Maren Morris says she struggled to work after giving birth due to postpartum depression

Maren Morris has been open about her struggle with postpartum depression since welcoming her son in 2020, but now she’s opening up even more, especially about how it affected her ability to work in the months following her “traumatic” C-section.

During an appearance on The Howard Stern Show in 2023, Morris explained that her new short haircut was the result of a recent decision to “cut all the trauma out of her hair.”

When Stern asked what trauma she was talking about, Morris noted that it was her first time seeing him since before she gave birth to her now-3-year-old son, Hayes.

“I think I was just starting to make very little sense to myself and to people around me,” Morris said about the depression she’s experienced since then. “I felt useless in the way of I couldn’t work. I couldn’t tour. Everything got canceled.”

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She continued, “It’s a tough one when you’ve done something for so long to not think that that’s you, even though you love it and it makes you a living, that’s not who you are. So separating those things was helpful, getting on Zoloft was also really cool.”

Stern asked if medication helped lift Morris out of her PPD, and she said it did.

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“It’s like you’re living in the negative, the red, for a long time without realizing it. That your supply is so depleted of just serotonin, dopamine and a lot of that is just chemical,” she explained. “And having the baby — and I had an emergency C-section — there were just a lot of things that didn’t go to plan, but everyone’s OK, everyone’s healthy. But the other side of that, which I’ve been vocal about, is that it’s a lot on the mom and you love your baby, and you’re obsessed with your baby, but oh my God your body has been through a violent thing and of course you’re going to be affected emotionally, hormonally by it afterwards.”

The most important thing is that she got help — and her new haircut looks amazing. Here’s to a fresh start.

A version of this story was originally published on Dec. 18, 2023. It has been updated.