Today we’d like to introduce you to Molly Nourmand.
Molly, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up on the shores of Lake Erie in Michigan. After graduating college, I felt pulled to move out of the Midwest and into a big city, namely New York City or Los Angeles. In undergrad, I majored in Psychology and minored in Dance, however, I mainly focused on performing and debating changed my major a few times. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life, but I was really into yoga at the time and sensed that I needed to do some more living and get work experience before seriously considering going to graduate school to pursue psychology. My head told me to go to NYC to continue my dance career, yet there were more signs pointing west–my older sister was there pursuing acting at the time, I wanted a break from harsh winters, plus LA is a mecca for yoga. So I “temporarily” moved to LA in 2004 to do a yoga teaching training program when yoga was just starting to take off. I found home within the yoga community and would go on to teach for over a decade in myriad settings from studios to schools to corporations to celebrities’ homes. I met my now husband about nine months after moving to Los Angeles, so I quickly formed roots in a new city without even knowing it very well.
While working as a yoga teacher, I started interning at a yoga magazine, which turned into a full-time position as an editor. I went on to work for different wellness publications, and while working at my editorial dream job, the economy collapsed in 2008 and that company dissolved, So I took a job at a beauty website. I soon became miserable in my cubicle because I knew that I had veered off the path of what I was put on this Earth to do. My discomfort coerced me to make a drastic change to my life. It had been nearly six years since graduating college, and I was now feeling ready to pursue more training in the healing arts. After touring Pacifica Graduate Institute, my intuition told me to apply there and only there. I knew people who had attended and they had something that I wanted.
Pacifica is a magical place. It’s an accredited university, plus the centerpiece of the curriculum is steeped in the philosophy of Carl Jung. Much of his work is about making the unconscious conscious. After nearly three years of commuting to Santa Barbara and turning myself inside out (that particular program had a reputation for doing just that), I received a Master of Arts degree in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Depth Psychology in 2013. My Master’s thesis titled, The Mythology and the Shadow of the Pill, examined the effects of hormonal birth control on women’s mood and libido. I have always been passionate about women’s issues, but it wasn’t until I became a mother that I felt like I found my calling within my field.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has not been a smooth road becoming who I am today. After grad school, I spent the following years accumulating clinical hours and then preparing for the state licensing board exams, which really took me to my edge. Through my time as an intern, as well as the first few years of being licensed, I worked at different drug and alcohol rehabs. I loved working with people who had hit a bottom, were at turning point in their lives, and open to a spiritual path. I preferred residential treatment where clients were removed from the daily rhythm of their lives, relationships and jobs and in a retreat-like environment.
Although I began to teach fewer yoga classes when I started working full time as a therapist, I remained rigorous in my own spiritual practice. I did yoga regularly, meditated daily and went on annual retreats including a silent retreat. In groups that I facilitate, I like to incorporate meditation and aspects of mindfulness.
I wanted to finish the process of getting licensed before trying to get pregnant, so the sound of my biological clock was an audible motivator for me. I got licensed in 2015, took on a full-time job at a treatment center, got pregnant in 2016 and continued to work until about a month before I delivered. After my daughter was born at the end of 2016, a combination of risk factors coupled with birth complications, lack of support, isolation, sleep deprivation and marital challenges were the perfect storm for me developing postpartum depression. Since I’m a psychotherapist armed with tools, resources and knowledge about Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders (PMADs), I thought I would somehow be exempt from it or be able to catch it, but I soon realized that I’m not immune. And if I’m struggling, then other moms must be struggling, too. After I got out the funk and fog of depression and sleep deprivation, I embraced the wounded healer archetype. In the fall of 2017 I created what I wish I had had: postpartum support for new moms called: Life After Birth™
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Life After Birth™ story. Tell us more about the business.
My initiation into motherhood birthed a new career path for me. Due to my own challenges, I feel called to help women pick up the pieces of their lives and selves during their transition into motherhood. During pregnancy, women are showered with so much love and attention. After the baby arrives, new moms are often left feeling discarded, invisible and expected to have it all figured out on day one of motherhood. The metamorphosis of becoming a mother is a delicate one. A safe cocoon is needed for the oftentimes awkward unfolding.
I have translated my passion for working with new moms into my specialty in my private practice. I have a more holistic approach to therapy and incorporate mind-body practices, including Somatic Experiencing and The Hakomi Method, into the work that I do with clients. I regularly attend conferences through Maternal Mental Health Now and 2020 Mom, and I have completed the certificate training with Postpartum Support International (PSI). I offer individual and couples therapy at my office near Beverly Hills. I help clients navigate challenges that include, but are not limited to:
Birth complications/trauma
Health issues with baby including time spent in the NICU
Experience with PMADs
Discord with partner and/or other relationships
Breastfeeding issues
Identity and/or body image issues
Grief and loss issues
In addition to working one-on-one, I hold space for the complexity of the transition to motherhood in my Postpartum Support Circle at WMN Space in Culver City. What differentiates Life After Birth™ from other mom groups? What I created is a process-oriented postpartum support circle that tends to the emotional and social needs of mothers. It is like a counterpart to mommy & me classes, which are typically more didactic in nature and focus on the baby—their development, sleeping and feeding schedules, etc. New moms hit the ground running and don’t often take the time to process all that has occurred leading up to becoming a mother. My circle is for any mom who is in the throes of Matrescence with a the desire to have honest, non-judgmental conversations about motherhood. (Matrescence is the psychological birth of a mother, similar to adolescence, involving hormonal and identify shifting. The term was made popular by reproductive psychiatrist, Alexandra Sacks, MD.) A woman could also benefit from my circle if she has had some type of challenge or trauma with conception, pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, postpartum transition, or a combination of the aforementioned journeys which may or may not result in a PMADs. There are fellow psychotherapists and other types of healers who attend my circle, which help deepen the discussions.
A dissonance often occurs between a woman’s fantasy of motherhood and their lived reality of it. Then mothers can feel like they are the only ones struggling and as though everyone else has it all together. The moms who work with me realize that they are not alone in their thoughts and their feelings, and they walk away with a fuller cup so that they are better able to give to their families. Those who attend my postpartum support circle in particular have more of a sense of community and connection among fellow mothers—an invisible thread that links them together.
I am most proud of witnessing the growth of new mothers that I help guide through this exquisitely transformational time. It is incredible how much better they feel when they are heard and seen and are given proper resources. The ingredients are pretty simple and yet so powerful.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I was fortunate to meet Paula Mallis, founder of WMN Space when I was pregnant. I went to her Maiden to Mother circle and took some of her Kundalini prenatal yoga classes when she still worked out of her home in Venice. At that time, she was gestating WMN Space. I had always dreamed of being part of a women’s wellness center and told her I would love to work at her facility in some capacity after I had my daughter. (Unbeknownst to me, becoming a mother would lead me to my life’s work.) When I was more or less ready to go back to work after maternity leave in late 2017, I reached out to Paula and told her about my idea for a postpartum support circle. She wholeheartedly embraced it and has been supportive of Life After Birth™ ever since. Paula continues to champion and promote the work that I do, and WMN Space itself contributes to the alchemy of my circle. I feel eternally grateful to have crossed paths with her. Without this synchronicity, my business would not be thriving the way it is today.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mollynourmand.com
- Phone: 323-786-3029
- Email: molly@mollynourmand.com
- Instagram: @lifeafterbirth_la
Image Credit:
WMN Space
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