The Kind of Mother I Want to Be
A while ago, someone asked me, “What kind of mother do you want to be remembered as?” And without even thinking, I said:
“The kind of mother who stayed with herself, even as she stayed with them, who didn’t vanish into the giving, but rooted herself deeper inside it.”
Living that looks like a thousand invisible acts no one else sees.
And maybe you’re not a mother.
Maybe you’ve never packed the lunches or stayed up past your own breaking point to soothe someone else’s storm.
But if you’ve ever loved something or someone so much that you stretched yourself farther than you thought you could… If you’ve ever been shaped, quietly and forever, by a love that didn’t ask for credit, then you know.
You know exactly what this feels like. It looks like keeping their favorite snacks stocked without them having to ask. It looks like knowing which water bottle they'll reach for without thinking.
It looks like baking muffins that aren’t perfect, but are familiar. It looks like remembering secret handshakes at the drop-off line. It looks like staying past bedtime, even when you're exhausted, because you know that’s when the real things come spilling out.
It looks like showing up, again and again, in all the ways that don’t get posted or praised and letting those tiny, quiet stitches hold the whole world together.
Not because I’m trying to be perfect, but because that's how I love. That's how I stay stitched to them. That’s how I stay stitched to myself.
And even with all the holding, remembering, and showing up, there are days when something deeper stirs under the surface.
Not a collapse.
Not a breakdown.
Something wilder.
The part of me that’s tired of being the place where everyone’s needs land. Tired of steadying the ground for everyone else while mine quietly cracks underneath. Tired of holding it all up without ever putting my own heart down.
If you’ve ever felt this way, see this weeks free resource. The Invisible Load: A Resource for the Women Who Hold it All Together.
It’s not that I lost myself in motherhood. It’s that I grew beyond the woman I thought I was supposed to be. And no one talks about that part. No ceremony marks it. No one throws a party for the woman who grows quieter and wilder and softer and fiercer, all at once.
Motherhood didn’t make me smaller.
It made me sharper.
It made me louder in the places that needed protecting, and softer in the places that needed saving. It anchored me deeper into what matters and stripped away what never did.
But there’s grief in that too.
The grief of outgrowing the woman who thought she could “win” at this. The grief of loving so thoroughly, so invisibly, that most of it floats by unacknowledged.
The grief of choosing the soccer game over the massage… again… not because I don’t need the rest, but because I can’t bear to miss it. I thought it was about the way they light up when they see me on the sidelines. But if I’m being brutally honest, it’s really that I don’t want to miss the way I light up when I see them play.
I will always choose them. Because that’s who I am.
Because love stitched itself into my skin long before I realized it.
And yes, I’m happy.
And yes, I know I’m blessed.
And still… no gratitude journal, no self-care checklist, no clever hack can lighten the real weight of carrying so much. No five-minute meditation can undo what this love costs.
Because here’s the hidden truth:
Sometimes joy and depletion sit side by side at the same kitchen table. Sometimes gratitude and grief lace their fingers together and call it an ordinary Tuesday. Sometimes you can love your life with everything you have, and still feel the small fractures spiderwebbing across your chest.
And that ache you keep trying to name?
That tired edge you keep apologizing for?
It’s not a flaw.
It’s not failure.
It’s the quiet, sacred evidence that you are living this life all the way through.
Because your body knows.
Your spirit knows.
They whisper first, then roar:
Not like this.
Not at the cost of yourself.
That’s the quiet ache.
The slow shift no one warns you about.
The lying awake after the house falls silent, feeling how slow it all moves, and how fast it’s already slipping through your hands. The tears that rise without warning, because you’re not just raising them. You’re weathering your own invisible seasons, too.
No one marks it.
No one sees it.
No one hands you a medal for the silent ways you outgrow yourself and stay soft anyway.
It’s not weakness.
It’s not failure.
It’s the sacred, unseen work that life demands from those who dare to love this fiercely:
To keep carrying.
To keep softening.
To keep standing inside the constant undoing—
and still choose tenderness.
So if you feel stretched thin, if you look in the mirror and hardly recognize her sometimes, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because you are living the part of the story no one talks about.
Motherhood will take you apart and rebuild you, sometimes before the coffee even brews. It will hollow you out and fill you back up in ways no one warns you about. It will make you softer where you need to break open, and stronger where you need to build new walls.
It’s holy.
It’s brutal.
It’s breathtaking.
It’s lonely.
It’s boring and overwhelming and too much and not enough all at once.
And none of that means you’re failing.
If you’ve been holding your breath, wondering why it feels so heavy, this is why.
Because you are in it.
Fully.
Heart-first.
All in.
That’s not weakness. That’s devotion at its rawest and most beautiful. You don’t have to do it quietly. You never did.
You are still you.
Not in spite of all this.
Because of all this.
And that?
That’s sacred.
That’s motherhood.
And that’s worth celebrating.
With love,
Dr. Zelana