Mental Health & Motherhood

My Mental Health & Motherhood Journey

I’m a mother. I’m also a bonus mom to a teenager. But I want to focus on my journey over these past three years. I have a three-year-old daughter. She was born in February 2020, literally two to three weeks before everything shut down. And she was born two weeks early! So praise the Lord.

I haven’t really spoken about or shared my birth story. Honestly, there are still a lot of open emotional wounds concerning my experience. Maybe one day I will share it, but for now, I would like to speak about my motherhood journey thus far.

There is one question that people would ask me that I have always found very interesting. After I gave birth, a few asked, “Are you dealing with postpartum depression, have you dealt with postpartum depression?” I always found that really difficult to answer because prior to becoming a mom, I battled depression. Any bouts of depression that I did go through, during pregnancy and after giving birth, really had nothing to do with motherhood at all. Instead, I was being weighed down by all of the baggage that I was already carrying.

I also thought that my experience was unique because I was a new first-time mom and then the world completely changed. All of the emotions that I was feeling because of my birth experience and even my pregnancy, had to be put aside. I went into survival mode. I think all of us did.

We didn’t know what was happening, what was going on. So three years later, I’m still dealing with those emotions. I’m unpacking that experience and trying to navigate what I felt back then and what I feel right now. Ultimately, when it comes to my mental health, there are many things that I am walking through that I’ve been walking through prior to becoming a mother. And now my motherhood journey has just added an extra layer on top of that.

Depression Is Real

Losing Yourself In Motherhood

So many women lose themselves in this new season. This is a concept that always grieved me when I would see so many women attach themselves to this idea of losing themselves in motherhood. And then I became a mother. A few months into my motherhood journey, I did a podcast episode about motherhood. I expressed how it was going for me and that I remained true to the idea of NOT losing myself. Nothing was taken away from me. I felt like I gained, I elevated, I entered into this new era of womanhood.

I think that sometimes in culture when things become normalized, we attach ourselves to a belief. It becomes an expectation. I believe a lot of women go into motherhood expecting to lose themselves. Lately, I have come to this new understanding of the power of words. The Bible says that death and life lie in the power of the tongue. And we hear that so often, but a lot of the time we don’t actually reflect on what these things mean and get a revelation about it.

Let’s think about this for a moment. When God created the world, he SPOKE everything into existence. That’s how powerful words are! The danger in attaching ourselves to things that become normalized and coming into agreement with it when we speak it over ourselves is that we force ourselves into an experience. And this goes beyond motherhood. It could be a marriage or even a career.

I’m really passionate about women being conscious about NOT losing themselves in motherhood because it doesn’t have to be this way. This is not to say that it doesn’t happen, but don’t go into motherhood with that expectation.

Are You Grounded?

I think it all comes down to being grounded. What is motherhood for you, what does it mean to you? Answering that question begins with having a grounding in yourself. Who are you? What are your values? Do you know what you believe? What do you like and dislike?

Of course, life is always moving forward. There are so many ups and downs. But when you have an intention to really know yourself, better yourself, and explore yourself, when you enter into a new season of life, it’s easier to move through that transition. Had I not already been on this journey of healing and transformation, these past three years would have been a hundred times harder. And they have been HARD!

And it’s not to say that I haven’t felt like I’ve lost pieces of myself during this time, but 95% of it really has nothing to do with motherhood! But I also want to shift our perspective about change and how we evolve when we let things go. I am different. I am not the same woman that I was prior to becoming a mother. You do walk into a newness, and sometimes that can be hard to really navigate because we have been conditioned to think that it’s a bad thing. But it is a beautiful thing to shed those layers of yourself that you no longer need.

Many times we hold on to parts of ourselves and parts of our past that can hinder us in the future and the present time that we are living. I’m continuing to discover new things about myself. Motherhood also teaches me so much. It reveals and uproots a lot of things, a lot of trauma that I had buried and hidden away. I needed to look at that, to face it.

This is hard and difficult. But again, it helps when you are already on this path of healing and self-discovery. You may not be healing from anything, but you should always be discovering who you are, and who has God designed you to be.

Unexpected Loneliness

Something else very interesting that I noticed when I first became pregnant was the loneliness that you can feel. During pregnancy, and even after pregnancy, no matter how much support you have and how many people are around you, your experience is yours alone. It’s this really intimate journey that you go on with your body, with your child, and with God.

At times it does feel extremely lonely. And those are the moments where I really have to lean on God and focus on Him. I have to ask him to reveal things in me and to me. To give me the strength, and the courage to continue to walk through this journey with joy. I know that my experience would have been different had I not become a first-time mom in 2020. But I also know that this experience would still have been very unique to me. So I try not to allow that thought to weigh me down.

Empower Yourself

One of the best pieces of advice to give new moms is to ask for help. However, you may not have that luxury, especially in 2020! My first year of motherhood was definitely not the experience that I always envisioned. And that’s okay. But aside from a global pandemic, some people may not have the help. Some people may not have the resources. So I really want to empower you to ground yourself.

Who are you? Who has God made you to be? What is your purpose in motherhood? Because I believe that God really does grace us with a purpose in our motherhood journeys, just like in every other journey of our life. Motherhood has added an extra layer to the struggles that I have with mindset, insecurity, and self-esteem but also to who I am as a woman. The essence of who I am. It elevates my soul.

This is why self-reflection is important. Healing is important. There are so many ways that you can live this out. For me, it’s about my relationship with God and reading the Word, seeking His face, and spending time in prayer. Even when I don’t want to! It’s about journaling and taking a breath when I feel that my life has consumed me.

It’s about nourishing my mind with revelatory conversation AND my body with movement and good food. This is why I’m always talking about cultivating an atmosphere of wellness in your mind, your body, and your spirit. How you show up or don’t show up is expressed in every area of your life.

My mental well-being meant a lot to me before becoming a mom, but so much more because I have a little girl. It is important to me that I don’t impart to her the many struggles that I have had over the years. I want her to see a woman who is intentional about living well. I also want her to see a woman that is intentional about doing the work to really cultivate wellness.

That begins with the thoughts that I used to let control me and the habits that I would give into. I am even more committed to breaking the chains, and stopping the cycles because I know that somebody is watching me. Motherhood has given me a greater responsibility.

I think we all know how important it is for mothers to take care of themselves, but I also believe the practice of self-care can fall flat and become very superficial. Having a spa day and making sure you get your hair done are great things to do for yourself. You should be taking care of yourself externally. But I want us to start INTERNALLY because that is always going to bleed out.

So what are you doing internally? Are you going to therapy, journaling your feelings, are you really thinking about your thoughts and questioning them? Are you praying and really trying to listen and hear God speak to you? What about your body? Are you moving your body? Are you eating well? Because many people lack the understanding that nutrition has so much to do with our minds. And moving our body has so much to do with our emotions and our overall health.

These are the things that we really need to be focused on. These are the things that need to be taught in school so that we know how to show up for ourselves. It’s time to really pull back the layers and do that deep work, that work that feels uncomfortable at times. Because so many of us are struggling. And for those of you who are not yet mothers who desire to be mothers, this is the time. This is the time to really build yourself, to nourish yourself. Because this is a beautifully challenging journey.

Peace, Love, Light