Hi, I'm Jennifer, your dedicated therapist supporting your care journey.

As a fellow mom, I understand the joys and challenges that come with motherhood. I understand feelings of mom guilt, perfectionism, frustration, and burnout. Throughout my own motherhood journey, I’ve learned how essential support really is. This journey can be tough, but it’s so much easier with support.

My Personal Journey

My passion for working with mothers developed after my own lived experience with perinatal challenges. I’m a survivor of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and birth trauma twice. During both births and postpartum periods, I was dismissed by my providers, gaslighted, and not taken seriously, and it almost cost me my life both times. After the delivery of my youngest son, I developed severe postpartum preeclampsia, and due to the dismissal from my doctors, it wasn’t treated until I was 3 weeks postpartum.

This led to two postpartum re-hospitalizations, separation from my baby during times of hospitalization due to COVID, the inability to breastfeed, cardiomyopathy, C-section wound infections 3 times, poor and delayed wound healing, abdominal and peripheral edema, elevated liver enzymes for months, and all the mental health challenges that come as a result of these physical health issues.

We were navigating this without any local family, and my husband took on the majority of the care for our 5 year old son and newborn baby. Our 5 year old son was due to begin Kindergarten, and I was unable to be part of that because I was so sick and in and out of the hospital frequently. On top of that, I had a very colicky tiny human with severe reflux who hardly ever slept and screamed unconsolably for hours daily for the first 5 months of life.

I spent 3 years in pelvic floor physical therapy due to pelvic floor dysfunction and extensive abdominal muscle wall separation (severe diastasis recti). My physical therapist was amazing and literally helped put my body back together (Shout out to Rebba Kipp, DPT, my angel on earth). There were times when I wondered if things would get better, if I’d be healthy enough to see my kids grow up, and if I’d ever recover from all the trauma I experienced.

My faith is a big part of who I am, and my relationship with God was the only thing that kept me grounded. There was a lack of family and social support, and I feel that God sustained me during that time. He sent the right people our way to keep our family going.

Our church family was so supportive, my amazing mother in law stepped in when I needed her most (my mother passed away in 2020, so it was really tough without her), and my closest friends were there during all my moments of complete despair. I used to wonder why my journey had to be so difficult and painful. In hindsight, I feel that every experience, challenge, and obstacle was God preparing me and cultivating my heart for this work. It was a tough road, but I’m on the other side and know that through these hardships I have an even greater understanding and empathy for the women I help today. I sought my own healing, sought advanced training and certification, and vowed to help as many women as I could.

So yes, I have advanced degrees, certifications, years of clinical experience, and extensive training. But that’s not what makes me an expert in this field. It is the combination of education and training and my personal lived experience that have created my unique perspective and expertise. I lived it, felt it all, and have truly been there. I get it.

So, wherever you are on your perinatal or reproductive journey, trying to conceive, grieving the loss of a baby, navigating motherhood, first time mom, veteran mom of 6, I’ll be there to hold space for your needs. Or perhaps, you are a teen girl or woman just experiencing the stress of life, trying to process traumatic experiences, struggling to adapt to changes and transitions, or just not feeling yourself lately. The therapy space is there for you also. In the words of Glennon Doyle, “Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyway”. If you’re ready to take the next step, I’m ready to meet you right where you are on your care journey.

~Jennifer Ford, MS, LCMHC, LPC, PMH-C