Actress Gina Rodriguez, best known for playing the titular character in Jane the Virgin, has thrown herself into a new role in recent years: motherhood. First she and husband Joe LoCicero had their son, Charlie, now 3, and then came daughter Lucy just seven months ago.

The shift to mom has taken some getting used to. Largely because Rodriguez held the belief that parenting was something she had to master alone.

After Charlie had to spend his early days in the NICU, for example, “when I finally was able to hold him, I was like, ‘I’m never letting you go.’ And I didn’t, to my detriment. I didn’t know how to ask for help. I felt guilty asking for help.”

She learned how to by the time Lucy was born because “I knew that if I didn’t ask for help, I was going to drown,” Rodriguez says. It was especially true that second time around, when her son had croup right after Lucy’s birth, and the new mom of two went through postpartum depression and anxiety.

“I was like, I need to talk to mothers,” she says. “I need to understand what’s going on in my brain. Why is this happening? Am I alone? Why do I feel so much guilt? Why do I feel rage?”

She found solace in the support she received from her sisters, in-laws, and the kids’ godparents — as well as from her own dad and mom, “a great mother,” who was always “present,” and whom Rodriguez had idolized as a woman who effortlessly did it all.

It took the actress’s own early-parenting struggles to find out the comforting truth.

“My son was still breastfeeding after I gave birth and I was tandem breastfeeding. Bad idea,” she says. “Some women can do it. Get it, girl! I was falling apart, and I felt rage.”

That’s when her mother admitted to feeling the same near the end of her nearly three-year run breastfeeding baby Gina.

“‘You were almost 3, still breastfeeding, and I was like, ‘get off of me,’” she says her mother shared. “She was like, ‘I’ll never forget, we were in Target, and you were like, ‘Mama, nurse!’ … And she was like, ‘Enough. No more! You get away from me, little one.’ She’s like, ‘I was falling apart.’” Her mom’s truth, along with her assembled community of support, Rodriguez says, “kept me standing. Because I was debilitated.”

Understanding the value in having a postpartum village is why she’s chosen to partner with Philips Advent on its new effort to link new moms with community. Share the Care Connector is an SMS-based support tool that came out of a company survey, done in partnership with the March of Dimes, which found that while nine in 10 people are willing to give new parents help, 62 percent of moms find it difficult to ask for it. As a result, they often struggle with isolation and decision fatigue in the postpartum period. The free text-messaging tool helps new moms connect with friends and family and ask for help with everything from meals to emotional support.

“This partnership helps you create a village,” Rodriguez says, calling the tool “revolutionary” in fostering a culture that uplifts moms.

“When moms are protected, supported, everybody benefits,” she says. “When you support a mother, a child has a more emotionally regulated experience. They become a better human being. They go out into the world, they do better for the world, and the world is a better place to be.”