Keke Palmer on being ‘forever postpartum’ and the mom community helping her navigate motherhood
TheGrio...
Keke Palmer tells theGrio why her community of mothers has become essential to navigating the complicated realities of parenting.
Before Keke Palmer became a mom, she was focused on the fun part: the excitement of pregnancy and the countdown to meeting her baby. The worries came later.
“Initially, I didn’t have many fears,” Palmer told theGrio exclusively. “But then after you have them, all this other stuff starts coming up, where you’re either learning about things online or you’re hearing things in the news… It’s like, were my ears just not on? Or was I just not concerned because I wasn’t a mother?”
Constantly worrying about her son’s physical and mental well-being and more, Palmer noted how terrifying it can be. Many new parents know that feeling, when the world suddenly seems full of risks you never noticed before. For Palmer, whose son Leodis is now 3, those questions haven’t gone away as he’s gotten older. They’ve just changed. And that kind of constant worry is part of what can make the postpartum period so hard on a mother’s mental health, long after the newborn stage ends.
Palmer admits she didn’t fully understand postpartum at first. What she’d heard came in extremes, “dramatic tales, like a daytime soap opera,” though it is some women’s reality is not always the case for every mom. Now she understands it differently.
“Postpartum is actually not something that really ever ends,” she said. “The symptoms can dial down, but… you’re kind of forever postpartum.” To take care of herself, she relies on therapy, prayer, and, most of all, her people. “I need my whole community to be a part of helping me through this. I think all moms do, and I feel very rich in the fact that I have a big community.”
She’s especially found that space amongst other moms at her son’s school. Coming from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, Palmer explains how the collective of “incredible women” has become her support system.
“They’ve made my life so full because so much for so many years, girl. My life has been just entertainment. I’ve only been operating in that main way, you know, in those expectations that come. It would be like your life just being, which I bet a lot of people can relate to when they hear this, work and home. You can’t do that,” she shared. “So spending time with these moms, it opened up my ability to get out what it feels to be a mom outside of just being a mother to my son.”
Palmer specifically noted how one Middle Eastern mom in the group, opening up about her concerns about her kids possibly experiencing the same discrimination and bullying she once experienced as a child, helped create a safe space for her to address her concerns about Leodis being the only Black child in the school. The conversation hit home for Palmer, who was also the only Black student in her class as a child. Her parents chose that school for the education, and she understands why, but she also remembers how hard it was to explain to them what it felt like socially. Now, as a parent, she’s asking herself the question she wishes adults had asked back then.
“Just having another mother, her experience is still unique to her, but there’s a universal specificity around trauma of ours triggering what our child’s experience is,” she explained. “As a parent, you don’t know how much of it is your stuff and how much of it is actually your kids’ stuff. So just to like have that conversation with her…you only want to get that if you are with some other moms…and have that support system to even have those kinds of conversations.”
Just as her mom group has helped her navigate different parts of motherhood, Palmer is committed to using her platform to do the same for other moms who may not have the same community. The mother and actress recently partnered with Sanofi to educate families about the importance of protection against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a serious lung infection that 2 out of 3 babies experience by the time they turn 1.
“RSV is unpredictable, and it’s difficult to know which babies may become seriously ill, that’s why it’s important for parents to have conversations with their baby’s doctor about RSV protection before or during the RSV season,” said Ayman Chit, Head of North America Medical, Vaccines at Sanofi. “BEYFORTUS delivers ready-made antibodies, helping to provide rapid protection against serious RSV lung infection for 5 months, the typical length of an RSV season. More than 11 million parents in the US have chosen BEYFORTUS for their baby, and by partnering with Keke Palmer, we’re encouraging more families to learn about RSV prevention and talk with their baby’s doctor about BEYFORTUS.”
“I don’t believe in scaring moms,” she said, encouraging parents to talk to their children’s pediatrician about RSV. “But I am in the business of informing moms and making sure they have all the information they can to make the best decision for the baby.”
Community is also central to what Palmer is building professionally. Her wellness platform “Practice by Palmer” started with Pilates and workout and has since blossomed to be a gathering place with monthly livestreams, in-person classes, and “walk and talks” that feature audio essays from Palmer and readings of other writers’ Substacks that people can listen to on a hike or a treadmill.
“At the core, it’s really community. That’s really what it’s about,” she shared. “And it’s a safe space, aside from the wellness piece, what really also made me want to [create this] was that the internet sometimes can be such an unsafe place. It gets to the point where we can’t talk about anything nuanced without somebody judging, criticizing, or hating. This is a place where people can come, and they can have conversations, bring something that is unique to the table, and not feel fear that somebody is going to attack us for having a unique opinion or just wanting to explore a concept or an idea.”
“That’s just how I was raised, to believe in community in that way.” Palmer continued reflecting on her work from Practice by Palmer to her eponymous podcast. “It gets to a point where it’s like it’s not all about me. It can’t be all about me. It shouldn’t be all about me, and it shouldn’t end with me.”