Category: Motherhood

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a mom. It wasn’t a passing wish or a soft hope — it was the one thing I knew to be true about myself. I spent years feeling like I had to justify that desire, explain it, defend it, prove it. Maybe a trained professional could trace that longing back to pieces of my childhood, but whatever its origin, it lived in me with certainty.

And when I finally became a mom to my daughter, the gratitude was so immense it felt like it lived in my bones. Some days it still rises up so strongly it brings me to tears. Loving her is one of the clearest, fiercest things in my life.

But lately, something quieter has been happening underneath that love — a realization I didn’t expect.

In the years I spent fighting to become a mom, I fought so hard for that one identity that I lost sight of the others. I poured everything into proving I was meant for motherhood, and somewhere along the way, I stopped noticing the parts of myself that wanted more, too.

Now those parts are resurfacing. Now I’m remembering dreams I set aside. Now I’m wanting things I didn’t give myself permission to want before.

And with that wanting comes a complicated sadness. A fear that maybe it means I cherish being a mom less than I used to, or less than I thought I would, or less than I’m supposed to. A fear that acknowledging my longing for more somehow betrays my daughter.

I never want her to think I wanted anything more than being her mom. I never want her to feel like she wasn’t enough. I never want her to carry the weight of my becoming.

But I also know — even if I’m still learning to believe it — that motherhood was never meant to be the whole of me. It was meant to be one of the truest parts, not the only one.

There has to be room for both. Room to love her with a heart that feels like it could burst. And room to grow into the woman I’m still becoming.

I struggle with the gray of that. With the unknown. With the quiet moments when longing shows up and asks me to look at the life I didn’t choose. But I’m trying to trust that wanting more doesn’t mean I love her less. It means I’m human. It means I’m expanding. It means I’m learning to hold both devotion and desire in the same hands.

Maybe one day I’ll figure out how all the pieces fit. Until then, I pray I can be the best mom I can be — not by shrinking myself, but by showing her what a whole, well‑rounded woman looks like. A woman who never makes herself less so someone else can feel whole.

A woman who teaches her daughter, simply by living, that love doesn’t require disappearing.