We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Martha Brookley. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Martha below.

Martha, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear stories from your time in school/training/etc.

My primary field of work was Education. I began my secondary education at the University of South Florida where I earned a Bachelor in Secondary Social Science Education with a Minor in English as a Second Language in 2010. In 2016, I became TESOL language certified at the University of South Carolina. Other than this formal education, I have found that professional add-on certifications have been really helpful in my education journey. I’ve become certified in everything from CPR to car seat technician, baby-safe sleep advocate, and babywearing educator. Certifications allow you to take courses exactly what you need for your career with minimal cost. In the future, I hope to become a certified maternal mental health support worker and a breastfeeding mentor.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Martha Brookley, and I am a baby safety volunteer at Mothers Helping Mothers nonprofit (www.mhmsarasota.com). At MHM, I do all things baby safety, from car seat safety to baby-safe sleep advice and babywearing info. Anything that involves a baby, I can do! On our open shopping days I can usually be found assembling baby equipment, teaching moms how to use a baby carrier, translating Spanish, or cuddling client babies while moms shop our free store.

Our nonprofit is primarily a free store for moms, so I am the person who takes in all the used and new baby gear and certifies it is safe for our clients to use. In addition to this, I also run the cloth diaper bank, menstrual cup program, Hurricane Ian grant distribution, and this year began work on our new CARES program.

While we do offer plenty of free items to moms in need in our community we also hope to provide a lifeline to families struggling financially and mentally in this economy. We are launching CARES this year to help connect moms in need to education and community in order to better prepare them for the future! We will be launching this program in 2024 and hope to have it fully up and running soon! We will offer financial planning courses, educational opportunities, online community thru our free facebook group (MHM Sarasota Helping Hands), mental health resources/support and connection to local nonprofits through the united way care portal.

I am so excited to see what this year will bring and privileged to be able to volunteer for such a wonderful organization.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2016 I gave birth to my son Remy. When pregnant, I had envisioned a perfect birth and leaving the hospital with a healthy new bundle of joy but unfortunately, that was simply not the case for us. While the birth of my son was indeed a blessing, it also involved a huge amount of pain and heartache. My birth ended in severe complications and a hospital stay for both myself and my son. Leaving the hospital with a baby in the NICU was a pain I could have never anticipated. Our stay was short but the impact was lasting. We got through it, and eventually, my son came home no worse for wear, but I couldn’t say the same for me. While the physical wounds healed, I was left unprepared for the mental toll that the whole ordeal had taken on me. My loving husband did the best to care for both his broken wife and colicky baby while also going to work for us every day. While he was at work every day I struggled to cope and eventually found myself in a permanent state of panic, anger and discontent. I would go through the motions of feeding, burping, and changing but never fully connected with my son. I could look at him smiling at me or laughing in his bouncer and knew I should feel…something…but it just wasn’t there. I recorded videos of how happy we were and sent them to friends and relatives to convince them we were ok. Yet I found myself slipping into a deep, dark depression and finally totally disconnected from the world. One day I woke up and simply did not want to be here anymore. I wanted it to end, all of it just to be over. That day I had a follow-up appointment with my son’s pediatrician. I called to cancel the appointment, and when the receptionist picked up the phone and asked me why I was cancelling, I simply broke down. I couldn’t understand why this was happening to me, why I felt this way or rather didn’t feel any sort of way. The receptionist connected me to a doctor who got me on the right path to treating what I now know was severe Postpartum depression and anxiety. The whole first year of my son’s life is still a blur. I blocked most of it out mentally and moved on but I still long to have those days, weeks, and months of his life back. All we can do is keep going. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, we must keep going. Seven years old now, my son Remy is a caring, thoughtful, and curious little guy, and I am so happy I kept going for him. Check-in on your friends and loved ones with babies. A text or a call could be the one thing that keeps them from sinking.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

Looking back, my educational journey was somewhat of an odd one. While I do have plenty of certifications in education, I am using absolutely none of them currently and have never felt so successful. That being said, I wouldn’t say it was a waste. Getting my education certification allowed me to teach English as a second language for 8 years and opened the door to the nonprofit world for me. I realized as a teacher that my passion was helping. While teaching English was great, I was more concerned that my students were fed and had coats than that they had the ability to pass a standardized test. I got into disagreements with administration when I handed out free tampons and school supplies instead of cramming for tests. If I could go back, I would have gotten a degree in social work instead of education. I much prefer helping people to reading textbooks and fiiling grades. Life is about how you make the world a better place. As long as I am leaving the world better than I came into it, then I could see my life as successful. It’s not the most lucrative viewpoint, and this nonprofit gig certainly doesn’t pad our bank account but it does help me sleep at night. You can’t buy happiness, but you can sure volunteer for it!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mhmsarasota.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHMSarasota
• Other: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mhmhelpinghands

Image Credits
Mothers Helping Mothers