Motherhood Made Me Start Over

For the women carrying complicated feelings this Mother’s Day.

This is my first Mother’s Day as a divorced single mom.

And to be honest, I thought it would hurt more than it did.

I thought I’d spend the entire day grieving the life I imagined for myself.
The marriage I thought would last.
The version of motherhood I thought I’d experience.
The rainbow babies I prayed desperately for after so much loss.

I never imagined being a divorced woman at 34 would be part of my story.
And for a while, I carried so much shame around that.

I thought that being a “good mother” was the woman who could hold everything together no matter how much it cost her.

I thought if I carried the heaviness quietly enough, maybe everyone else around me could still feel whole.

But the days leading up to Mother’s Day, I let myself feel deeply.
Not just the grief. But the gratitude too.

The gratitude for how motherhood has changed me.

The gratitude that even through heartbreak, disappointment, rebuilding, exhaustion, and all the ways life did not go according to plan… motherhood softened me.

It cracked me open in the most painful and beautiful ways;
and has forced me to learn how to mother myself too.

To tend to the parts of me I neglected for years.
The anxious parts.
The exhausted parts.
The grieving parts.

The little girl in me that learned how to survive long before she ever learned how to rest.

Lately, I have had to slowly tend myself back to care.
And it doesn’t look as glamorous.

Sometimes it looked like crying after putting my boys to sleep.
Sometimes it looked like sitting in silence trying to remember
who I was outside of survival mode.
Sometimes it looked like asking for help instead of pretending I am doing okay.
Sometimes it looked like recognizing how much pain and trauma I normalized simply because I survived it.

But this past week, I invested in my joy.
I finally took the naps my body has been craving.
I got some much needed mommy solo time.
We did our annual photoshoot.
My boys and I got donuts and went to the beach.

First Beach Trip 2026

And while watching them run toward the water with sandy little feet and joy untouched by adult pain, I realized something:

We are okay.
More than okay.

There is softness in our home.
There is laughter here.
There is peace here.

And I honestly never thought I would find peace after all of this.

I spent so much time fearing the loss of my marriage that I never stopped to ask myself what it was costing me to stay disconnected from who I was becoming.

Now my children get a mother who can breathe again.
A mother who laughs more freely.
A mother who is still healing, but no longer losing herself in the process.

And that’s the part I want other women to hear today:

Sometimes the most loving thing a mother can do
is save herself too.

Because while I’ve been busy raising my boys, they’ve also been healing me.

Healing the parts of me that forgot how to rest, how to have fun.
Healing the woman in me who thought love had to feel heavy to be real.
Healing the version of me that kept silent just to keep the peace.

Mothering my children has been healing me too.

And today, I’m thinking about every woman carrying complicated feelings around motherhood.

The single mothers rebuilding quietly.
The women grieving miscarriages, baby losses, or children they never got to hold long enough.
The daughters carrying complicated relationships with their mothers.
The women spending today missing their mom deeply.
The mothers silently wondering if they are enough.
The women longing to become mothers one day.

I know holidays like Mother’s Day can hold both grief and gratitude.
And that is okay.

Maybe today all you need is to buy yourself flowers.
Open the windows.
Play music that makes you feel held.
Take yourself out for something warm.
Sit still long enough to notice how much you’ve survived.

Maybe today is about honoring the ways motherhood has changed you.
How it’s softened you.
Strengthened you.
Saved you.

Or maybe it’s about honoring the women who mothered you back to life when you were falling apart.

The friends who checked on you.
The women who reminded you who you were when shame tried to erase you.
The sisterhood that carried you when you could barely carry yourself.

This year, I’m embracing that motherhood is not about perfection.

It’s repairing.
It’s trying again.
It’s loving gently after life has been rough with you.

And maybe healing does not always arrive looking like the life we imagined.

Maybe sometimes healing arrives looking like tiny hands reaching for yours.
Like hearing “mama” from the next room.
Like realizing peace feels unfamiliar simply because chaos lasted so long.

This Mother’s Day, I’m no longer measuring my life by what ended.
I’m measuring it by the softness that is here now.

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