“One day, you’ll have a child just like you.”

It was said to me like a threat—almost like a curse.

Now I have four children who are more like me than I care to admit 😂 I see my caring nature, my kindness, my sass, and my charisma reflected back at me every day.

And somehow, raising them has made me understand my own mother less.

Because although my children challenge me, overwhelm me, and regularly test whatever sanity I have left, they also make my life incredibly full. Seeing myself in them has helped me recognize that the parts of me that were treated as difficult were never evidence that I was unlovable.

Discovering you're autistic as an adult can bring an enormous sense of relief, along with grief, sadness, anger, and confusion. You may finally have an explanation for experiences you've struggled to understand your entire life, while also realizing how differently things might have gone if you'd known sooner.

Both feelings can be true at the same time. You can feel grateful to finally understand yourself and still be heartbroken that you spent so many years believing something was wrong with you. You can feel excited about getting to know yourself in a new way and also feel overwhelmed by how much that understanding changes.

"Where did I go?" can show up in the chaos, during a diaper change with a crying baby or in the middle of a sleepless night. But it often shows up in the quiet moments too, when everything looks and feels right. That can be confusing. You might think, I have no reason to feel this way.

Here's my working theory. In the quiet, your nervous system and brain finally have a moment to breathe. You finally have a moment to drop back into yourself: your thoughts, your emotions, your body, changed but still you. Everything that's been pushed beneath the surface in the swirl of feedings, diaper changes, and bottle washing can finally rise. The question isn't a sign that something is wrong. It's a sign that you can finally hear yourself.

There shouldn't be a “should” here.

I know that's not necessarily what we're taught. We're surrounded by messages that motherhood is supposed to be this beautiful, magical time, and that you should feel grateful for every moment because it goes by so quickly. You have a healthy baby. You wanted this. You should be happy.

But that's bullshit.

You can be incredibly grateful for your baby and still have a really hard time. You can love your child and still feel frustrated, overwhelmed, angry, sad, anxious, exhausted, or desperate for a break. Those feelings don't cancel out your gratitude, and they don't make you a bad mother.

In fact, putting pressure on yourself to feel happy or grateful all the time can make an already difficult transition even harder.

Postpartum mental health is a specialized area of care. Pregnancy and the postpartum period involve enormous physical, biological, emotional, and social changes, and mental health concerns during this time can include depression, anxiety, OCD, trauma-related symptoms, bipolar disorder, and, more rarely, postpartum psychosis. These concerns can overlap, which is one reason appropriate assessment matters.

Often, yes. Not always, and that distinction matters. But if you have ever cried after sending a two line text declining a dinner invitation, something more than politeness is happening.

For many women, people-pleasing is an attachment based survival strategy. It usually begins young, in a home where staying connected to the people you depended on required a great deal of attention to their needs and very little attention to your own. Culture teaches a version of it too, and the two often reinforce each other. Some people are simply easygoing and agreeable, which is a different thing entirely.

If your mind keeps returning to what happened, it doesn't mean you're failing at postpartum. It doesn't mean you're weak, broken, or ungrateful. It may simply mean your brain is still waiting for the support it needed all along.