Leaning In, Burning Out, & Losing Me: The Motherhood Tug-of-War
A mother’s response to “Moms Are the Worst” (yay a rebuttal!)
Between the Wines is free—like a book club, but with more chaos. Paid subscriptions keep it going and support my writing. If you’re enjoying these essays, please consider upgrading. Cheers! 🍷
A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay called Moms Are the Worst. It was messy and honest and mildly offensive. And it struck a nerve.
To my surprise and delight, the piece sparked a tidal wave of responses—DMs, emails, long voice notes. Women told me about losing themselves, finding themselves, resenting their children, resenting their friends, trying desperately to hold onto pieces of their identity. It was emotional. It was complicated. It was everything I hope this newsletter can be.
So when a friend sent me this essay—written from the other side of the motherhood mirror—I knew I wanted to share it. It’s not a rebuttal, exactly. It’s more of a beautiful complication. A yes-and. Her story is raw and real and brave in its own way, and I’m so grateful she’s allowing me to share it here.
It means the world to me when people don’t just read my work, but engage with it. Disagree with it. Expand it. That’s the whole point. Human connection, vulnerability, and (ideally) one glass of wine too many.
Let’s keep the conversation going. There’s no right way to do any of this—but talking about it makes it a little less lonely.
xx, bb
On paper, I have everything. Two beautiful, healthy kids. A genuine partner who does the heavy lifting with me. A life that looks suspiciously like a Nancy Meyers set. And yet — I feel like I’ve lost myself.
I’m writing this because I wish someone had said it out loud to me sooner. (Perhaps they did and it didn’t register because I wasn’t there yet.) Maybe you’re reading this on your phone while hiding in the bathroom. Or on your commute, wondering what the hell you’re doing. I see you.
Having kids rips you to shreds. The truth of the matter is that for a period of time it simply doesn’t matter what you like, what you think, what you feel, who you think you are—you are mom. Full stop. Fighting back is like swimming against a riptide.
Everyone tells you to enjoy it. “Enjoy your kids, they’re not this little forever!” “It’s just a short amount of time, slow down. You’ll miss the days when they need you like this!” As much as I love my children with every fiber of my being, at the time, I felt physically incapable of letting everything else go and letting motherhood take all of me.
I desperately tried to hold on to the pieces of my identity that I loved—I loved my job at an art gallery, and I loved horse riding (nice to meet you, I’m Charlotte York.) Since graduating from college, I was the girl who did it all: my day job, yoga, painting classes, planned all the group trips, was super close to my family—all this without taking myself too seriously (or so I thought). I did everything I could to keep that persona. My husband and I read books about parenting and partnership, hired the most wonderful nanny in the world, I went back to work early, convinced my boss to let me work 3 out of 5 days a week from home, did post-natal physical therapy, pilates and pre-booked in my riding lessons to be back on a horse as soon as possible. All the right things…
For a while, we held it together. From the outside, we were living the dream, but the cracks were forming—the fights every time I had to (and wanted to) travel for work, crying in the car on the way to the train because I missed my son. But it was just a little while, right? Sheryl Sandberg told us to “lean in,” and if we just pushed hard enough, we’d get there. So that’s what I did, like the good Millennial girl I am – I tried to have it all.
At this point, I was already frustrated and resentful. My riding fell apart, I was traveling a lot, I felt horrible, someone was always touching me, and when I was at home or with my kids, I was constantly checking my email for fear of letting something slip.
My daughter arrived just 18 months after my son. I thought things might be better because we had learned a few things. I shuffled work so I didn’t have to travel as much. Even though the idea was floated many times by those close to me, I still refused to give up my job; I had already given up a job that paid for a career I loved, even if it was unforgiving to motherhood.
It felt like the art world was the only unique part of me I had left, so I sunk my claws in. The ‘compromise’ was three part-time jobs squeezed into a 5-day work week where I only traveled once a month (spoiler alert, that never happened, and I still ended up traveling 2-3x a month.)
I finally discovered the limit does exist.
My family, friends, and colleagues can attest that I went into a dark place. I was withdrawn, cried a lot, yelled a lot, and had several embarrassing professional breakdowns. I tried so hard to be everything. To do everything. I held on so tightly to the “old me,” the identity that I wanted. What I failed to realize is that clinging to my hobbies—to the external markers of identity—was slowly eroding who I actually was.
Who was that, exactly? There are times I am not really sure - being capable and organized, being present with friends and family, being goofy in the kitchen, loving to be creative, and joking with my husband. But I guess sometimes the things you do, help remind you of the person you are – at least that’s what I thought.
It’s strange—the moment I realized I truly missed myself wasn’t in some big, dramatic way, but in the middle of something so mundane. I was driving home from the supermarket with a latte in hand, hoping the little treat might lift my mood, when my favorite song came on the radio. Halfway through, I noticed I wasn’t singing; my face was blank, my jaw clenched, and my mind racing through an endless list of worries. That hit me hard. I used to always sing in the car—loudly, terribly—and suddenly, I couldn’t even remember the last time I had. But nothing compares to the heaviness of sitting with your child when they ask, “Mummy, can you play with me?” and feeling like you have nothing left to give—so drained that you can’t even put down your phone or muster the energy to engage, just sitting there while they keep trying to pull you back, not understanding why you’re so far away. How do you reconcile both feelings?
Ultimately, I wasn’t being a good mother, a good partner, or a good employee, nor was I being a good version of “myself” (whoever she is.)
Throughout all of this, the thought that continues to haunt me is whether I am doing well enough for my kids. For every hour I have spent trying to maintain my identity, am I throwing my children further into what social media is now classifying as ‘childhood trauma’? In 30 years, are my kids going to turn around and say I damaged them and they need to “heal” from my parental performance?
