Kyle Holmes on Loss, Fatherhood, and Postpartum Mental Health

In the weeks leading up to his wife’s death, Kyle Holmes thought things were finally turning a corner.

They were talking about future plans again. She seemed lighter. Mother’s Day had gone well. After months of hospital visits, therapy appointments, obsessive fears, and constant reassurance-seeking, it finally felt like some of the weight had lifted.

Then, while Kyle was at work one day, his wife died by suicide after struggling with postpartum depression and what he believes was postpartum OCD.

Now, nearly a year later, Kyle is sharing their story during Maternal Mental Health Month in hopes that more families recognize how serious postpartum mental health conditions can become, especially when someone appears outwardly okay.

Running Had Always Been Kyle’s Reset

Long before tragedy entered his life, running had already become one of Kyle’s biggest coping tools.

Around 2018, he suffered a serious concussion while playing rugby. His wife encouraged him to stop playing contact sports, and running gradually replaced that part of his life. What began as shorter races and casual training slowly evolved into marathon running.

He had always enjoyed running. His family regularly participated in turkey trots together, and he’d done plenty of local 5Ks over the years. But distance running gave him something different mentally.

“It’s almost like active meditation for me,” Kyle said. “You’re able to tune out the world and get in the zone for a little bit.”

He especially loves running while traveling, using runs as a way to experience new cities and clear his mind at the same time.

Years later, running would become one of the few places where he could still feel grounded after losing his wife.

A Birth Experience That Changed Everything

Kyle and his wife welcomed a healthy baby girl in 2024. Physically, the delivery was extremely difficult.

The hospital was overcrowded, and they spent labor in a cramped side room filled with equipment. Their daughter was positioned face-up during delivery, which complicated labor significantly. Eventually, the doctor recommended a vacuum-assisted delivery, and afterward Kyle’s wife suffered a severe fourth-degree tear.

Doctors repeatedly told her she was healing remarkably well physically. But emotionally, she struggled almost immediately with feelings of failure surrounding the birth.

“She felt like she didn’t do it the right way,” Kyle said.

Even though their daughter was healthy and thriving, Kyle’s wife became consumed by guilt over the delivery and the decisions made during labor. She kept replaying everything in her mind, convinced she had made a terrible mistake.

Kyle said one of the hardest parts was watching her intelligence turn against her.

“One of the things she valued most about herself was that she was so intelligent,” he explained. “That kind of worked against itself in the end.”

She became trapped in cycles of researching complications, reading online forums, and catastrophizing normal recovery symptoms.

Kyle believes part of what made his wife’s struggle so complicated was how deeply empathetic she was. She cared intensely about other people, especially other women and the ways women’s pain is often minimized or dismissed within healthcare systems. As she spiraled deeper into postpartum depression and obsessive thinking, she absorbed countless stories from other women online and carried their fear and trauma alongside her own. Kyle feels like she internalized those experiences completely.

She wasn’t only grieving her own birth experience and recovery. She was grieving for every woman who felt unheard, unsupported, or forced to sacrifice their own well-being in the process of becoming a mother.

When Fear and Guilt Took Over

For the first couple of months after birth, Kyle’s wife focused heavily on recovering physically. Then her mental health began declining more rapidly.

Kyle believes she likely developed postpartum OCD alongside postpartum depression. She repeated the same fears constantly throughout the day, especially one phrase:

“Kyle, I made the wrong decision.”

Hours were spent scrolling through support groups and medical articles online. If doctors reassured her that one concern was unfounded, another fear quickly replaced it.

“She almost couldn’t pair reality with how she felt,” Kyle said.

At one point, she became fixated on information she had read about lifting restrictions during postpartum recovery. She interpreted it so literally that she stopped picking up or holding their baby altogether because she feared causing additional damage to her body.

For several months, she avoided holding her daughter almost entirely.

