We all feel it. It may actually be one of the biggest challenges we face in motherhood… navigating the mental and stress load we hold as mothers. We need to hold their big feelings, even though we aren’t quite sure how to hold our own.

You can hardly blame us for being swept up in the culture of busy. It surrounds us in our every day lives, life is busy and I’m struggling to find any parent who can tell me otherwise.

Chasing being the ”good mother” has crippled me. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve sat crying in the bathroom wondering how I am failing so much at being a mother. How something that is so ingrained in my being, a rite of passage for some, felt so unnatural and hard for me.

The reality of raising neuro-divergent children is much more complex. We feel overwhelmed with all the moving parts we have to watch to ensure everyone is happy and regulated. We have moments when we wish for things to be easier. I’ve had conversations with mums who are exhausted from always being on, endlessly jumping from one need to the next, constantly worrying and being in a state of anticipation for the next trigger that could upset one of the kids.

What are the consequences of not embracing self-care as a mother? Being a mum never felt like too much, but right now, I have an unshakable feeling that this is too much. I am struggling, I feel like I have no time for myself and everything is always for everyone else.

I was a mother to two young children, my second literally weeks old and I already felt like I was drowning. The surges of guilt and failure waved through me every hour, on the hour. I couldn’t really fathom that all of a sudden everything felt so hard. I had longed to be a mother yet this was overwhelming, confusing and painful.

A mother’s body can feel tired, weak and no longer in the same form as it used to be. It doesn’t move the same, feel the same, look the same, love the same. But there is so much pressure to get back your pre-baby body and to love yourself - but there is not enough talk about the emotional changes we feel about ourselves after carrying and birthing babies.

I sat slumped against the end of my bed, the heaviness of my own mind making it almost impossible to get up and do what I should be doing - being their mother. That responsibility on it’s own felt like too much for me to hold.

I remember thinking that after the lockdowns had lifted life would just go back to normal. Like the green light meant the stress and build-up of these years would diminish overnight and it would all be better again. But it hasn’t felt like that at all. There is a lingering fatigue and a sense that I should have made changes and shifted things, but I’m back to being just as stressed as I was before.

No one wants to talk about motherhood anger and rage. We are expected to be calm, present, connected and happy… but the reality is we have feelings too. Our experiences as mothers, the changes we go through, the physical demands all contribute to intense feelings - wo why is no one talking about this?