"Let's Talk Therapy" with Chanel Riggle

an interview with a woman who has fought tirelessly to tend her to own mental health and found a way to support other moms along the way. an icon, if you will.

Welcome to this tiny corner of the internet where an off-duty psychotherapist keeps the conversation going on how to make sense of this life thing we’re all doing.

This week’s newsletter is an interview series, “Let’s Talk Therapy.” Through these dozen or so questions, you will get a deeper sense of how therapy can look and feel. Like most things, transparency about the inside of an experience can do wonders in deepening our compassion and understanding for oneself and others. My sincerest wish is this series will help in normalizing the complex feelings that can arise through doing therapeutic work and empower us to utilize it more wholeheartedly. Also, if I’m honest, I hope to learn even more about the experience of being a client so that I can continue to be an increasingly attuned psychotherapist.

Our guest today is

Chanel Riggle

, writer of

Motherhood Minute

. A newsletter about, as she puts it, “Quick reads for mothers who need a minute. Deep dives into parenting, mental health, and connecting with others.”

We all need a minute—especially the week of Daylights Savings—ammirite?

I came across her work initially through an open call last spring for speakers for a virtual conference about motherhood and mental health she was hosting. Having had my own challenges¹ with matrescence and mental health, I felt called to apply—even though I was mostly full of self-doubt I had anything to offer. It was an honor to be a on a speaker panel for that event last October. I suspect it was a full circle moment for us both to be able to do what we could to offer the type of support we both could have used when we were new moms.

I truly admire how she has taken her experiences—ones that you will soon hear were not all positive—and thought about how she could personally find a way to fill a hole in the mental health sphere. It’s a level of gumption that I aspire to inhabit.

Chanel hosting the conference in October 2024. She was SUCH a natural.

This interview is full of heart, honesty, and may be a introduction to some mental health treatments you’ve never heard of before.

Without further ado…

1. First things first: How are you feeling–in this very moment–about volunteering to talk about therapy and mental health?

I’m excited! I have a lot to say because I’ve had to search for help in many seasons of my life. I used to shy away from speaking about my mental health or how I’ve asked for help, but in October of 2012 I was suicidal and I came out of that vowing to never hide it again. I joke that I’m now in the pro leagues of being a mental health patient.