“Dear Me, Before It All Began”
Dear Younger Me,
You’re probably sitting in a quiet café, latte in hand, scrolling through cute baby clothes online and imagining what kind of mother you’ll be. Maybe you’re watching a mother with a toddler on the train and thinking, “I’ll never be like that. I’ll be calm, organized, and balanced.” You might even have a Pinterest board titled “Mom Goals.”
I know you. You like plans. You like tidy outcomes and achievable checklists. You think if you just read enough books or follow the right parenting accounts, you’ll be ready.
Let me stop you right there—not to scare you, but to tell you the truth.
Nothing will prepare you. And that’s okay.
Motherhood isn’t a puzzle you solve. It’s not a badge you earn. It’s a constant becoming—messy, beautiful, exhausting, and sometimes breathtaking in the most unexpected ways. If I could sit with you right now, before the pregnancy tests, before the sleepless nights, before the guilt and the tiny hands reaching for you at 3 a.m.—this is what I’d tell you.
First: You won’t love every moment. You’ve heard people say that, haven’t you? “Cherish every second!” “It goes so fast!” But here’s the real truth: some seconds will feel like eternity. Like when your baby won’t stop crying and you’ve Googled every possible reason, and you’re crying too, in the bathroom, biting your sleeve so nobody hears. You’ll feel ashamed for not enjoying it. Don’t. It’s okay not to love every part. That doesn’t make you a bad mother. It makes you real.
Second: You will lose parts of yourself. At first, it’ll be practical things—your time, your sleep, your body. But then, it’ll sneak into your identity. The things that made you “you” will get buried under bottles and bedtime routines. You might forget what music you used to love. You might avoid mirrors. You’ll feel like you’ve disappeared. But you haven’t. You’re still in there, I promise. And when the fog clears, you’ll start gathering those pieces again. Slowly. With love.
Third: You’ll be lonelier than you expect. Motherhood is strangely isolating. Even when you’re never alone. Especially then. You’ll be surrounded by tiny people who need you constantly but can’t ask how you are doing. You’ll look around and wonder if you’re the only one feeling this way. You’re not. You never were. Find your people—even if they live in your phone. Message them. Laugh with them. Complain without guilt. You’ll need it more than you know.
Finally—and maybe most importantly—you are enough. Not because you’re perfect. But because you’re trying. Because you care. Because even on the days when you swear under your breath while cutting up tiny bits of apple, you’re still showing up. And showing up matters.
I’m not writing this to warn you. I’m writing it to hold your hand through what’s coming. Because I know you’re going to be okay. Not because you’ll “do it all,” but because you’ll learn to let some things go. You’ll rewrite your own definition of success. And you’ll realize, somewhere between the spilled milk and the sleepy kisses, that motherhood isn’t about becoming someone else.
It’s about becoming more of who you already are.
And that? That’s something no baby book could ever teach you.
With love,
Your future self
(standing barefoot in the kitchen, reheating coffee for the third time, and smiling at how far you’ve come)
“The Motherhood No One Warned Me About”
Dear Younger Me,
Let’s talk about what happens after the baby comes.
You’re going to feel everything—and nothing—at the same time.
The moment they place that tiny human in your arms, you might expect a movie moment. That rush of unconditional love everyone talks about. But what if it doesn’t come right away? What if you feel numb? Or terrified? What if your first thought is, “Wait… this is forever?”
That doesn’t make you broken. It makes you human.
I wish someone had told me that bonding can take time. That love isn’t always lightning. Sometimes, it’s slow—like tea steeping. Quiet. Gentle. And eventually, it fills the room with warmth.
You will also discover a kind of exhaustion that lives in your bones. The kind that no amount of coffee—or well-meaning advice—can fix. You’ll walk around like a ghost some days, your body moving on autopilot while your mind tries to remember who you were before “Mama” became your new name.
Sleep will become your new obsession. And when your baby finally sleeps for three hours straight, you might cry from gratitude… and then lie awake anyway, because you’re terrified they’ll stop breathing. No one warns you about that part—the irrational, aching anxiety that sneaks into your chest at 2:00 a.m.
But here’s the beautiful part: one day, they’ll look at you—really look—and smile. And in that moment, every single thing will soften. You’ll still be tired. But you’ll also feel something bigger than joy. It’s not happiness exactly. It’s something deeper. A quiet knowing that you are their whole world. That you are doing something extraordinary just by being there.
Still, there will be days when you feel like you’re failing.
When you snap because they spilled the cereal again, and then immediately feel guilty for raising your voice. When you feed them cup noodles for lunch and wonder if you’re damaging their nutrition—and their soul. When you scroll through social media and wonder how other moms seem to be doing it all with clean houses and smiling kids.
Here’s what I want you to remember:
Instagram isn’t real life.
Nobody “has it all together.”
And the fact that you’re worried about being a good mom means you already are one.
You’ll also learn to make peace with mess. Not just the toys on the floor or the dishes in the sink—but the emotional mess. The contradictions. The chaos. The days when you want to run away, and the days when you never want to let go. You’ll carry guilt like it’s part of your wardrobe—and then slowly, you’ll learn to take it off.
