For the first three or so years of my daughter’s life, I struggled deeply. For a while, I assumed it was postpartum depression. Then I thought maybe it was because I was my dad’s caretaker. Then maybe it was the grief after he died.

All of those things were factors. I know they were. But I had extreme periods of depression, mood swings, irritability, and so much more. There are details I’m still not sure I want to share. Essentially, I felt very unstable, long past the period of time when most people would consider something “postpartum.”

I went back on oral birth control about 6 months after I gave birth. I stuck with the same kind I was on prior to getting pregnant because it worked for me–for over two decades. I took Lessina (levonorgestrel), a low-dose combination of two synthetic hormones: ethinyl estradiol (estrogen) and levonorgestrel (progestin). No problems ever seemed to come up but my mental health started to decline significantly.

I kept telling my doctor something was wrong, and she kept offering “lifestyle changes.”

Are you getting enough sleep? Are you exercising? Do you have a good support system? Are you taking enough personal time?

I was doing all the things I was supposed to do to “feel better.” I was trying. I was exhausted with trying everything and constantly felt defeated.

I cried to my doctor and my psychiatrist telling both of them that something was wrong with me. My OB sympathized and ordered blood work. My iron was low, so I got an iron infusion. Nothing changed. She checked my cortisol levels, it was low, so she put my on a cortisol support supplement. No change.

I was on an anti-depressant but I didn’t feel like it was helping at all. After my dad died, I went on anxiety medication. Six months later, I tried a new antidepressant. Then I tried a mood stabilizer. After that I tried ketamine therapy.

Meanwhile I sobbed to my therapist in countless sessions about everything–parenting, my dad, my marriage and how I felt like I was drowning and that I was a terrible parent. She offered some books to read but not much else.

I started researching perimenopause, desperate for answers. That has to be it, I thought.

I kept telling my doctor I wanted to go off birth control so I could have my hormones tested, and she kept gently giving me reasons I didn’t need to.

“You’re a little young to be in perimenopause.”

“Well, I’ve read that having a baby can trigger perimenopause sooner.”

I had Googled everything by that point.

“Let’s hold off on that and order more blood tests, and I think you should follow up with your psychiatrist.”

My psychiatrist didn’t have much to offer at that point.

“We could try a different medication. Let’s chat with your therapist about trying a different type of therapy and wait for your labs to come back.”

My therapist was worthless by then. She usually just stared blankly at me while I sobbed offering little advice and no solutions.

At each appointment with my OB, everything felt lightly dismissed. She had me fill out a one-page form with 10 questions at each appointment to rate how happy I felt.

Please select the answer that comes closest to how you have felt in the past 7 days–not just how you feel today.

I have looked forward with enjoyment to things:
As much as I ever did
Somewhat less than I used to
Definitely less than I used to
Hardly at all

I have felt sad or miserable:
Yes, most of the time
Yes, quite often
Not very often
No, not at all

I have felt anxious or worried:
No, not at all
Hardly ever
Yes, sometimes

I have felt so unhappy that I have been crying
Yes, most of the time
Yes, quite often
Only occasionally
No, never

I even got this one:
Which expression reflects how you feel today?

It was the most generic, basic way a provider could address mental health. It felt like such bullshit so after one of my appointments I googled it to see if this form was common. Answer, yes it is, in various ways.

It felt like I was hitting roadblock after roadblock and screaming into the void. I was constantly spiraling, and it was affecting every part of my life.

I felt like I was losing my fucking mind.

So I decided to look for help somewhere else and I found a naturopath.

I still saw my OB, and after months of conversations, I made the decision on my own to go off birth control. She finally agreed to test my hormones. My new naturopath ordered hormone tests too, significantly more than my OB had ordered.

I cried to her the same way I had cried to every other doctor. I told her I felt crazy. She sat with me for over an hour. She didn’t cut me off because she was running out of time. She didn’t pass my questions off to a nurse. We talked through countless possibilities, and she ran all sorts of tests.

My hormone labs came back normal. It wasn’t perimenopause. At our next meeting, she mentioned the idea of reproductive hormone sensitivity and talked a lot about how birth control can affect women differently, even if they haven’t previously had problems with it.

I didn’t think much of it at the time. But within a month of going off birth control, it was like someone had pulled back the curtains and I could see again.

After two months, I basically felt like the person I was before I had a baby.

I wasn’t having depressive episodes.

I wasn’t having insane mood swings or the same level of irritability.

I wasn’t filled with that deep, uncontrollable sadness.

I felt like this enormous weight had been pulled off of me, and suddenly everything made sense. It was so obvious that my birth control was fucking me up.

I haven’t gone back to my OB since.

I’m not saying I have a definitive answer for everything that happened to me. I know I don’t. There were a lot of things happening in my life during those years, and I’m sure they all mattered. But I started digging into reproductive hormone sensitivity, and I found out that what I experienced isn’t completely unheard of and it’s not just a small or fringe area of research.

There is evidence that some women are much more sensitive to hormonal birth control after pregnancy than others.

The connection between hormonal contraception and depression isn't new. A 2016 Danish study that followed more than 1 million women found that women using hormonal contraception were more likely to begin taking antidepressants or receive a first diagnosis of depression.1

But what happens when you introduce hormonal contraception during the uniquely volatile hormonal period after childbirth?

A 2025 study of more than 610,000 first-time mothers found that women who initiated hormonal contraception during the first year after giving birth had a 49% higher instantaneous risk of developing depression than women who didn’t. The association was strongest when combined oral contraceptives were started earlier after delivery.2

The postpartum period is a particularly sensitive time for the brain. Pregnancy exposes the brain to extremely high levels of estrogen and progesterone. Within days of birth, those hormone levels plummet. Most women adapt, but researchers now believe some women have an abnormal sensitivity to these normal hormonal shifts, rather than abnormal hormone levels themselves.3

So, are some women simply more sensitive to these hormonal shifts than others? Maybe…?

A 2023 study found that women who had previously experienced depression after starting hormonal contraception were more likely to develop postpartum depression later.4

But that almost raises more questions. Were these women biologically more sensitive to hormonal changes? Or had hormonal contraception contributed to their earlier depression, while the underlying vulnerability to depression remained? The study can't tell us.

Either way, a simple way to understand it for some women is this:

pregnancy → postpartum → hormonal recovery → restart hormonal contraception → depressive episodes

So, if you’re asking, “How would a doctor actually determine whether someone’s depression might be hormone-sensitive?” the frustrating answer is: there isn’t a single diagnostic test for it.

Instead, you’d have to look at the pattern and timing of symptoms. Did depression begin around a major hormonal transition? Did it worsen after starting hormonal contraception? Did similar symptoms happen when hormonal contraception was started again? Did something similar happen during another reproductive transition?

For a long time, I thought the problem was that I wasn’t handling motherhood very well. I thought I wasn’t cut out for it. Then I thought it was having too much on my plate. Maybe I just needed to try harder to find the right medication or the right therapist.

I don’t know if reproductive hormone sensitivity explains every difficult moment of those first few years. It probably doesn’t. Life was complicated. I was a new mom. I was caring for my dad. I was grieving. There were a lot of reasons I wasn’t okay. But the timing is almost exact. I went back on birth control 6 months after having a baby and my mood dropped significantly.

I felt constantly dismissed by my OB, and that is the part I can’t ignore. I asked for help countless times, and she quite literally advised me not to go off birth control. She kept saying, “Well, you were on it for years and never had a problem. I don’t think you need to go off it now.”

I started oral birth control when I was 17, never really knowing what it was doing to my body or mind. I was told it was safe–we all are. But there is still a lot we don’t know about what hormonal birth control does to women over the long term, or why some women seem to react so differently to it than others.

For decades, women’s health has been understudied, under-diagnosed, and too often dismissed as something we just have to live with. We’re told we’re stressed. We’re tired. We’re hormonal. We need to exercise more, sleep more, take more time for ourselves. And sometimes those things are true. But sometimes they become an easy explanation for symptoms that deserve a much deeper look.

