Like many women (22% of new Black moms, to be exact), Monét experienced postpartum depression after giving birth to Hazel.

“I went through a phase, to be honest, where I was going through postpartum depression,” she shared with Pop Sugar in August. “It’s really a lonely place that’s not talked about too much. People mention it when you get pregnant but you may be as little as depressed afterward, and to the depth and how you pull yourself out of it, there’s no blueprint to that.”

She expounded on living with postpartum depression to Self in an interview published a few weeks later, explaining that she put a lot of pressure on herself to lose the baby weight quickly.

“I was very hard on myself, and just judging so much and worrying about what I used to look like and what I used to have,” she told the outlet. “It’s just all living in the past, which is the setup [for feeling like a failure].” She added, “[But] you have to think forward. It’s been a battle to be okay with whatever size I am at the time.”

Monét told Pop Sugar that a “great community of other moms” helped her get through it.

hazel monet gaines

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