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The postpartum period can look normal from the outside while it feels like a full-body emergency on the inside. After the headlines around the Lindsay Clancy case, I wanted a real conversation about what postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety can actually feel like, why people minimize it, and how fast a new parent can lose their sense of self.
Claude Racine joins me with raw honesty. She’s a former professional dancer and choreographer turned wellness advocate, and she describes going from relentless hustle and “I don’t need help” independence to panic, grief, and intrusive thoughts just days after giving birth. We talk about the pressure to perform motherhood, the reality of breastfeeding stress and sleep deprivation, and the hardest truth: when you’re scared of your own mind, “you’ll be fine” is not support. Claude explains what she needed most from loved ones, what partners often miss, and why acknowledgement and steady presence matter more than perfect advice.
Claude was diagnosed with Hashimoto's. Working with a
functional nutritionist, she reversed the autoimmune disease, lost 35 pounds, and felt like herself again. That experience lit a fire in her — she got certified in
functional nutrition and built a practice helping over 1,000 women lose weight, reverse chronic illness, and come off psych meds.
But three years in, Claude noticed the thing she built to help women was quietly costing her the two relationships she cared about most: her marriage and her presence as a mom. So in February 2024, she closed her business. Not because it wasn't working — but because she realized her power was better spent as a wife and mother than as a founder.
We also get into the gut brain connection, inflammation, and how her health journey uncovered autoimmune issues that changed her recovery plan. From there, Claude shares the second arc many caregivers recognize: swapping pain for productivity, chasing success as a coping strategy, and then deciding to rebuild life around being present as a mom and a wife. You can find her at “Glow Up with Claude,” and she and her husband create relatable marriage and parenting content as “the Velinskys” on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
@thevalinskys
@glowupwithclaude and @scientologylv for anyone curious or wanting to know more about Scientology!
These days, you'll find Claude volunteering at her church, creating funny (and
hopefully relatable) content with her husband about marriage and parenthood, and choreographing alongside him for work. Her mission now isn't just about impact in
one area of her life — it's about showing up fully in all of them: as a wife, a mom, a creator, and a woman who finally gave herself permission to slow down.
If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with a new parent, and leave a review so more families find real postpartum mental health support. What’s one thing you wish people understood about postpartum?
ABOUT MICHAEL MACKNIAK
Michael Mackniak is an attorney, author, speaker and creator of the Guardian Model. For more than 30 years, his work has focused on mental illness, caregiving, care coordination and what happens when real families collide with systems that don't always work the way they're supposed to.
READ MORE FROM MICHAEL
Essays, stories, observations and occasional evidence that I'm still a work in progress:
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-mackniak/
Substack
https://substack.com/@michaelmackniak
Medium
https://medium.com/@mwmackniak
BOOKS BY MICHAEL MACKNIAK
Saving Melissa: 7Cs to Cure the Mental Health System
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0997421401
Character: Become the Person Your Social Media “Friends” Already Think You Are
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1790810612?lv=shuf&utm_source=chatgpt.com&channelId=480&plpRedirect=mhFallback
Download the episode companion to this and other episodes here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hPXaKMrs3yrLEP2g7l1HIRH3hz65tK1g
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