Did I work too much? Did I see my friends too much? Are they going to remember the times when I was so burnt out, I had some ‘mommy juice’ or shouted or wasn’t engaging in their play and turned on the television? All I (and 99% of parents) am trying to do is my best while trying not to lose myself in the process. But with all that we know about parenting now, and social media shouting at you: healthy foods, baby psychology, consent parenting – the list goes on – it’s a losing battle.
My recent epiphany: maybe trying to maintain my identity might have been the mistake, rather than embracing the new identity that should have naturally formed. Part of me is jealous of the moms who can lean deeply into motherhood and let it be their entire personality. They let it consume them, and they do it well, rather than dropping balls all the time. Moms who embrace motherhood seem to be taking this journey far more gracefully than I am. Do they have a strength and sense of self that I don’t have, to not be afraid of getting lost in all this?
A few weeks ago, I went to a conference for women in my industry – there was a lot of discussion about how it can be hard to do it all (the understatement of the century.) Without going on too much of a non-sequitur, I raised my hand to ask a question and shared a small bit of my story with the auditorium. Will there ever be a place for me in the industry I love to do what I am good at and really contribute in a way that suits my family? Or have my life choices, moving my family outside the city and making a daily commute impossible, knocked me out of the game? Basically, I wanted the room to tell me whether I just had to give it up and stop trying.
I was shocked by the number of women who came to me afterwards and thanked me for speaking up. So many of them were in the same boat but felt they couldn’t bring it up - there was no venue for a joint identity because society expected more and didn’t want to hear about kids beyond perfunctory questions (that is unless you’re in a mother’s group.) They also felt lost and didn’t know who to be—we have to be stellar in the office and ever-present at home, the world doesn’t allow for an in-between (without reminding you that you are insufficient.)
The moral of the story is that there is no good way to do this. The moms who make motherhood their entire personality are either the lucky ones (as are their kids), or they are just better at masking the struggle a lot of us are trying to navigate. Sometimes we don’t lose our identity on purpose, it gets stripped from us. Sometimes we do lose it on purpose because that’s what our families need from us.
After all of this, I am now trying to lean into motherhood and make it more of my personality. I’m excited, I’m scared. It is a daily exercise to re-calibrate my mindset.
I’m now losing my old identity on purpose. Not because I failed—but because I’ve changed.
Since I’m currently juggling a book of poetry, a mystery, and still emotionally recovering from Hunchback, I don’t have a completed read to pair with wine today. Tragic, I know.
Instead, I made you a little scatterplot of the books I’ve read so far this year—mapped along two incredibly scientific axes:
Craft vs. Chaos (the structure, the sentence-level sorcery, the restraint or lack thereof)
Vibes Immaculate / Plot Delivered ↔ Vibes Off / Story Who? (you know it when you feel it)
It’s wildly subjective, emotionally driven, and almost certainly offensive to anyone who believes in objectivity. Which, respectfully, is not my problem.
Enjoy. Disagree. Send me your own version. Let’s make bad data cool again.
*A visual representation of my taste. Please do not use this to diagnose me.
Writing Update
I have two speeds when it comes to writing: painfully slow and ludicrous speed. Guess where I landed this week?
I finished the first draft—messy, chaotic, tenses-all-over-the-place—coming in hot at 89,000 words. Now I’m knee-deep in figuring out the details: the folklore, the magic system, the actual cost of using magic (because of course there’s a cost). It’s been nice to let my brain live in dark, horror-laced fantasy for a bit while I wait on edits for Susie Sweetheart. Honestly, I needed the reset.
But now? Now my brain is soup.
Please consider clicking the little heart on this essay—your engagement helps more than you think! I’d love to hear from you if this essay made you ~feel~ something, have read a book I recommended, or think I’m wildly off about my wine pairings.
xx,
bb
As a retired teacher who was a working mom of two some advise… don’t be so hard on yourselves. I was I felt like I had to be supermom all of the time . Looking back I wish I would have not been so hard on myself. I’m sure you are all doing better than you think… no such thing as the perfect mom… stay off of all the mom groups on social media it just makes you feel alittle inadequate.. you are doing a great job I just know it!!
Thank you for sharing this. And thank you to your friend for writing it. Motherhood—the wishing for it, the feeling stuck in it, the reminiscing of it, and yes, sometimes, for many, even if only fleeting, the regretting of it—can feel so messy and all-consuming. It’s complex, so personal and yet universal in a lot of ways. I related to a lot here. I was wholly, completely consumed with motherhood for years, it felt like I was a shell of a human. Then I began clinging to newly reclaimed hobbies for dear life, because it felt like the only way back to myself. Now, my kids are both solidly in pre-teen/teen territory, their needs have changed, and so have mine. I was just chatting with my family yesterday about possibly pausing my membership to a pottery studio, because the long commute and the current demands of my life make it hard for me to attend often enough to justify the cost. My eldest was horrified. “You can’t QUIT POTTERY!!” The kids know that for a few years, pottery was the only thing keeping my head above water. We talked openly about how this was something just for me, because I needed it. But now the current arrangement isn’t serving me in the same ways, and it may make sense to pause. Three years ago I would’ve felt panicked at the thought, like I’m letting my identity slip away again. But now I feel more secure in who I am as a mother who is also a creative person. I’ve learned to embrace the ebb and flow of things in both roles. But the figuring out is always messy. And it’s different for everyone. If we can all talk more openly about it, hopefully it will feel less isolating, no matter which stage we find ourselves in.