I think one of the hardest parts is that someone can be incredibly sick without having anything obvious show up on a standard test. You can be functioning well enough on the outside that no one realizes how badly you’re struggling on the inside.

Yes, I had heard from some friends that birth control made them feel crazy but I wish I had known sooner that hormones could affect some mothers intensely after having a kid. I wish my OB had taken my concerns more seriously. Did she know about reproductive hormone sensitivity and if she did why didn’t she explore this possibility? The information isn’t hard to find, a quick google search will lead to multiple medical journals.

I knew something was wrong and it felt like no one was advocating for me. So, if you are experiencing anything like this you and you are lost looking for answers, you have to advocate for yourself. And if the answer you're being given doesn't make sense, you're allowed to keep looking for a better one.

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There’s a funny tension in how people talk about trauma today.

On one hand, nearly everyone has experienced something that changed them: years with an abusive parent, losing someone they loved, bullying, illness, divorce, or simply growing up in a family where emotions were handled... creatively.

It seems like we've sorted humanity into two groups: people who insist they have absolutely no trauma despite casually mentioning things like, "Dad disappeared when I was little, but that's not why I hate birthdays," and the people who have a therapist on speed dial because their highschool boyfriend unfollowed them on Instagram.

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Humans are weird. I think most adults are just functioning collections of strangely specific fears.

My therapist keeps telling me I have trauma. I tend to brush it off in more ways than one.

“Nah, I’m fine”, I think to myself. Oh sure, there are things from my childhood that were a bit off but I turned out ok. I function just fine. (Until I don’t.)

I saw a new chiropractor recently. After looking at my X-rays, he actually apologized to me for everything my body had been through.

“You’re so lucky,” I hear a lot when I meet a new practitioner.

It’s always a weird thing to hear.

I know my body carries its own history of trauma. Injuries I’ve mostly learned to live with, pain I’ve learned to work around, things I don’t think about unless someone points them out.

But overall? I deal. Or, more accurately, I ignore a lot of it. Either way, I’m fine.

It’s funny because I sometimes cringe when people answer, “I’m fine.” Ok, tell me how you really feel.

But maybe “fine” isn’t meant to be honest. Maybe it’s just social shorthand. A way to end the conversation, reassure the other person that nothing needs fixing, and keep everyone moving.

Everything’s fine.

I suppose that’s why I say it so often.

Because do you really want to know how I am?

Probably not. And honestly, I don’t always want to tell you. We’ve all got places to be, emails to answer, dishes to do, kids to pick up. Other things that we’d rather talk about.

Sometimes “I’m fine” isn’t about hiding the truth—it’s about acknowledging that neither of us has time to dive into the whole thing while waiting in line for a much-needed adult beverage at happy hour.

I think that’s part of what makes trauma such a strange word. It sounds so big and dramatic, like something that should come with a warning label or a sad soundtrack. But a lot of trauma is surprisingly ordinary. It’s the thing that happened, and then life kept going. You went to work. You made dinner. You laughed at something stupid. You forgot about it for a while. Then, years later, someone asks why you tense up when a car brakes too hard, or why your shoulders live somewhere near your ears, and suddenly there’s a whole backstory you didn’t realize you were carrying.

Perhaps that’s why so many of us resist the word. We think acknowledging trauma means making a big deal about it. It means crying on command and announcing that we are officially damaged. But maybe it can also mean something much quieter: admitting that certain things happened, that they left marks, and that we adapted. Sometimes beautifully. Sometimes badly. Usually a little of both.

There’s also a weird hierarchy around trauma, as if we’re all supposed to compare scars before deciding who gets to feel affected. We’re all carrying around our own collection of dents and fractures—some visible on X-rays, others only showing up in the strange ways we react to the world. Most of us just learn to function around them.

We don’t all carry trauma in the same way, and we don’t all talk about it the same way. Some people need to name it. Some people need to joke about it. Some people need years before they can do either. But most of us, in one form or another, are walking around with evidence of what we’ve survived.

And most days, we call that evidence being just fine.

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“I’m only gone for the weekend.”

“She’ll have so much fun with her Dad. He can handle it, but here’s a day by day schedule just in case.”

“I really needed this but will my daughter resent me for going on this trip?”

“I’ll make up for it when I get home.”

It’s amazing how quickly a weekend away can turn into a courtroom defense in your own head.

If motherhood had an official job description, I’m convinced there’d be an unwritten requirement at the bottom:

Feel guilty.

I didn't realize how much I'd internalized that expectation until an older friend, whose children are now grown, asked me a simple question, “How many nights do you think you’ve spent away from your daughter in the past year?

I paused. I started mentally scrolling through the calendar. A couple ski trips. A work trip. Two weekends with girlfriends.

“About 25,” I finally said.

The number hung in the air longer than I expected.

Before she could respond, I heard myself asking, “Is that... bad?”

She looked at me and said, “No. I think it’s great. I wasn’t able to do that.”

Her answer surprised me, not because I disagreed, but because my first instinct had been guilt.

It made me think about a phrase I've heard countless times since becoming a mother: mom guilt.

Long before I became a parent, I knew personal time would matter to me. I love disappearing into the mountains for a weekend. I love traveling, writing, and spending uninterrupted time with friends. Those parts of me existed before I became a mother, and I never wanted motherhood to erase them.

Now that I have a daughter, that desire still stands. Taking time to myself helps me be more patient. More present. More emotionally regulated. I come home with stories to tell, energy to give, and a deeper appreciation for the ordinary moments we share.

And yet, every once in a while, that little voice still appears.

Shouldn’t you feel guilty?

I've realized it's not really a question I came up with myself. It's one that seems to have been handed to me.

There are all kinds of mothers. Some regularly take weekends away or pursue hobbies that have nothing to do with parenting. Some travel often for work. Others rarely leave their children at all. Some genuinely don’t want to. Others may desperately want to but can’t because of finances, childcare, work, or countless other realities.

I recognize that my ability to take time away is a privilege. I have a supportive partner, reliable childcare, and the financial means to occasionally say yes to a trip. Not every mother has that. But this isn't about whether every mom can take time away, it's about whether those who can feel guilty for wanting to.

I also wonder how many women don’t take time for themselves because somewhere along the way they learned that wanting it makes them a lesser mother.

How many of us have absorbed the idea that a “good mom” is the one who is always available, always sacrificing, always putting everyone else first?

When fathers spend a weekend with friends, go on some sort of sporting trip, or leave town for work, it rarely sparks conversation. It’s simply part of life. No one asks them to tally the nights they’ve been away from their kids. No one quietly wonders whether they’re putting themselves first too often.

But mothers?

We’re often expected to justify our absence before anyone has even questioned it. We've come to assume that we will be the default parent, the one whose needs are the easiest to postpone.

It’s an odd belief that motherhood requires constant self-sacrifice, and that a mother’s identity should shrink to make room for everyone else’s.

I don’t think that expectation comes from one person or one generation. It’s woven into our culture. We inherited an idea of motherhood that leaves very little room for women to remain fully themselves. Even women who reject those expectations intellectually can still feel them emotionally.

That’s patriarchy at work. Not necessarily because any individual person is enforcing it, but because we’ve inherited cultural expectations about each gender.

Sometimes it's just a feeling, like a small pang of guilt that arrives even when your child is loved, cared for, and thriving. Sometimes it’s the reflexive need to explain why you took a weekend away, even when no explanation should be necessary.

A few days after that conversation I had, my friend sent me a text.

“Mom guilt about time alone is bullshit. Says me. I wish it away for you.”

I’ve reread that message several times since.

Not because I needed permission from her, but because I realized how many women probably never receive that kind of permission at all.

I don’t wish for every mother to spend more nights away from her children. Some truly don’t want to and that’s ok.

What I do wish is that every mother gets to make that choice freely, not from guilt, not from shame, and not because she’s trying to live up to someone else’s idea of what a good mother looks like.

