The Paradoxes of Motherhood

One of the many unspoken truths about becoming and being a mother is that it’s not a smooth, gentle transition, that always comes naturally and only fills you with satisfaction and bliss. 

Motherhood is messy, it’s chaotic and confusing and for many mothers it can feel like an uprooting from everything they knew to be true. It can contain a multitude of experiences and a whole bag of emotions, seemingly opposite or making no sense. 

Becoming a mother comes with paradoxes that turn your world upside down.

Joy and grief.

Pain and awe.

Confusion and a sense of purpose.

No wonder so many mothers wonder if there’s something wrong with them for feeling seemingly opposite things at the same time. You can find yourself feeling a need to be alone and to own your body again and at the same time feeling that you don’t want to leave your baby with someone else. 

You can feel and find a new sense of purpose and know this is your mission and find resources inside you that you never even knew you had. And at the same time you can feel deeply unsatisfied and confused by this new routine, these tasks that blend together in what looks like a repetitive pattern you’re stuck in.

You can feel immense joy and wonder at your baby’s first steps, her accomplishment and evolution and at the same time wanting to stop it all, so that her tiny little hands never stop holding onto you for comfort. 

You can feel like you’re expanding in so many directions and that you’re rearranged and seeing so far in space and time, with such a wide new perspective and still feel that you’re trapped and constricted by the routines and lack of control over your life, over your schedule and your body. 

And so many more.

An infinity of worlds lived in the inner life of a mother. Deeply complex, holding both sides of life at the same time. Ad infinitum. 

So you wonder? Am I losing it? Which one is real? The feeling that I need time for myself or the feeling that I never want to be without my baby? Which should I trust?

The inner life of a mother is deeply complex and multi faceted.

Both can be true inside you at the same time. They can co-exist in your inner world and there is nothing wrong with you. If anything, you are capable of deeply feeling your transformation as a mother, you are aware and alive.

In an emotionally illiterate culture, where we push down and run away from our emotions, feeling so deeply and being present in your transformation can become overwhelming and it is in fact challenging the status quo. 

So when you feel all your experience and allow it to move through you, you also start understanding that you’re so immensely complex that you can carry many shades of life inside you. 

Maternal ambivalence - feeling two seemingly opposing feelings at the same time- is normal and is a common reality of the life of mamas. Feeling joy and anger, feeling awe and frustration, love and sadness. 

There’s the mother you, who feels deeply and is pushed to care for her baby and wanting to be with her at all times and at the same time there’s the you who is not a mother, who remembers your past life, who feels your needs, your wants and pulls you away from being with your child at all times. And that is normal. They’re both part of you and they both live inside you. But particularly in the first months, years postpartum they are often in conflict and pull you in separate directions. 

It can feel very consuming and hard to reconcile two emotions that seem to ask different things from you. As you’re pushed and pulled in two opposite directions it can feel overwhelming. 

Having support and a gentle acknowledgement of your reality can shift the way these emotions run through you. It can help you find a sense of validation and a compass to navigate these intense emotions.

Do you feel pulled between 2 seemingly opposing emotions inside you? I would love to hear about your experience if you want to share this with me and if you want to be held in 1:1 support by me. 

This is also a topic we explore in THE SUPPORTED MOM PROGRAM, if you’re craving group support and a tight group of sister to share with. 

Whatever your season is as a mother and a woman, know that you’re not alone and that you deserve all the support in the world.

✨

holding space for you, mama,

Simona