Somehow, I found the courage to make a call to a local organization and find the words to say, “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t feel right.”

A woman from the organization came over, sat across from me, and handed me a questionnaire. I filled it out, the answers spilling out in black and white. And when she looked at it, she didn’t hesitate.

“Postpartum depression.”

PPD. Three letters. A diagnosis.

At the time, I barely knew what it was. It wasn’t something people talked about openly, not in my circles. I went online and started reading, clicking from one page to the next. And with every word, I felt it sinking in.

Wow. This is me. This is me.

There was comfort in the validation — this wasn’t in my head, this was real — but at the same time, it was terrifying. I had a label now, but labels didn’t change diapers or rock screaming babies to sleep.

The organization assigned me a support worker who took charge of my “case,” and sent me a few hours of cleaning help, meals, and several nights with a night nurse.

The rest of the time? I was still trying to stay afloat on my own, still waking up every morning and feeling like I was sinking.

So I went to the doctor.

He listened. He nodded. And then he wrote a prescription for Sertraline, a widely prescribed antidepressant in the UK. It was like giving paracetamol to a cancer patient, I later realized. It didn’t even scratch the surface.

When I told them it wasn’t helping, they told me to increase the dose. Another 100. Wait. Another 100. But that just made me feel numb.

I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t anything. I was a shell. A ghost, floating through my days, waiting for something to change, for something to start working.

I called my GP to try to explain that it wasn’t helping, but they told me to give it more time. And the more I waited, the more I withdrew. I isolated myself, avoiding people. Avoiding life.

A friend called me one day.

“Gitty, you have to get out of the house.”

I barely had the energy to answer. “I can’t. I’m too weak to move.”

“You have to try.”

I took a deep breath. “I can’t. I can’t trust myself to leave the house.”

Silence.

And then, finally: “Are you sure this isn’t postpartum blues? You’ll be just fine.”

No. It wasn’t postpartum blues.

It wasn’t just the few days of weepiness people talk about after birth. I was seven weeks postpartum. This was obviously something else.

Some days, I didn’t think I would make it to the next morning.

When people sent in food, I quietly tucked it away in the freezer, labeling each container with instructions — how to reheat it, how many portions there were. For my husband. In case he had to do it all alone.

And I was terrified. Because not only was I losing my grip on myself, I was scared of what might happen to my babies.

And that thought alone nearly broke me.

One Friday afternoon, when my babies were three months old, something snapped. Someone had come over to drop off some food, and I just lost it. A full-blown breakdown ensued. “I can’t do this anymore,” I screamed and cried. Panicking, my husband didn’t hesitate; he made arrangements for the kids, and immediately called my support worker and the crisis team.

That’s how I found myself entering Homerton Hospital’s A&E (accident and emergency department) late one Friday afternoon.

It was Shabbos by the time I was admitted. The hospital placed me in the Gardner Ward for acute psychiatric cases. Gutted and incoherent, I fell into the bed they showed me, incongruently grateful for the chance to sleep the night undisturbed.

As soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, a wave of confusion washed over me. I felt fine. What was I doing here? And then, chaos erupted. A fellow patient, envious of the kosher breakfast delivered to me, literally broke the handle off my door amid her loud, pounding demands.

It was a traumatic day. I spent most of my time curled up in the corner of my bed, the room bare, airless, and uninviting. The absence of an en suite bathroom meant venturing into the hallway, which was unthinkable. I was too terrified to move, let alone use the bathroom.

Hours ticked by before I mustered the courage to ask to see a doctor. By this time, it was late on Shabbos afternoon. Desperate, I pleaded for my release. “I’m fine. I’m okay. I don’t belong here,” I insisted. Surrounded by the chaos, I felt a perverse reassurance of my own sanity. I don’t know whether he believed me or was simply worn down, but he agreed to discharge me.

Once my husband showed up to check on me that afternoon, we walked the 40 minutes home from the hospital.

But home wasn’t the sanctuary I needed.

A day later, another massive breakdown hit me. It was Sunday night, and the feeling of failure overwhelmed me. I broke down.

My husband, terrified at seeing me in such a state, called Hatzalah. Their arrival brought little comfort as I cried and rambled incoherently, accusing the Hatzalah members of conspiring to spread my secrets. They gave me two options: either I went to the hospital with them, or I would face the police, which would spell the difference between voluntary admission or being “sectioned” (a term used in the UK to mean legally detained). I had no choice but to comply.