I hope I can be a model for my daughter and that she grows up believing that becoming a mother, if she chooses to, doesn’t require her to drop the things that make her feel most alive.

And I hope I can feel that guilt a little bit less in my own life because guilt has a funny way of lingering long after we’ve stopped believing the stories that created it.

But who is really keeping score anyways? The answer isn't our children, it's us, and the societal expectations we've internalized.

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“Mostly my friends and I just smoke weed,” he told me. “We don’t really go to parties.”

No parties?

The statement genuinely confused me.

Parties, or more accurately, partying, were a defining feature of my high school years. They were woven into the rhythm of our weekends. By Friday afternoon, the question wasn’t whether there would be a party, but where it would be.

Sure, we smoked plenty of weed too, sometimes even on school grounds. But the real social event was always the party. A house when someone’s parents were out of town. A kegger up in the hills above the city. A party at a frat house. We spent the entire week looking forward to those nights. They were where bonding with girlfriends happened while clutching red solo cups, crushes developed, drama unfolded, and stories were born.

So when he casually told me that he and his friends didn’t really go to parties, I assumed there had to be another reason.

Then he explained.

“Someone I know was accused of sexual assault at a party. The girl said he didn’t ask for consent.”

My mind immediately went to the girl involved.

But then he said something that caught me completely off guard.

“The guy didn’t do it though. She later admitted she made it up because she was mad he dumped her. Still ruined his reputation though.”

I sat there for a second, trying to process what he was saying.

“And now nobody wants to go to parties,” he continued. “We’re afraid of that shit.”

WTF.

That was all I could think.

Not because false accusations don’t happen, they do, though they’re rare. What struck me was that this fear was occupying space in the social life of his circle of friends. When I was in high school the dangers we worried about were getting caught by someone’s parents. We were frequently reckless but we still showed up.

His friends seemed to be carrying a different set of anxieties altogether.

Whether the story was exactly as he understood it or not almost felt beside the point. The lesson they took away wasn’t that they should be careful or look out for one another. It was that parties weren’t worth the risk. On the other hand, boys from my generation did not seem to worry about being careful and consent never seemed to be at the top of their mind.

I remember leaving that conversation feeling oddly disoriented. Not nostalgic for teenage drinking, but surprised by how dramatically the social landscape had changed. Obviously, there were plenty of kids in my high school who didn't party (hello, I grew up in Utah), but the idea that a group of friends would voluntarily skip parties out of fear of being accused of assault would have been almost unimaginable to most people I knew.

I found myself thinking not just about the fact that some kids don’t seem to party the way we did, but about a word that barely existed in my teenage vocabulary at all: consent.

Today, teenagers and young adults grow up discussing consent in health classes, on social media, in movies, in college orientations, and in conversations with friends. It seems there is an expectation that consent should be an ongoing topic and clearly communicated. I’m sure the concept is far from clear in practice, but at least it is part of the cultural conversation.

When I was growing up it wasn’t.

Looking back at high school and even much of my early twenties, I don’t remember anyone talking about consent, not really. Not my friends. Not my teachers. Not my parents. Not the media we consumed. There were light conversations about sex, abstinence, pregnancy, and on the rare occasion rape. “No means no” was mentioned but there was almost nothing about boundaries, pressure, coercion, power dynamics, or what healthy consent actually looked like.

We drank cheap beer, overly strong mixed drinks and and had a vague sense that we should “be careful”. But most of the time we thought we were invincible.

In high school, I had an older boyfriend for a couple of years. We started dating when I was a sophomore and he was a senior. I felt so cool having an older boyfriend. We were off and on again a lot and when we were on a “break,” I’d still hang out with his friends. When he graduated he and his friends rented houses, and threw keggers almost every weekend. It felt exciting at the time, being seventeen and suddenly spending my weekends with people who seemed so much older and freer than my classmates.

My boyfriend was one of the good guys. Quiet, kind, and never pushy. He never pressured me when we were together. But during those periods when we weren’t officially dating, I hooked up with someone friends in the group a couple times. Not sex, just making out in the corner at a party or going to third base in the back of someone’s car.

Was I making questionable decisions? Maybe. But so was everyone around me and there was a subtle confidence that comes from being young and learning that sex appeal can get you attention.

Part of me was probably trying to make him jealous. Looking back, it seems painfully obvious. Most of the time it didn’t work, though. At least he never acted jealous. If anything, I was usually the one left feeling foolish afterward.

Anyway, there was one particular night when I drank too much. The details are fuzzy now, 20+ years later, but I remember enough. There was a party with beer and jungle juice (iykyk). There was loud music and beer pong and all of my friends were there drinking too.

Then there are gaps.

What I remember next is waking up the following morning on a couch I didn’t recognize. The house was quiet and empty cups lay around every where. My underwear was pulled slighty down, just above the hem of my very short mini skirt. My head was pounding and I had no idea how I ended up on that couch.

None.

I sat there for a minute trying to piece together the night before, but there was nothing to grab onto. No clear memory. No explanation. Just fragments of making out with one of my ex-boyfriend’s friends.

Nobody else was awake, so I gathered my things, got in my car, and drove home with a raging headache. I treated it like any other rough morning after a party.

Looking back, I don’t think it ever occurred to me that I might have been assaulted. I don’t think I was raped but something likely happened. There was no one to point a finger at when you couldn’t remember everything.

I was drunk and dressed in a sexy way, what did I expect?

That was the logic. Not something anyone explicitly told me, but something I had absorbed from the culture around me. If you drank too much, whatever happened afterward was partly your fault. End of story.

By the next weekend, a rumor started circulating among our friend group that I was easy. That I would put out. A slut.

I told myself the same story everyone else seemed to be telling. I was a party girl. I put myself in those situations. Whatever happened, happened because of choices I made.

But there would be many situations in college, even when drinking wasn’t involved, that would raise all sorts of questions in today’s lens that never crossed my mind or my friends’ mind at the time.

What strikes me now isn’t that maybe I was reckless. It’s how little curiosity anyone, including me, had about what had actually happened.

The conversation was never: Were you okay?

The conversation was: What did you expect?

The truth is, if I look back on those years, I can confidently say that almost every woman I know has been sexually assaulted in some way. Maybe she wouldn’t have called it sexual assault at the time. But there is always a story about being pressured and giving in—even when dead sober. About saying no and being asked again and again in a sweeter way. About doing something you didn’t want to do. About loosing pieces of a night after going home with a guy from the bar. About going along with something because you wanted a guy to like you. About waking up feeling confused at why you were half naked and wondering how you got there.

I know this because, in recent years, many of my friends have talked about it. Not in a "this happened to me" kind of way, but more in an, "Oh yeah, consent didn't really exist," kind of way. Conversations where people casually mention questionable experiences, times they think they said no, or times they don't remember everything that happened.

Many of us simply filed them away under the category of “bad experiences.”

All of this reflection doesn’t mean every sexual encounter was assault, nor does it mean young people today have everything figured out—they obviously don’t. But it seems there has been a cultural shift in some circles. Behaviors that were once dismissed as normal, inevitable, or simply “part of being a party girl” are now more questioned. Conversations that would have been casually discussed among close friends are now happening more publicly. And those conversations should happen.

I think the irony, though, is that while my generation often lacked the courage to name violations when they occurred, Gen Z has grown up immersed in conversations about consent to such a degree that some young people seem to navigate social situations with an entirely different set of fears. They may be more aware of boundaries, but also more conscious of the social consequences of crossing them. They are afraid of what will be posted on the internet. They are afraid of being doxxed.

One generation normalized experiences that should never have been normalized. The other seems more concerned with the consequences to their own image. In both cases, though, the question of accountability remains.

Maybe that's what cultural change looks like. The pendulum swings hard before eventually finding a healthier balance.

I keep thinking about that conversation with the my younger friend who told me he and his friends didn’t go to parties in high school. Part of me envies his generation. Not because they have solved all these problems, because of course they haven’t, but because they seem to ask questions that many of us never did.

