Parenthood Support

When parenting doesn’t feel the way you thought it would.
Just the ongoing, exhausting work of doing everything — and wondering where you went in the process.

There’s no right way to feel in parenthood. Therapy can support you at any stage—whether you’re:

  • Flat lay of baby essentials, symbolizing the early stages of parenthood and the emotional weight that can come with starting a family.

    Wondering If Parenthood Is Right for You

    You're not sure if you want kids—or maybe you're facing fertility questions, pressure from others, or uncertainty about what a future with children could look like. Therapy gives you space to sort through it with honesty and care.

  • Smiling parents sitting with their baby at home, reflecting the emotional connection and complexity of early parenthood.

    New to This Role

    Maybe you're postpartum and unrecognizable to yourself. Maybe you're adjusting to adoption or a major shift in identity. Whether joyful, ambivalent, or completely undone, your feelings are valid—and worth exploring.

  • Trying to Hold It All Together

    You're doing everything for everyone—and losing sight of yourself in the process. From mental load burnout to emotional disconnection, therapy can help you reconnect to what matters (and who you are outside of being "the strong one").

  • Parenting Through Complexity

    You’re navigating a nontraditional path—fertility treatments, surrogacy, step-parenting, or parenting with trauma in your past. We offer therapy that honors the messiness and makes room for your full story.

What We Help With

Parenthood can sometimes feel more like crisis management than connection.
You’re “on” all the time. Scanning for what might go wrong. Holding everything together. Wondering if you're doing enough—even when you're doing everything.

We help clients navigate:

  • Postpartum anxiety and high-functioning hypervigilance

  • Intrusive thoughts, fear-based decision making, and emotional overload

  • Mental load and emotional labor that make it hard to rest

  • Guilt around asking for help or needing space

  • Identity loss after becoming a parent

  • Relationship strain related to caregiving roles and expectations

  • Ambivalence about becoming a parent 

  • Parenting with a partner who isn’t aligned

  • Fertility challenges, grief around parenting, or nontraditional family paths

At Hearten Therapy, we offer therapy for parents that meets you in the middle of the chaos—when caregiving feels relentless, identity feels blurry, and rest feels out of reach. Even if no one else sees the cracks, we’re here for what it’s costing you to hold it all together.

How Therapy Helps

This isn’t checklist therapy. It’s space to say what you’re actually feeling—and hear it reflected back without shame.

We help you:

  • Validate what’s real – Yes, it has a name. Postpartum anxiety, caregiver burnout, and identity loss are real—and you don’t have to pretend they’re not.

  • Untangle fear from truth – We help you notice the patterns that keep you stuck in overfunctioning or shutdown, and gently shift them.

  • Reclaim your voice – Whether that means communicating your needs, redefining your role, or simply asking for help without guilt.

  • Redistribute the mental and emotional labor – So you can stop doing everything before anyone even notices.

Because you shouldn’t have to carry all of this—and process it alone.

Who We Work With

We work with adults across Illinois who are looking for:

  • Parents of all genders, roles, and family structures

  • LGBTQ+ and BIPOC parents seeking culturally responsive care

  • New parents navigating postpartum mental health concerns

  • Stay-at-home parents, working caregivers, and those trying to do both

  • Individuals exploring parenthood, ambivalence, or fertility challenges

  • Couples in which one partner wants kids and the other isn’t sure

At Hearten, therapy for parents—and those considering parenthood—is relational, inclusive, and attuned to the emotional weight that caregiving can carry.

Virtual therapy available throughout Illinois — because you deserve space to process what this season is asking of you.

We also offer specialized perinatal therapy for those navigating the emotional landscape of pregnancy, postpartum, and early parenthood.

Whether you're feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, uncertain about becoming a parent, or carrying grief around fertility, our therapists are trained to support you through it—with care that goes deeper than symptom checklists and speaks to the whole experience.

Let’s talk about what support could look like for you.