They urged me to pack essentials for a short hospital stay. A couple of days, I gathered. When I headed to my bedroom to pack, I saw my son, who had woken up from the noise, in my husband’s bed. A wave of sorrow washed over me. I sat beside him, wrapping my arms around him, pressing my face into his warm little frame. For a moment, I wasn’t a woman unravelling. I wasn’t someone about to disappear into a hospital ward. I was just a mother, holding her child, promising him that it would be okay. To this day, I hope that my presence that night helped ease the ordeal for him, softening the imprint of lasting trauma.

While I was with him, I could hear my husband outside as he calmly managed the situation with Hatzalah and insisted on giving me this time with our son. “She’s talking to our son. She’s just trying to be there for him.”

This time, they admitted me to the Mother and Baby Unit. This was the psychiatric unit for mothers after birth, where they took you in along with your baby — or in my case, babies. Terrified of looking after my own babies, I choked at the mere thought of that responsibility. “I can’t do this,” I wailed.

But the choice I was given was to either stay in the MBU or return to the dreaded Gardner Ward. Gradually, as the days passed, with lots of help from nurses delighted with twin babies in the ward, I began caring for my babies again. But I was far from okay. The drugs, the exhaustion, the loneliness — it was crushing. I felt like the only Jewish mother in the world struggling so profoundly. I was surrounded by non-Jews, struggling to explain my basic needs while in a state where I could barely form a coherent thought. There was no kosher food, no way to warm up what little I had. Shabbos felt endless. The nurses didn’t understand why I couldn’t press the buzzer or use electronics. I could barely understand it myself in my haze.

I had almost no visitors outside of my husband’s daily visit. The ones who did come — I will never, ever forget them. They were my only tether to life outside those walls.

It was hell on earth.

You owned nothing in a place like that. Not your space, not your dignity. Even the most basic human needs were stripped from me. I didn’t have control over something as basic as a shower. I had to press a button every few seconds just to keep the water running.

Later, I wrote in my “Thank You Hashem” notebook: Thank You for a toilet seat. For a shower that runs without constant prodding. For a pillow to rest my head. For a phone charger. For the ability to open a window and feel air on my face.

It was an awful time.

A few days became three long months, then I was finally discharged again. The doctors were happy enough with my progress on the meds to decide I would be safe on my own. I was glad that this chapter was almost over.

Yet there was no one waiting for me at home, no supper on the table, no one checking in. And I was expected to function again. But I couldn’t manage basic tasks. I couldn’t do laundry, I couldn’t look after the kids; even plating food sent over by others was a monumental effort. The frustration and disappointment of it was crushing.

“There must be more we can do,” my husband kept saying. “Something isn’t right.”

So off for a second opinion we went. We met a psychiatrist who listened, taking the time to understand what I was going through. After a careful evaluation, he put a name to it: treatment-resistant depression.

“Finally, a formal diagnosis,” others said, relieved. But to me, it was the final blow. My last bit of hope drained away, leaving nothing. The world didn’t just feel dark — it felt over. The tunnel I was trapped in had always been long and endless, but now, I could feel the bricks stacking up at the exit, one by one, closing me in. There was no way forward, no way back. Just the overwhelming sense that I would never get out.

After months enveloped in darkness, deciding to hope again was perhaps the biggest challenge of all.

The doctor presented his options: electroconvulsive therapy (commonly referred to as ECT), ketamine, r TMS. Did we want to attempt any of these?

“We’ve never heard of rTMS before,” my husband and I admitted, overwhelmed but curious.

“Try it,” the doctor encouraged. “It stands for repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. It’s a noninvasive treatment that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate the brain areas involved in mood regulation, and it’s often used for depression.”

Deep, deep down, I knew I needed to find a way to get better. That small, persistent part of me is what pushed us to consider rTMS. It seemed the most feasible option — less invasive than ECT, and while prohibitively expensive for us, family members agreed to sponsor it, and it was still way below the price range of ketamine. We did our research and learned that although it wasn’t widely discussed, it had an excellent success rate.

Armed with this information and a fragile new hope, we chose to proceed.

We made an appointment at the private Nightingale Hospital, one of the only clinics in London that performs this particular treatment, and my anxiety went through the roof. I couldn’t sleep the night before. I was sick the morning of my first session. Despite our research, I felt only one percent hope and 99 percent certainty that it wasn’t going to work for me.

I arrived at the appointment, got onto a dental chair, and the facilitators put a massive, helmet-like contraption onto my head, taking measurements to be sure it fit well in the right spots. The facilitators explained everything step by step, immediately putting me at ease.

Inside the helmet, there was a machine that would send electromagnetic pulses directly into my brain. It would stimulate the part of the brain that controlled mood. With severe depression, that part of my brain had stopped functioning. Medications were supposed to wake it up, but for people like me with treatment-resistant depression, that didn’t happen. The meds would do very little.