At the same time, I think about the girl I used to be. I think about how quickly I blamed myself and how many women I know carry similar stories that were brushed aside or internalized.

Maybe the goal isn’t to return to the carefree parties of my generation, nor to live in fear of every social interaction. Maybe the goal is something in between: a culture where young people can gather, make mistakes, flirt, fall in love, and have fun, while also understanding that care, respect, and consent are part of the experience.

If that’s where we’re headed, the awkward conversations, the overcorrections, and even some of the anxiety may simply be part of the journey.

And perhaps that’s better than the silence we grew up with.

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Your hands are still soft,
just as they were when you were a baby.

Even now, with dirt tucked beneath your nails,
chipped nail polish on your fingertips,
and traces of the day's adventures
still clinging to your skin.

When you rush to me
and slip your hand into mine,
my heart still skips a beat.

The feeling is different now,
but somehow exactly the same.

I remember when your whole hand
could wrap around a single finger,
when your grip was tiny but determined,
as if letting go was never an option.

Now your hands are bigger
but also still small.
Your stride is faster.
You run ahead of me instead of behind.

Still, every time you reach back for my hand,
time folds in on itself.

For a moment,
I can feel every version of you at once.
The newborn curled against my chest,
the the baby crawling toward me,
the little girl standing here today.

I know these hands won't stay small.

One day they will grow strong enough
to build a life of their own,
to hold someone else's hand,
to open doors I cannot follow through.

It’s as it should be.

But I hope I never forgot the weight of your hand in mine.
The trust tucked into your fingers.
Because long after your hands have grown,
I know I will still remember
how they felt when they were small.

Some part of me will always be reaching back,
trying to hold on to the memory
of your tiny hands.

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For most of the past year I’ve said I wanted absolutely none of that. I looked at turning 40 less like a moment to reflect and more like a chance to leave the past year in the dust. No sentimental montage. No profound gratitude for “the journey.” Just me aggressively trying to crawl toward a fresh start while carrying an emotional support matcha and approximately 100 unresolved feelings.

I’ve described the last year as awful more times than I can count. Am I complaining too much? Regardless, it was the year that put me through the motherf*cking ringer. The kind of year where you wake up exhausted before the day has even started. Where showering feels like a personal achievement. Where there were days I sat on the edge of my bed trying to negotiate with myself to just stand up. Feet on the floor.

And yet, somehow, I did.

Not always because I wanted to. Honestly, there were plenty of days I didn’t want to do a damn thing but hide under the covers.

But adulthood doesn’t really care if you’re emotionally hanging on by a thread. The kiddo still needs to be fed and bathed. The dog still needs to be walked. Work emails still come in. Life just keeps tapping you on the shoulder saying, “Hey babe, hate to bother you during your breakdown, but you still have responsibilities.”

Rude, honestly.

But it wasn’t just obligation that got me through. It was also the small moments of good stuff. The social gatherings that made me feel like myself for just a few hours. The hugs and snuggles from my baby girl. The moments that I could check out of daily life and enjoy a ski trip with friends. The ordinary things that somehow kept me tethered to myself.

Yet, one of the hardest things that I have had to come to terms with is that not everyone will show up for you in the same way that you would show up for them. It’s just a fact. And sometimes it hurts real damn bad. But other people will surprise you with how deeply they care, and those are the people you gotta lean on.

Initially I didn’t want anyone to know how deeply I was struggling. I didn’t really want to ask for help. I figured everyone had their own problems. Their own stress. Their own lives. I didn’t want to feel dramatic or like a burden. So I tried to carry all of it myself, quietly pretending I was “handling it” while internally feeling like a human Jenga tower one wrong move away from collapsing.

But this year taught me that letting people in is its own kind of strength, because as it turns out suffering in silence is wildly overrated.

I spent so much of my life thinking strength meant handling everything alone. Keeping it together. Being “fine.” Smiling while internally resembling a raccoon digging through a dumpster fire.

But the truth is, the people who love you usually want to carry pieces of the weight with you. You just have to let them. That part has been hard for me. Vulnerability comes easy for me but actually asking for help doesn’t. It sounds beautiful in theory until you’re actually doing it and suddenly feel like you’ve accidentally shown everyone your emotional nakedness under fluorescent lighting and no one looks good in fluorescent lighting.

But leaning on people saved me.

Not in some dramatic movie-scene way. More in the quiet, human way. Someone checking in. Someone sitting beside me in the mess instead of trying to pull me out of it too quickly. Someone reminding me that I am still myself underneath whatever fresh hell life decided to serve that week.

So no, I don’t feel particularly reflective about the past year. I mostly feel tired. Proud. A little bruised. A lot more honest. And surprisingly grateful. Because somewhere between being absolutely wrecked and forcing myself to keep going, I realized something important: resilience isn’t always loud. Sometimes it looks like crying in your car and then still showing up. Sometimes it looks like asking for help even when it feels hard. Sometimes it looks like having a little more faith in yourself.

This all has had me thinking about how animals survive things that would completely break most of us. Injury. Storms. Hunger. Losing their homes, their babies. And somehow, they keep going. Weirdly, somewhere along the way, my brain landed on birds. Birds are some of the most resilient creatures.

Resilience isn’t about fearlessness. Birds don’t fly because they never fall, they fly because at some point they trust their wings enough to leave the branch anyway. They launch themselves into storms, headwinds, uncertainty, and somehow keep going.

I’d like to I think that this year taught me to trust my own wings a little more.

Buy me a matcha 🍵

I’ve been thinking about making this list for a while, so in honor of Mother’s Day and the absolute chaos, sacrifice, unhinged behavior, and unmatched multitasking that comes with being a mom, I figured there’s no better time to finally put it all into words.

Honestly, I could’ve written 50 things, but none of us have time for that because someone is probably yelling “MOMMMMMY” from another room. So here ya go, enjoy and Godspeed!

1. No one told me postpartum isn’t just six weeks. For some women, the hormonal, physical, emotional, and identity shifts can last up to two years.

2. No one told me I’d never again use the bathroom without at least one witness.

3. No one told me motherhood would make me completely unfazed by wiping someone else’s boogers on my shirt because there was no tissue, no time, and honestly no shame left.

4. No one told me your relationship can suddenly feel more like a logistics company than a romance.

5. No one told me I’d become irrationally emotional over putting on tiny shoes.

6. No one told me I’d spend years being touched constantly and still somehow feel lonely.

7. No one told me postpartum rage exists.

8. No one told me that some women go straight from postpartum hormone chaos into perimenopause with almost no break in between (yay us).

9. No one told me I’d google “normal toddler behavior” seventeen times a week.

10. No one told me I’d become weirdly proud of someone else’s bowel movements.

11. No one told me motherhood would expose every unresolved issue I’ve ever had.

12. No one told me I’d suddenly understand my own mother in ways that would break my heart a little.

13. No one told me how much pressure there is to enjoy every second.

14. No one told me I’d become the family historian, scheduler, nutritionist, emotional support person, and house cleaner.

15. No one told me the phrase “take care of yourself too” would become almost comically unrealistic at times.

16. No one told me I’d fantasize about checking into a hotel alone just to hear my own thoughts.

17. No one told me motherhood would erase the part of me that once said “ew” with conviction.

18. No one told me how much motherhood changes some friendships. Some deepen. Some just disappear.

19. No one told me how much of parenting is pretending you know what you’re doing.

20. No one told me I’d have an entire internal ranking system for which bodily fluids are “annoying but manageable” versus “burn the shirt immediately.”

21. No one told me motherhood would make me simultaneously softer and more feral.

22. No one told me my standards for cleanliness would evolve into “no one is actively sticking to the floor.”

23. No one told me I would learn to negotiate with a toddler like I’m defusing a diplomatic crisis.

24. No one told me I would start rationing energy like it’s a scarce resource.

25. No one told me I would be this tired and still laugh and love this much.

His death wasn’t particularly dramatic yet it still caught me off guard. He was an old man with a lot of health problems that lived a long and full life. Yet, it still rattled me to my core in a way I wasn’t prepared for.

