get some me time we have activities and we also have a five-minute guided activity um so it could be like working out or sound meditation float meditation um which you can either opt in or or not often um and it's just really a it's like a safe space i would say for mothers to or and parents as a whole um to kind of mingle and talk about things or just go and take a breather because we all need that break. It's very important. Yeah. I love that you've created that. That's really cool. Yeah. I love that. So what does the future look like for Unspoken Mothers? Do you have plans for growth? I imagine that you're going to get even more people every year at your 5K. What's next for you? That's really the hope. I have so many dreams for Unspoken Mothers. But my main focus is I will say this area because I grew up here and this area is very important to me. But eventually what I would like to do is take the 5K to different areas. I'd like to go to different areas of Virginia. I'd like to go to different states and do the same 5K just to raise awareness. For the Unspoken Mothers Cafe, I would love to get into different YMCAs. We have a bunch around here and really different spaces. It doesn't even just have to be the YMCA because it's a pop-up. Yeah, a lot of dreams. I love it. I love it. I love it. And I imagine you just fly out of bed each morning with purpose. And I love that you have been able to take a dark time for you, document it, share it, and then now you're in turn able to help others. So congratulations on everything you've created. I just love it. Thank you so much. Well, you've already mentioned your website. If people, maybe if they want to support you in other ways, how can they connect with you? Yeah, so our email address is unspokenmothersinfo at gmail.com. That's really the best way to reach me for any other type of partnerships or support or anything like that. I respond pretty quickly, so. Okay, amazing. Well, Veronica, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and sharing Unspoken Mothers with us. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for listening to the Fredericksburg Neighbors Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to fxbgneighborspodcast.com.