The machine felt like a woodpecker banging into my brain. Every single bang, every pulse, was like a drill straight into my skull. I felt like my eyes were going to pop out.

They tried to reduce the intensity, but the pain was still unbearable. I have no idea how I got through it, but somehow, Hashem gave me the strength to push through one bang after another. Over and over, for a total of 20 minutes, I was subjected to five-second bursts of stimulation and ten-second breaks in between.

I went through it every day. After just three sessions, I wanted to quit. I didn’t think I could do it anymore.

I spoke to my psychiatrist, and he said, “Try ten sessions. If after ten sessions you see no difference, then you can stop. But give it a real chance.”

So I said, “Okay, ten sessions. That’s it. If nothing happens, I stop.”

But happen it did. It was a miracle.

Each session, my eyes would twitch, my fingers would twitch, even my teeth would chatter. That’s how they knew it was working — if I wasn’t twitching, they’d raise the intensity. The vibrations were so strong, I thought I felt my teeth rattle in my jaw.

Each session, I came home with a migraine, completely and utterly spent.

But something inside me told me to push through. I kept thinking, “This has to work. This has to work.”

Shabbos was usually my toughest time. I would get very dysregulated being home with the kids. By this point, my husband had stopped going to shul so he could be present for all of us. I couldn’t be on my own; if one of my kids started crying, my brain would immediately spiral into a deluge of downward thoughts entirely out of my control. But ten rTMS sessions in, while reflecting on Shabbos with my facilitator, I realized that I’d been alone with the kids for ten minutes. And… I was okay. One of them cried, but I managed. I didn’t panic. I wasn’t overwhelmed by a flood of destructive urges.

“That is an incredible result,” my doctor told me.

And I knew the sessions were doing their job.

RTMS doesn’t work like medication. While medication is an excellent option for many people, for some, it doesn’t work.

My psychiatrist explained that rTMS is like exercising a muscle that’s been weak for years. Every session was like a workout for my brain, forcing it to wake up and function properly again. It was why I needed to go every single day, Monday to Friday, for the first ten sessions (and then another ten). It had to be constant, like training a muscle. Then, once the pathways were strong enough, I could start tapering down to every other day, then twice a week, and eventually stop.

It wasn’t just about my brain, it was also about my body. Depression makes you completely shut down. Your nervous system goes into survival mode, and you feel like you can’t function. This treatment forced my brain to turn back on — and when that happened, my body started following. It was like I had been asleep for months, and I was finally waking up.

After the tenth session, the facilitators handed me a questionnaire. It asked, “How overwhelming are your thoughts of wanting to escape or not be here, from one to ten?” I paused, realizing something surprising. “Hey, actually, I haven’t been struggling much with dark or overwhelming thoughts in the past few days.” That was new; I hadn’t expected it.

Even though the process was still difficult and painful, I knew something was shifting. It was what pushed me to keep attending my sessions at Nightingale and to agree to another round of ten.

Slowly, slowly, I showed more interest in my kids. I put together suppers, even though I found it difficult to plan them. My mental capacity was still lousy, so I needed help with the thinking part, but I was gradually able to do more things.

The first time I went to the grocery store, I felt like I had conquered the world. That was how huge it was to just do something normal again.

One thing that was tough was everyone waiting for me to get better — my husband, my family, my friends. They were all waiting. It’s a scary feeling, that expectation to be okay again. Because what is “better,” even? You forget what “better” is when you’ve been this low. Also, people often think the moment you start feeling better, you are completely better. They don’t always understand that it’s a process, and that the process isn’t always linear.

That fear kept creeping up — the same fear I felt when I had left the hospital. People assume that when you leave the hospital, you’re fine. But really, you’re just out of the danger zone. You still have such a long way to go. I had to relearn life. I had to learn that recovery wasn’t about being perfect. It was about slowly, very slowly, stepping back into life.

After 15 sessions, I slowly started to feel this fog lift from my head, from my shoulders — from everywhere.

Before rTMS, there was no one home inside my head. There was no logical brain. I was completely shut down.

But as the treatments continued, I started to become more present. I could sit with my babies and not panic. I could answer a question without feeling completely overwhelmed. I could look people in the eye again.

After 20 sessions, I went back to the psychiatrist.

“Wow, you are a success case,” he said, reviewing my file.

Hearing those words did something to me. It was the first time in so long that I felt like I was actually coming out of this. The first time I genuinely felt, This nightmare isn’t forever.

But I had also wondered, What if it didn’t last? What if this was just another thing that would work for a little bit and then stop? That fear sat inside me, even as I knew I was improving.

That was why I decided to do another round of 20 sessions, three times a week, to wind down to twice a week. I wanted to be certain that the changes in my brain would stick.