My relationship with my dad was never simple. It was complicated and a complicated relationship made processing his death all the more difficult.

There was tension. Not as a kid, just when the years of adulthood stretched out over time. When I became a parent myself pieces of my childhood came back into focus, not as memories alone, but as reflections. I started to see him in ways I hadn’t before and I wrestled with parts of my upbringing that didn’t make sense.

In the last two years of his life, I became his caretaker. He didn’t live in my home but I was the one managing everything. His health, the bills, the fallout of his behavior, the messes he left behind – both literal and emotional. It was heavy and the responsibilities of being a caretaker and a parent to a young child felt endless.

The truth is that there were moments I resented him. I resented how he behaved and the choices he made and how all of it shaped my life.

And then he died, and that resentment didn’t disappear, it turned into guilt.

Guilt that I didn’t savor the time while I had it. Guilt that I didn’t find a way to loosen my grip on the resentment before he was gone.

I wish I had made more space for empathy, for curiosity, and for just being with him as he was, in whatever time we had left.

He was difficult but he was also brilliant in his own way. He carried a kind of bottomless wealth of knowledge about the things he loved: life in the mountains, the work he did, the world as he understood it. I can see now how much there was to learn from him and I wish I had leaned in more when I had the chance.

I think some people in my life assumed that when he died, a certain weight would be lifted. I know I did. That without the responsibility of caring for him, I’d feel freer, lighter, like I had been released from something.

But the opposite happened. My life didn’t get easier. It came crashing down.

The past year was hard for so many reasons other than my dad but his passing amplified everything. It affected how I think. There were stretches where I couldn’t focus, where everything felt foggy and harder than it should be. It affected my body. The exhaustion, the way stress seemed to settle physically, the sense that my nervous system was constantly on edge.

It showed up in my relationships. In how I parent, in my marriage, in the way I connect or don’t connect with people. Grief made me more distant at times, more reactive at others, more sensitive. It shifted the way I move through the world.

It reshaped my sense of identity. Losing him didn’t just mean losing a parent, it meant losing a version of myself that existed in relation to him. And with a complicated relationship, that loss has been even harder to define. There isn’t a clean narrative to hold onto, just a lot of contradictions to sort through.

And a year later, I’m still in it. Still processing what it means that he’s gone. Still untangling who he was and who I am now without him here.

In a few weeks, I’ll turn 40. I’m not especially hung up on the number itself, but I am anxious about what comes next. This past year has made me question so many parts of my life and I know that process isn’t over.

But I don’t want to process anymore. I want to just be.

I know 40 is supposed to be a milestone, something to mark or celebrate. But with everything going on in my life, and with his absence, it feels unremarkable, less like a celebration and more like a quiet marker that I made it through one of the hardest years of my life without my dad.

They say calming one’s nervous system is a totally achievable process. I, however, have yet to figure out how to do such a thing.

I’m told to “take a deep breathes.” In and out through your nose. This is the cornerstone of all advice, obviously. Often offered nonchalantly by people who seem not to be stressed themselves and who have apparently never experienced the particular full body reaction to arguing with your husband moments after your toddler was also screaming in your face.

Inhale deeply, exhale slowly, and instantly your body forgets about stress and responsibilities. Bravo, you did it.

My therapist recently asked, “How can you reduce stress in your life?”
Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Simply remove all stressors from your life. Get a new job, resolve all problems in your marriage, achieve financial stability, and raise a perfectly regulated child. Once you’ve done that, your nervous system should settle right down. It’s really more of a lifestyle tweak.

“I’m tired all the time,” I tell my doctor.
“What do you do for self-care?” she asks.

Bitch, please. I do more self-care than the average monk. I sleep as much as possible, I eat well, I go to yoga, I drink an absurd amount of water, so much so that I am peeing all the damn time. I take personal time. I limit my alcohol consumption. I get weekly acupuncture, spend time in my garden, and I take goddamn antidepressants.

She smiles and suggests journaling.

I want to punch her in the throat and direct her to said Substack.

What about meditating? This is excellent guidance, because nothing says calm like sitting quietly trying to tune the world out while your intrusive thoughts replay every choice you’ve ever made while also simultaneously building a grocery list.

I’ve developed the kind of 11s between my brows that suggest I’m constantly trying to solve a problem I cannot identify and will never finish solving. They’re really settling in. Very committed. At this point, a nervous system reset might not do much, but Botox probably will. At least I’d look less like I’m actively bracing for impact.

Of course, all of this advice comes wrapped in a kind, well-meaning tone that suggests your nervous system is a delicate instrument that can be tuned with care. Which is a comforting idea, right up until your body decides to interpret a mildly inconvenient situation as a full-scale emergency and you’re left wondering why you’re experiencing fight-or-flight in response to your toddler refusing to put on her shoes.

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In the end, calming your nervous system is supposed to be about safety, slowness, and self-compassion. And maybe, occasionally, it actually is. But more often, it feels like trying to convince a smoke detector to relax while someone in the other room forgot about dinner burning on the stove.

Of course, there’s also this broader, quieter expectation that nervous system regulation is an individual responsibility. That if you’re disregulated, it’s a personal project. Something to optimize. Just journal through it.

But I can’t help wondering about the larger context of it all.

Is it actually easier for some people to “calm down” than others? Or is that a question we’re not really supposed to ask out loud?

Because it does feel like women, especially mothers, are often expected to carry more of everything. More emotional tracking, more anticipating, more remembering, more smoothing over. More of the invisible labor that keeps things from tipping over.

And then, on top of that, we’re told to teach our children how to regulate their emotions when we are barely dealing with our own.

To stay calm while managing everyone else’s emotions. To breathe through the interruptions. To soften our reactions. To be the steady one in the room, even when no one is steadying us.

It makes me wonder what “nervous system regulation” even means in a world that doesn’t particularly encourage nervous system safety in the first place.

We don’t really live in a society that rewards calm. Or protects it. Or even makes much space for it.

We live in a society that runs on urgency. On responsiveness. On being available, efficient, accommodating. Even rest has become something to record and compare. What was your sleep score?

So of course my body feels like this sometimes. Of course it stays slightly braced, slightly on alert, even when nothing is technically wrong.

It’s not completely personal. It’s cumulative.

And still, the advice comes back to the same place. Breathe. Slow down. Take a walk. Touch some grass. HYDRATE.

As if regulation is something you can do alone, quietly, in the margins of a life that keeps asking you to be “on.”

I don’t really have a neat conclusion for that. Just a kind of ongoing curiosity about what we’re asking of ourselves, and whether it’s actually designed to be achievable in the way it’s often presented.

I’ve come to the conclusion that a fully healed nervous may not be possible at this time in my life due to certain personal circumstances that can’t currently be changed. I can’t get that full nervous system overhaul that wellness people with a monthly subscription or a new morning routine promises. More just small, almost invisible moments where my body isn’t gripping quite so hard.

So—more deep breaths. I try to unclench my jaw several times a day because it aches from grinding my teeth at night. I drink more water, because keep hydrating!, they say. I keep going to yoga and I keep writing on this here Substack.

Not because any of it feels perfectly healing, but because, somehow, it works just enough most days.

And honestly, at this point, that’s basically enlightenment.

Also, have you tried box breathing?

Buy me a matcha! 🍵

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As a millennial, I often find myself looking back on my childhood and marveling at how simple it all felt. It was certainly not perfect, just simple in a way that feels almost impossible now. Time moved differently. Afternoons stretched wide and open, with no real agenda beyond, “go outside and play.” And so we did. We made something out of nothing. We were bored, and instead of trying to escape it, we stayed there long enough for it to turn into something else. Imagination, invention, freedom.

I have come to the conclusion that boredom is underrated. Would 10/10 recommend these days.

