Becoming a mother changes so much. Your body, your relationships, your priorities, your identity, and sometimes even your sense of who you are. And somehow, you’re expected to adjust to all of it while caring for another human being around the clock. Motherhood can bring so much joy. You can be completely in love with your baby and deeply grateful for your family. And you can also miss who you used to be. You can feel touched out, anxious, angry, lonely, overwhelmed, or completely unlike yourself. You can lie awake worrying when you desperately need sleep. You can feel resentment toward the people you love most. You can wonder why something you wanted so badly feels so much harder than you thought it would. And then you can feel guilty for feeling any of it - that’s the part of motherhood that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Some women know right away that they’re struggling. For others, it’s much less obvious. Maybe you’re functioning. You’re feeding the baby, answering texts, getting everyone where they need to go. From the outside, you might even look completely fine. But inside, you don’t quite feel like yourself. Maybe you’re more anxious than you used to be. More irritable. More overwhelmed by things that never bothered you before. Maybe your relationship feels different. Your body feels unfamiliar. Or you find yourself wondering: Is motherhood supposed to feel this hard?
There is no threshold you have to reach before you’re allowed to ask for help.
Struggling doesn’t mean you aren’t grateful. It doesn’t mean you don’t love your child enough. It doesn’t mean you’re doing motherhood wrong. What I know is how much it matters to have a place where you can be honest about it all—the love, the anxiety, the anger, the guilt, the loneliness, the identity shifts, and everything that might feel hard to say out loud.
I’m a mother too, and becoming one gave me a deep respect for just how enormous this transition can be. But my experience isn’t yours. And yours isn’t the next mother’s. There is no single way to struggle in motherhood, just as there is no single way to experience it.
I try to create this kind of open, curious space in my work with mothers. You don’t need to come to therapy knowing exactly what’s wrong or what you need. You don’t have to be in crisis. And you definitely don’t need to have it all together. We can start with where you are. Sometimes you simply need a place where you don’t have to hold everything together. A place where someone is thinking about you, too. Because you matter in this transition, too. Not just as a mother, but as a person.
Schedule an intake call with me to get started.