By the time I finished the second course, I felt even stronger. I wasn’t just surviving anymore — I was living.

At my psychiatrist appointment after session 40, I found myself relaying to the doctor how I’d felt, how things had been.  He looked at me and said the sweetest words I’d ever heard.

“You are in remission.”

I don’t think anyone can adequately grasp how huge those words were for me. Depression had been my whole world for so long, I forgot what it was like to not be drowning, what it was like to breathe again.

Being in remission didn’t mean I was suddenly happy all the time. It meant that I could manage. It meant that I could be more present with my kids. I was able to take care of my household without it feeling impossible. I was able to answer questions without feeling like my brain was short-circuiting. I was able to go on errands without panicking. And slowly, I started doing things I actually enjoyed. I started to feel like me again.

I could even start therapy, something that wasn’t possible back when my safety was acutely threatened. My husband and I undertook intense couples’ therapy alongside individual EMDR, among other trauma healing approaches.

People often wonder whether postpartum depression is entirely physiological, meaning it’s caused by changes in the body like shifting hormones or the physical recovery after birth, or a result of past trauma where stress and overwhelm knock you over in a way it might not do if you started with an empty load. I’m not a medical expert, yet for me, I believe it was both. I think of it like holding a cup of coffee. Being postpartum and overwhelmed was the shove that made it spill. My earlier experiences had filled the cup; the crash came when everything tipped over.

Accepting that took time. But once I did, I was finally able to start healing, both mentally and emotionally.

I wouldn’t wish what I went through on anyone. But I also wouldn’t take it back. It made me stronger, even though at the time I felt like the weakest person in the world. It made me kinder, because now I see how much pain people carry that no one else notices. And it made me determined — determined that no one should ever feel as alone as I did. That’s why I share my story. Because if even one person reads this and realizes they aren’t alone, then it’s worth it.

When you’re in it, you think the darkness is forever. You can’t imagine ever feeling okay again. I know, because I was there. I thought, This is it. This is my life now. I thought I would never get better, never be a mother, a wife, a person again.

But depression lies. It tells you there’s no way out. It tells you you’ll never feel normal again. But that’s not true. I know, because I came out of it. And if I came out of it, so can you.

I almost gave up on rTMS after three sessions. I almost didn’t try at all. But I pushed through, even when I had no hope, and that’s the only reason I’m here today. You don’t have to believe it will work. You don’t have to feel strong. You just have to keep going. Even when you can’t see the light yet — keep going.

The worst part of depression is the loneliness. It makes you feel like no one could possibly understand what you’re going through. But so many people are struggling — they just don’t talk about it.

That’s why I tell my story. One, so that no one else has to feel as alone as I did; two, to help break the stigma. It’s not your fault that this happened, and there’s no shame in it.

This isn’t medical advice, and I encourage everyone to seek guidance from a professional — then keep searching until you find the right fit. Because recovery is possible.

So if you’re struggling, please — reach out. There is help. There is hope. And you deserve both.

What Is rTMS?

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) is a noninvasive treatment for depression and other mental health conditions. Using magnetic pulses to stimulate specific areas of the brain involved in mood regulation, rTMS helps “wake up” underactive neural pathways, often leading to significant symptom relief. Unlike medication, it doesn’t rely on chemicals in the bloodstream, which means fewer systemic side effects.

Who is it for?

RTMS is FDA-approved for major depressive disorder, particularly for those who haven’t responded to standard treatments like therapy and medication. It’s also used for anxiety, OCD, and even certain types of chronic pain. Since it’s noninvasive and doesn’t require anesthesia, many find it a relatively well-tolerated alternative when other treatments haven’t worked.

What to expect

A typical session lasts about 20 minutes. The patient sits comfortably while a coil is placed near their scalp, delivering targeted magnetic pulses. Some describe it as a tapping sensation. Treatments are usually done five days a week for four to six weeks. Most people start noticing improvements within a few weeks, though results vary.

Is it easy to access?

RTMS has become increasingly available in recent years. Many private clinics, hospital programs, and mental health centers now offer it, and some insurance plans cover treatment. While availability varies by location, those seeking rTMS can often find a provider with a simple online search or a referral from a psychiatrist.

RTMS isn’t a magic fix because while it can significantly reduce symptoms, its effectiveness varies, and it requires multiple sessions, doesn’t address underlying issues, may need maintenance, and works best when combined with other treatments like therapy and lifestyle changes. Yet for many — like Gitty — it’s been a breakthrough when nothing else seemed to help.

Gitty F. lives in London, UK, and is the founder of Hugs Care Packages, an organization that sends luxury care packages to women across the UK struggling with their mental health — because she knows how isolating the journey can be and doesn’t want anyone to have to go at it alone.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 943)