I was an only child, which meant a lot of my time was spent alone. I had a treehouse, a dog, and an unspoken expectation that I would figure out how to fill my own hours. And so I did. Entire worlds were built in my treehouse. I would rearrange my room after school for no reason, invent games with rules that made sense only to me, dress my dog up in costumes that she absolutely did not ask for. Stories unfolded without screens, without notifications, without anyone watching or documenting them. It was just me, time, and whatever I could dream up.

Connection looked different too. I had a box where I would keep all of the notes friends would pass me in school. I remember lying on my bedroom floor as a teenager, waiting for a boy to call me, phone cord stretched to its limit, talking about nothing and everything. We would talk for hours, goodbyes ending with “no, you hang up first.”

We burned CDs like we were producing art. Track one set the tone. Track seven made you blush and reach for the volume. If someone made you a mix, that was a declaration, or maybe even a lyrical hint at a crush.

Technology seemed to arrive more slowly back then, almost politely. In early high school, I had a pager, which is hilarious looking back. That small, beeping reminder felt like my first taste of independence. Then came the flip phone, and eventually the indestructible Nokia, with pixelated Snake, interchangeable cases, and the careful curation of my favorite song of the week, recorded as my voicemail message. Technology felt like a tool, not an extension of ourselves.

Now, everything feels louder. Faster. Childhood especially seems filled with constant stimulation, something I notice more now that I’m a parent. Screens are always glowing. Algorithms anticipate, and it feels like content never ends. There’s always something to watch, something to click, something to consume. Boredom has been almost completely engineered out of our existence.

I notice more now how often everyone is on their phones around me. Checking them during pauses in conversation, or even mid-conversation when interest fades. Waiting in line? Scroll. Sitting in silence? Fill it. Any discomfort? Distract immediately. It feels endless.

I miss the simplicity of existing before phones arrived and the internet exploded.

It doesn’t feel like just nostalgia. The world has changed, and there’s no going back. I want my daughter to have space, to learn how to be bored, and how to fill that time with imagination. To discover who she is without a screen telling her what to feel or what to want.

I want her to climb something, build something, create something.

I know I can’t recreate the past for her. But maybe I can protect small pockets of that simplicity. Maybe I can choose slowness where the world demands speed. Maybe I can teach her that it’s okay to have nothing to do, and that sometimes, that’s where the best parts of life begin.

I don’t just want it for her though. I want it for all of us.

I don’t mean this in a “technology is bad” kind of way. I’m not about to throw my phone into the ocean and live off the grid. But in a more subtle, harder-to-answer way, what did it cost us to always be connected? To always be consuming? To always be available?

Because I don’t think we’re meant to process this much of the world, constantly.

There is something grounding about not knowing everything. About not having immediate access to every opinion, every headline, every perspective at all times.

Those “simpler times” weren’t just about less technology or fewer distractions. They were about presence and possibility. We weren’t documenting our lives, we were just living them.

Maybe the goal isn’t to go backward, but to hold onto what mattered about those simpler times and carry it forward, intentionally.

I want to remind myself that not every moment needs to be documented. Some moments are better when they’re just ours.

Sometimes the best thing I can do for my daughter, and honestly for myself, is to put the phone down and just see what happens.

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I saw a friend recently at another friend’s baby shower. I don’t see her often, but she’s one of those semi-distant friends woven through different groups since high school. Somehow we both moved away from where we grew up and landed in the same city. We mostly reconnect at kids’ birthday parties or holiday gatherings, clutching a glass of wine, doing polite small talk while pretending we’re not exhausted.

The last time I saw her, she said they were going to Mexico for two weeks with three other families I knew.

Two weeks. To Mexico.

I couldn’t even get a handful of my girlfriends to commit to a kid-free, four-night trip to Mexico for my 40th. Four nights. No children. Minimal responsibility. Margaritas with a clear start and end time.

But these people? These absolute pioneers of modern parenting? They packed up their entire brood, multiple children, matching rash guards, probably a shared Google Doc, and went for two. whole. weeks.

“How was Mexico?” I asked, smiling.

I mean, I knew how it was. I saw it on Instagram. I had seen the photos. Children playing in the sand like a sunscreen commercial. Adults smiling at the camera, holding drinks with fruit stabbed into them. It looked like a multi-family utopia sponsored by tequila.

“It was amazing!” she said, glowing with sun-kissed skin from Mexico.“It was how it should be, everyone taking care of everyone. This is the village!”

I clenched my jaw and smiled. “Sound like a great trip.”

But internally, something in me recoiled.

The village.

Ah yes. The village. That magical, mythical place where childcare and meals are shared, everyone feels supported, and no one is hiding from their toddler in the basement eating snacks alone like a feral raccoon.

(I do love raccoons though.)

What f*cking village?

Because I do not live in that village. I don’t even live near it. I think I missed the exit years ago and now I’m just circling some emotional roundabout with a screaming toddler in the backseat.

I really thought I would have more of a village. I had a baby at the same time as a few of my friends. We talked a big game back then. Ski trips, camping trips, backyard dinners where our children would play peacefully while we sipped wine like civilized, well-supported adults. It all felt inevitable. Like something that would just… happen.

The village isn’t just something you hope for, it’s something you’re told will be there.

It’s baked into everything. Parenting books. Instagram captions. The way people talk about motherhood like it exists inside a built-in support system. As if community is a given, not a variable. As if proximity automatically turns into presence.

The thing is, I know I would have a village. Just not here, where I live now.

If I were back in the city I grew up in, surrounded by the friends I’ve known for 15+ years, I think it would look different. I know it would be different because every time I go home for a visit the village is there. It’s easier. More built-in.

But the so-called village where I live now didn’t grow after my kid was born, it dissolved. The people we thought would be around aren’t anymore. Friendships shifted after we had a kid, despite how much effort we put in. The ones with kids are busy building their own versions of survival. And just like that, the thing we thought would expand quietly faded.

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And to be clear, while I know that I am complaining I also know that in a lot of ways I’m lucky to have any support at all. I fully aware that there are plenty of people doing this truly alone. Single moms. Parents without partners, without any family nearby, without any backup at all. I see that.

But that’s kind of the point. We shouldn’t have to.

You’re told, subtly and constantly, that this is how it works. That support will just… materialize. That your people will show up with shared calendars. That motherhood, while hard, will be held.

But then life happens.

Reality is that someone’s kid is always sick. Someone else is overwhelmed. Someone moves. Someone disappears. Someone doesn’t have a babysitter. Text messages go unanswered, not out of malice, just capacity. And somehow coordinating a simple park hang turns into a logistical exercise that requires three spreadsheets and a blood sacrifice.

The “village” I was promised feels less like a thriving community and more like a group chat where no one ever actually commits to anything.

It’s almost like there should be a warning label on parenting books, blogs, or even hospital discharge papers:

*WARNING*
Having a child does not mean you will have a village.
You will likely be doing a lot of this alone. Plan accordingly.

And me, being the deeply sensitive person that I am, feels it all.

I’ve realized it doesn’t take a village to raise a child. The child will, in fact, grow. They’re very committed to that.

The village, as I understand it now, is actually for the mother.

And yes, there are times I am deeply, irrationally jealous of the people who seem to have one. Those sun-drenched, group-text-thriving, Mexico-traveling villages full of besties and their coordinated offspring. There are times when I look around and just say, “well damn, this is not how I thought it would be.”

Because I was sold something a little different.

Not everyone was, but a lot of us were definitely… misinformed.

“You can have it all,” they said.

And you can. Technically.

You can have the career, the kids, the house, the matching holiday cards. You can have all of it.

You might just be doing a shocking amount of it alone.

You might also slowly lose your mind because our society isn’t built to care for parents. Once the kiddo is born, the structure around you thins out. You’re on your own bud. Figure it out. And you do. We all do.

You might burn out in a quiet, unglamorous way. You might find yourself so lonely it feels absurd, given how many people you actually know.

No one really tells you that part.

No one says, “You can have it all, but a lot of it will happen in isolation.”

No one says, “The village may never arrive. And also, it’s underfunded and short staffed.”

