Motherhood, A Sensory Evolution
“No one told me that becoming a mother would also mean meeting myself, maybe for the first time.”
A personal reflection on burnout, masking, and coming home to myself in motherhood.
Nothing could have prepared me for the growth of myself, my becoming, my sensory evolution.
Motherhood awakened me.
Existing in the space between darkness and light. Little did I truly know about myself, and sitting in the discomfort of this parallel existence. One of awe, wonder, and the deepest love and gratitude, completely devoted to my tiny baby boy. It was here I began to learn of the discomfort that came in the stillness, in my own company, truly being with myself for the first time. Every waking moment, dedicated to being the perfect mother, and every quiet moment in between, desperately searching for distraction…
for being with myself was the most uncomfortable existence I had known.
“No one told me that becoming a mother would also mean meeting myself — maybe for the first time.”
It wasn’t until two years later that I would learn the word neurodivergent. I began to understand myself, my neurotype, how my brain worked, how my system functioned, and how my sensory experience shaped the way I moved through the world.
A lifetime of masking, and multiple experiences of burnout finally understood.
Motherhood revealed me like an onion, peeling away at me layer by layer. Each layer brought me closer to a softening, a landing, a remembering. A return to a place that existed deep within me, a place I once knew, before shame, before conditioning, before I learned to mask myself so cleverly in a world that wasn’t built for me.
Layer by layer, I revealed more. I began to soothe my inner child, just as I soothed my own child. Loving my children became a way of learning to love myself, after a lifetime of self-rejection. What a sweet and glorious life motherhood has gifted me.
It turns out… I am not a stupid person. It turns out that becoming a mum gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. The courage to fight for the little girl who once surrendered to life’s difficulties.
I’ll never forget the deep sadness I felt the day I declared I wouldn’t try to prove myself anymore. I was 15 years old. I simply said, “Okay, what’s the point in trying? I’m not a clever person. I’m giving up. This decision helped me to feel safe.
I couldn’t handle another shameful moment or bad grade. Desperately trying to focus, working overtime, yet distraction always taking over. I lived in a space of imaginative daydream. The mask hid it so well. Shamed by my teacher. Ridiculed for another “blonde moment.” Laughed at for my purity.
I didn’t follow.
It didn’t make sense.
What was the point?
It breaks my heart when I think back to that moment,
because it was the moment I gave up on myself,
and I lost that little girl. Motherhood brought me back to her.
Becoming a mother has showed me that I’m not stupid. Far from it. And that I have every reason to devote myself to that little girl, and to the woman I am now.
Through loving my children, I’ve learned to accept and love myself with compassion. Now, in the quiet moments in between, instead of rushing for distraction, I soak them up. I bask in the deliciousness of my own company, and in simply being with myself. How lucky I really am to have made it here.
Motherhood saved me.
It forced me to face my challenges,
to learn how to be vulnerable, imperfect, human, to accept myself and to look for the answers.
And in that,
I found myself.
