Build Your Village
Move Beyond Self-Care to Community Care
with Divya Kumar, LICSW, ScM, PMH-C
Therapist and author Divya Kumar joins us to unpack where our ideas of what a ‘good mother’ looks like actually come from — and why so many of us are quietly exhausted trying to live up to them.
We talk about how families and cultures hand down these narratives, why standard self-care advice so often falls short, and what community care can look like in real, day-to-day life.
Divya offers a grounded path for parents who feel isolated: how to start building a village when you don’t have one, how to make asking for help feel normal again, and what larger structural support parents actually need. If you’ve ever felt like you’re carrying too much alone, this conversation is for you.
Divya Kumar is a South Asian-American psychotherapist specializing in perinatal mental health, trauma, and the transitions surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. Drawing on a public health background, she focuses on how race, culture, and immigration shape the journey into parenthood, and works especially with clients of color and first- and second-generation immigrants.
She holds an MS from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, an MSW from Simmons University, and a PMH-C certification from Postpartum Support International. She’s a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in Massachusetts.
Divya co-founded the Perinatal Mental Health Alliance for People of Color with fellow therapists Desiree Israel and Jabina Coleman; the Alliance later merged with Postpartum Support International.