No one says, “You might be the entire infrastructure.”

There isn’t always a village.

Sometimes there’s just you, standing in your kitchen at 6:12 pm, reheating leftover mac n cheese for the third time, trying to build a life out of sheer willpower, snacks, and yes, screen time.

So you adapt.

You stop waiting for the village to appear and try to start building something else.

Not a village, exactly.

More like a small, slightly chaotic, self-built cabin, held together with duct tape, low expectations, and the occasional text from a friend who couldn’t make the trip.

And when someone does show up? When a friend brings wine over, or texts back, or meets you at the park without rescheduling three times?

That’s not the village.

That’s a miracle.

And honestly, I’ll take it.

Buy me a Matcha! 🍵

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My body does not know how to rest anymore. It hums with a quiet vigilance, as though even in stillness it must remain on watch.

I dream of limbs sinking into something soft, not just a bed, but a surrender, a place where the weight of me is finally carried by something other than myself. A place where sleep does not have to be chased, coaxed, negotiated, but arrives like a tide and pulls me under without asking.

My body does not know how to give into the gentle ending of a day. Dusk comes, but I do not dim with it. I linger in a half-lit state, stitched to the hours by invisible threads of worry, of memory, of the next need waiting to be met.

I sleep in stiffness, not fully here, not fully gone. My jaw clenches, teeth grinding down the unspoken, the undone, the endless list that rewrites itself even in the dark.

They say it’s burnout. A season. A passing storm. A phase in life that will loosen its grip in time.

But my body does not believe in phases. It has learned only endurance.

And my mind, my poor, tireless mind, does not know rest anymore either. It flickers and spins, a carousel that never empties, rising and falling to the relentless rhythm of responsibility.

Even in dreams there are echoes of crying, of reaching, of being needed before I can arrive.

I have become a place where rest visits briefly but never stays.

Beneath the exhaustion, beneath the ache of being always on there is a glimmer of hope that one day I will remember how to set all of this down,

and that my body and mind, faithful and overworked, will recognize the moment

and finally, gently,

let go.

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When you aren’t at the beginning anymore… but aren’t fully there yet either.

The space in-between. I’ve seen so many women on Substack talk about it and it’s been mentioned more recently in person too.

The space in-between isn’t expected. The breakthrough hasn’t happened yet. It’s not the before. It’s not the after. It’s more like a rebuilding that you never planned for.

The part where you’re no longer who you were, but you’re still learning who you’re becoming.

Motherhood dropped me into that space without warning. One day I was a version of myself I understood, even in all her messiness, I was confident in her. The next I was someone new, stretched thin between who I had been and who I was now responsible for being.

Grief dropped me there too. Unexpectedly when my dad died, and in waves that still come, almost a year later. It rearranges you quietly, pulling you further from the person you were before without asking permission. Losing my dad didn’t just take him, it shifted the ground beneath me. It made me question what I thought I knew, about him, about myself, about the stories I had built my life around.

And in some ways, being a wife slowly slipped me into that space too. Not suddenly, not dramatically, but over time. In the compromises, the shared responsibilities, the unspoken expectations. In the ways I adjusted, adapted, gave, often without realizing what parts of me were being reshaped.

All of it layered together.

Motherhood.
Marriage.
Grief.

Each one asking something different from me, but all of them pulling me into this middle space where nothing feels fully formed, where I am constantly recalibrating. It wasn’t just the physical exhaustion or the constant demands. It was the identity shift. The way everything I thought I knew about myself, my relationships, my capacity, was quietly undone and reworked in real time. The way my marriage felt different. The way my childhood started to resurface in unexpected and painful ways, asking to be looked at again, and again, this time through the lens of being a parent myself.

I found myself questioning things I had long accepted. Noticing patterns I didn’t want to repeat. Carrying more than I had anticipated or could even hold at times, both practically and emotionally.

And at the same time, there was this unexpected, layered mourning for the version of me that existed before. The one who had more space, more clarity, more certainty in who she was. Looking back I wonder if that version of me was just kind of an illusion. Maybe she romanticized how she thought life would be. That version seems so much simpler.

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No one really prepares you for that part.

The part where you are actively becoming a new version of yourself, but don’t yet recognize the person you’re becoming as your own. Where even your reflection feels unfamiliar. And sometimes you’re not even sure you like her yet.

It can feel disorienting. Like you’re doing something wrong because nothing feels clear or complete.

I think it’s worth noting that this space can affect any woman, not just mothers. So many of us reach points in life where we look around and say, “This isn’t what I thought it would be,” or “I don’t want this life anymore.” Maybe it looks like what society calls mid-life crisis, maybe for others it comes earlier than in mid-life.

Sometimes we realize we never really knew what this life was supposed to be. Maybe it’s the career that doesn’t feel fulfilling. Maybe it’s relationship that no longer fits. Maybe it’s the expectations we’ve carried that suddenly feel heavy. Maybe it’s all of it.

This is the space where everything we thought we had figured out starts to shift. It’s that middle ground where identity, desire, and circumstance collide, and it asks us to reckon with who we were, who we are, and who we might become.

I think that we don’t stay here long enough in conversation, especially when it comes to what it actually feels like for women to live inside of it. And yet, it touches all of us in some way, whether through transitions big or small, loss, love, career, or self-discovery.

The in-between isn’t glamorous.

There’s no clear announcement of its arrival and you don’t even really have the words to articulate what’s happening. You don’t celebrate it. Most days, it just feels like you’re moving through something quietly, without knowing exactly where it’s leading.

Sometimes it’s moving quietly on the outside, with a smile on your face, while screaming on the inside.

It’s the space where things have already shifted, but nothing has fully settled. Where you can feel the distance between who you were and who you’re becoming, but you can’t quite name either one anymore.

That middle space changes you in ways the beginning never could.

It breaks down walls you didn’t even realize you were hiding behind. It hardens you in places that once felt soft, out of necessity, out of survival. It asks more of you than you ever thought you had to give, emotionally, physically, mentally.

It asks you to hold more.
To carry more.
To keep moving even when nothing feels clear or resolved.

There’s a loneliness to it, too. Because from the outside, it can look like nothing is happening. Life is normal. But inside, everything is shifting.

Grace.

I’ve been trying to give myself grace. I’ve had to learn how to do that.
It’s a practice. And it’s hard.

I’ve had to loosen my grip on who I thought I had to be.
Stop expecting myself to have all the answers. Because I don’t.

Instead, I’m learning how to sit with the questions.

That’s the part no one really talks about.
How the same space that stretches you, hardens you, and demands everything from you…

also teaches you how to be softer with yourself in a way you never knew you needed.

To the women rebuilding their identity.
Their direction.
Their lives.

I know the in-between doesn’t look strong.
It looks quiet. It looks messy. It looks like doubt.
But it is still strength.
Even if no one else sees it yet
I see you.
I am you.

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I joined Instagram in 2012 and have never once taken a break or stepped away. I scrolled every day, with only the occasional gap when I was traveling without service. It became as routine as breathing. Most mornings, it was the first thing I did, before my feet even hit the floor. With a habit that ingrained, it was only a matter of time before comparison, jealousy, and insecurity took root.

In the beginning, it felt harmless. It was just photos and filters. My feed was filled with snapshots of friends, late nights, and the kind of carefree chaos that defines your twenties, all washed in that unmistakable VSCO tint. Influencers, as we know them now, barely existed. There was no strategy, no optimization, no sense that you were performing for anything beyond your immediate circle. It felt small and fresh. Manageable.

But as Instagram grew, so did the expectations. The platform shifted from a digital scrapbook into something sharper, more transactional. Influence became currency. And somewhere along the way, I started to want what I saw. The gifted products, the sponsored trips, the perfectly curated lives that seemed to exist just out of reach. It seemed like a harmless ambition.