Kyle believes guilt became central to everything she experienced. She no longer felt deserving of being a good mother or having a happy life. Slowly, her world became smaller and smaller as fear, shame, and obsessive thoughts took over her daily life.

Trying to Find Help

Kyle knew something was seriously wrong. He arranged therapy appointments, attended doctor visits with her, and brought her to the hospital multiple times.

Still, getting help became incredibly complicated.

“She really only wanted people to confirm the fears she already had,” Kyle said.

When therapists reassured her or challenged the catastrophic beliefs she held about herself and her recovery, she often stopped seeing them after only one or two sessions.

The hardest part for Kyle now is knowing how much she hid toward the end.

He believes she became afraid of being hospitalized, so she started pretending she was doing better. Looking back, he can see how carefully she masked what she was really experiencing.

“She put up a facade,” he said.

At the time, though, it genuinely seemed like things were improving.

That false sense of hope made what happened next even more devastating.

Learning to Parent Through Grief

Immediately after his wife’s death, Kyle didn’t really have the opportunity to stop and process what had happened. He was suddenly raising a 10-month-old daughter on his own.

“When you have a baby that age, it’s nonstop,” he said. “You can’t really pause.”

Survival mode carried him through those early months. Thankfully, he had strong support nearby. His daughter’s grandparents, aunt, and cousins all stepped in to help, giving him occasional time to catch up on basic responsibilities or simply go for a run.

Over time, he and his daughter slowly settled into routines that allowed both of them to function and heal.

Now that she’s older, Kyle says he finally has more space to focus on his own mental health too.

The loneliness, though, is something he still struggles to explain.

Right after a death, people constantly check in. Eventually, those messages stop. Life continues for everyone else while grief quietly remains.

“There’s something inherently lonely about it,” Kyle said. “You feel disconnected from everybody else.”

Finding Himself Again Through Running

In the immediate aftermath of losing his wife, Kyle kept running simply because he needed somewhere to go. He would drop his daughter off with family members and head out for an hour just to breathe.

Then, several months later, he stopped running entirely.

The combination of grief, winter, exhaustion, and emotional burnout caught up with him around the six-month mark after her death.

Signing up for the New York City Marathon with Team Still I Run became one of the first things that helped pull him back out of that low point.

Kyle had already completed six marathons before, but this one felt different. Training again reminded him that he was still allowed to exist outside of grief and parenthood.

“It felt like a small victory,” he said. “Like something my old self would do.”

When searching through NYC Marathon charity partners, he specifically looked for a mental health organization because he wanted his training and fundraising to carry deeper meaning.

That search led him to Still I Run.

Why Asking for Help Matters

One thing Kyle has learned as a single parent is how difficult, and necessary, it is to ask for help.

Marathon training requires childcare, scheduling, and relying on other people regularly. For him, that process has become part of healing too.

“The whole process kind of forces you to ask for help,” he said.

It has also helped him reconnect with parts of his identity that existed before loss completely reshaped his life.

“It’s important for single parents to achieve something that isn’t being a parent,” he explained. “You can lose yourself in it.”

This year’s NYC Marathon will also carry emotional significance because his daughter will be there to watch him. The last time he ran the race was in 2023, before she was born.

Why These Conversations Matter

Kyle hopes sharing his wife’s story encourages more honest conversations around maternal mental health and postpartum conditions.

Postpartum depression and postpartum OCD can be incredibly isolating, especially when someone feels trapped inside obsessive thoughts, guilt, fear, or shame. From the outside, families may appear okay. Internally, things can be unraveling quickly.

Maternal Mental Health Month exists to remind families that mental health support during and after pregnancy matters just as much as physical recovery.

Kyle also hopes other partners understand how complicated these situations can be. Even when someone is surrounded by love, support, appointments, and reassurance, mental illness can still distort reality in devastating ways.

By speaking openly now, he hopes more families recognize warning signs earlier, seek support sooner, and understand they are not alone in what they are carrying.