Nobody warned me about this part of motherhood.
The part where you wake up one random day and think, “When did I disappear?”
I was going through my phone and I landed on a picture where I distinctly remember, this is from when I was drowning, even though it didn’t look like it. I didn’t know how to explain it. I just felt empty. Flat. Tired in a way sleep couldn’t fix.
I walked around feeling like I was grieving. I just didn’t know what I was grieving.
So I smiled.
I said “Good.”
“Fine.”
And I kept going because that’s what good moms do, right?
But I wasn’t good.
I wasn’t fine.
I was barely holding myself together.
I coped with wine, Cheetos, and Netflix back then. At the time, I thought it was the stress. Or hormones. Or me being ungrateful. But I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety.
But after only 3 months of therapy, I “graduated.” My therapist had given me the tools I needed and helped me process some things that I hadn’t before.
There was something more to the story than just being down.
I was the teacher everyone loved.
The wife who said the hard things and still felt unheard.
The mom who was always worried, always watching, always on.
And I was tired in my bones.
I told myself it was just a season and I could hit pause on who I was and come back later.
But time doesn’t wait.
My son didn’t need me the same way anymore.
My marriage started coming apart.
I ate my feelings while balled up on the couch and cried in the car more times than I can count.
And then one day, I broke.
Motherhood and marriage don’t just add responsibility.
They can slowly replace you.
No one really prepares you for that.
Maybe you’ve been told you’re being dramatic.
That nothing is actually wrong.
That it’s “just depression.”
Maybe it is.
The way I see it, depression makes a lot of sense when you’re grieving.
Because what you’re grieving isn’t nothing.
You’re grieving the woman who never got invited back once the baby years ended.
Or maybe you’re grieving a woman you never really got the chance to meet.
When I stopped trying to bubble-bath my way out of it…
When I stopped pretending I was fine…
When I finally admitted, “I honestly have no idea who I am”…
That’s when something in me changed.
We hold funerals for bodies. But when a whole identity dies? Nothing. Tuesday shows up. Laundry still needs folding. Life just keeps going.
Like she never mattered.
But she does matter. She always did.
And she’s still here.
Waiting.