So I leaned in. I began to curate my feed, to shape something that looked like a “brand.” My following grew, slowly, but enough to keep me hooked. Every outing became an opportunity to capture content. Nothing was just an experience anymore, it was potential. Potential for a post, for engagement, for validation. Brands started to notice. Offers came in. I made some money. And for a time, it felt like proof that I was doing something right.

But the validation never lasted. It was fleeting, conditional. Always tied to numbers that could rise or fall without explanation.

I wasn’t a professional photographer, and neither was my husband, but that didn’t stop me from expecting perfection. I would critique every photo he took of me, searching for flaws, asking for retakes, adjusting angles like it might fix something deeper. Then I would spend hours editing, rewriting captions, second-guessing every word. It stopped being creative. It became obsessive.

I never felt pretty enough. Never interesting enough. Never quite right. My self-esteem rose and fell with likes and comments, as if strangers on the internet had been handed the authority to define my worth. I would catch myself thinking, why not me? as if there were a finite amount of success being handed out and I had somehow missed my turn.

The worst part wasn’t the comparison. It was the dissonance.

Because the more I tried to shape myself into something that would perform well online, the further I drifted from anything that felt real. I could feel the gap widening between who I was and who I was presenting to be. And instead of closing it, I kept feeding it.

Eventually, it started to feel gross. Not just the app, but my participation in it. The way I was thinking. The way I was seeing myself. I didn’t trust my own motivations anymore. I didn’t know if I liked something because I actually liked it, or because it would look good posted.

And underneath all of it was a quieter realization, one that’s harder to admit: I didn’t feel fake because Instagram was fake. I felt fake because I was.

Studies have already proven how damaging social media can be on young people, particularly teenage girls, so it really shouldn’t come as surprise that it can be damaging for adults too.

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I stopped trying to be an influencer a few years ago and let go of the curated feed. I started posting more of what I actually wanted, more of my real, everyday life. I unfollowed most of the influencers who had fueled my obsession, and instead began sharing more of my writing and my real life. It helped. For a stretch of time, Instagram’s grip on me loosened.

But jealousy doesn’t disappear just because your algorithm changes. It doesn’t only live in the polished feeds of strangers with millions of followers. It can exist much closer to home, woven into the lives of people you actually know. People whose milestones, relationships, and successes still show up on your screen, inviting quiet comparison in a way that feels harder to justify, and therefore harder to admit.

I know I’m not alone in all of this. Social media has a way of holding up a mirror to the parts of ourselves we’d rather not look at. The insecurity, the competitiveness, the hunger for validation. It doesn’t create those things, but it sharpens them. It gives them somewhere to live and grow.

It wasn’t just influencers or friends’ feeds though, it was the doomscrolling, too. My feed became saturated with images and videos of children in Gaza who had their limbs blown off. Reels of people begging for food at checkpoints, and families starving in Sudan. People attacked and shot in the streets by ICE. I was addicted to reading and checking the news. I found myself reposting headline after headline to my stories, calls to action, petitions to sign, ways to “do something.” I urged people to get involved, to join community groups, to call their representatives. All very important things, but it started to consume me.

The constant stream of devastating news, both globally and at home, became overwhelming and frankly depressing. It wasn’t just informative anymore; it was deeply and persistently draining.

My mental health started to decline. Not because of social media alone, but it was undeniably contributing. The habit of scrolling stretched longer and longer, quietly consuming hours of my day. Time that could have been spent being present in my life, present as a parent, slipped by unnoticed, replaced by a constant, low-grade disconnection.

So, on a random Tuesday I deactivated my Instagram account. I deleted the app, along with Facebook and Threads, from my home screen.

Then I opened a Substack.

I don’t have a clear plan for where my Substack will go, and I’m ok with that, but I know I want to focus on my writing. I want to spend more time putting my thoughts into words instead of losing hours in other people’s lives.

Truthfully, my departure from Instagram probably won’t be permanent, but for now, it feels right.

Already, it feels different here. Substack so far doesn’t come with an endless scroll, the invisible competition, or the pressure to perform for likes. It feel light, not depressing, and it feels more intentional.

The community here feels slower, more thoughtful. People are engaging with ideas, not just images, and it makes sharing feel meaningful again. I’m excited to write, to share my thoughts, and to read.

So far different feels so good.

Buy me a matcha! 🍵

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He gave me a book once called The Highly Sensitive Person.

I don’t remember the occasion. It wasn’t wrapped, I don’t think. My dad was never much for ceremony. It was likely handed to me casually, the way he offered most things. Here, you should read this. Like he had discovered something important and wanted me to have it too.

I didn’t read it.

I’m not even sure I opened it. If I did, it was briefly. Long enough to decide it wasn’t for me. Long enough to feel something I didn’t have words for at the time, something close to rejection. I got rid of it not long after.

At the time, I didn’t want to be someone who needed a book like that.

Highly sensitive.

It sounded fragile. Like a diagnosis disguised as a personality. Like an explanation for something I hadn’t agreed was a problem. I spent most of my life trying to be less of everything. Less emotional. Less reactive. Less affected. I thought if I could just dull the edges a bit, life might feel easier. Relationships might feel easier. I might feel easier to be around.

What a gift it would be, I thought, to not be so sensitive.

To let things roll off.
To not replay conversations hours later.
To not feel the subtle shifts in tone, the things unsaid but still present.
To not carry other people’s moods like they belonged to me.

To not feel that particular sting when I’m not included.
To not notice who shows up and who doesn’t.
To not feel hurt, deeply and disproportionately, when someone doesn’t show up for me in the way I know I would show up for them.

I didn’t want a framework for any of that. I just wanted those feelings gone.

My dad saw something in me, though. Something familiar, maybe. He was perceptive in ways that didn’t always translate to action, but every so often he would land on something with startling accuracy. This was one of those times. He handed me that book without explanation, but I think now it was his way of saying, I see this in you.

I just didn’t hear it that way. Or at least at didn’t want to at the time.

I heard, this is something you need to fix.

Or worse, this is something that makes you difficult.

So I got rid of it.

It’s a strange thing, getting older and realizing that sometimes people offer you the right thing at the wrong time. That a gesture can be both insightful and completely missed. That you can reject something not because it’s wrong, but because you’re not ready to understand it.

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about that book again.

Not in a nostalgic way, exactly. More like something unfinished, something I brushed past too quickly. I think about how differently I might read it now. Not as an accusation, but as an explanation. Not as a flaw, but as a lens.

Because the truth is, I am sensitive.

I always have been.

I notice everything.
I feel things deeply, sometimes inconveniently so.
I absorb the emotional undercurrent of a room without trying.
I hold onto moments long after they’ve passed, turning them over, again and again, examining them from every angle.

For a long time, I thought this made life harder than it needed to be.

Now I’m starting to wonder if it’s also what makes my life… mine.

It’s what makes me remember the exact smell of waffles cooking and the way it can carry three different memories of my life at once. It’s what allows me to sit inside a memory long enough to understand not just what happened, but how it felt, and why it mattered. It’s what makes me pay attention.

It’s what makes me write.

I don’t know if my dad understood all of that when he gave me the book. Maybe he just recognized something in me that he also carried. Maybe it was his way of naming something he never quite knew how to talk about directly.

Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe he just thought it would help.

I wish I had kept it.

Not because I think it would have fixed anything, but because it might have softened something. It might have given me language earlier. It might have made me feel less like I needed to be different in order to be okay.

There’s a particular kind of regret that comes with throwing something away before you understand its value. It’s small, but persistent. It lingers.

And it feels heavier now.

He’s gone now, and the book is gone with him, in a way. It isn’t just something I can go back and ask about, or laugh over, or tell him he was right about. The memory of it is no longer just about a book I didn’t read. It’s about him. About a moment I didn’t recognize for what it was while I still had the chance.

I’ve thought about buying the book again. I probably will.

Not to become a different person. Not to learn how to be less sensitive.

But to sit with the version of me who couldn’t accept it yet. To see what my dad saw. To read it this time not as a correction, but as a kind of permission.

What a gift it might be, not to be less sensitive,
but to finally stop wishing that I was.