And while we’re here—let’s talk about your relationship.
Having a baby changes everything. Your partner might feel distant, or even invisible, while you’re consumed by this tiny new universe. You’ll argue over silly things like diapers and whose turn it is to take out the trash. You might feel resentful that he gets to leave the house, wear actual clothes, and have adult conversations. That’s normal.
But you’ll also find moments of deep connection. Like when you both stare at your baby sleeping and whisper, “Can you believe we made that?” Those moments are real too. Hold on to them.
Motherhood will challenge every idea you had about strength, identity, and love. It will break you open in ways you didn’t know were possible. But what comes out of that breaking isn’t weakness—it’s something closer to grace.
You will become someone new. Not better, not worse. Just more you. More layered. More grounded. More whole.
And that woman?
She’s someone I’m proud of.
“Finding Myself Between the Cracks”
Dear Younger Me,
Let me tell you a secret they don’t print in parenting books: you don’t disappear forever.
Yes, for a while, you’ll feel like you do.
You’ll lose track of your own voice under lullabies, temperature checks, and snack schedules. You’ll start answering to “Mama” more than your own name. You’ll forget what silence sounds like.
But slowly—quietly—you’ll begin to hear yourself again.
It might start in the smallest way: you’ll make a playlist of music you actually like. Not nursery rhymes or white noise, but the songs you used to blast in your twenties. You’ll play them while you chop carrots for dinner, and suddenly, your hips will sway without thinking. You’ll hum along. You’ll feel that spark again.
That spark is you.
You’ll begin to want things again—not just naps, but ideas. Projects. Conversations. Space. You’ll realize that craving solitude doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you whole. And yes, you’ll feel guilty about it. At first. But then, you’ll understand: a burned-out version of you doesn’t serve anyone—not your child, not your partner, and definitely not yourself.
So you’ll begin to carve out small windows of time. A solo walk to the supermarket. Ten minutes of journaling. A cup of tea without interruption. These slivers of peace won’t feel like much at first, but they are everything. They are reclamation.
You’ll even dream again—of things beyond diapers and school forms.
Maybe it’s going back to work, even part-time.
Maybe it’s writing, painting, starting a blog (hello).
Maybe it’s simply letting yourself want something without needing permission.
You’ll also start drawing boundaries. Gently, but firmly.
You’ll say “no” to the PTA task that drains you. You’ll stop apologizing for store-bought meals. You’ll push back when someone says, “But you’re just a mom.” You’ll look in the mirror and stop trying to be the woman on that glossy parenting magazine. Because you’ll finally understand: she doesn’t live in your house. You do. And your house, messy and loud and real, is enough.
You’ll begin to see the invisible work you do—not as failure to reach something better, but as the foundation of your family. You’ll stop measuring your worth by how many tasks you completed or how patient you were on a hard day. You’ll begin to measure it by something softer: how much you forgave yourself, how much space you made for joy.
And that’s when something shifts.
You’ll no longer see motherhood as the end of your story, but as a powerful, imperfect middle. One that still holds room for plot twists, side quests, and new dreams. You’ll start to notice that being “just a mom” was never small. It was never static. It was always evolving.
One night, your child will fall asleep on your chest. The room will be quiet. And you’ll sit there—tired, unshowered, and slightly sticky from some mystery snack—and you’ll feel it:
You are still you.
Wiser, more tender. A little braver than before.
And you’ll whisper something you never thought you would:
“I like the woman I’m becoming.”
“You Are Not Lost. You Are Becoming.”
Dear Younger Me,
I wish I could reach back through time, wrap you in a soft blanket, and tell you this:
You’re not doing it wrong.
You’re just doing something hard.
Motherhood will stretch you in ways no one ever prepared you for—not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, existentially. It will ask you to give everything, even on days when you feel like you have nothing left to give. And still, you’ll give it.
But you’ll also learn something vital:
You can give without losing.
You can bend without breaking.
You can be a mother—and still be you.
It took me time to understand that “sacrificing everything” wasn’t a badge of honor—it was a slow erasure. And that real love, the kind that’s sustainable and deep, includes love for yourself too.
These days, I still do the things I used to resent—packing lunches, wiping counters, setting out tiny socks in pairs. But I do them differently now. Not because I’m expected to, or because I want to “get it right,” but because I choose to. And that small shift—choice—has changed everything.
I’ve stopped chasing some mythical ideal of “Supermom.” I no longer believe that my value comes from how clean my house is, or how much screen time I avoided. Instead, I measure success in deeper ways:
Did I listen when my child needed to talk?
Did I rest when I was exhausted?
Did I laugh today?
Did I speak kindly to myself?
There are still hard days, of course. There always will be. But now, I meet them with more grace. And when I mess up—and I do—I no longer crumble under the weight of guilt. I apologize, I forgive, and I move on. That, too, is part of the motherhood I wish someone had told me about.
So if you’re reading this letter now—not as my younger self, but as someone walking their own motherhood path—let me say this to you directly:
You are allowed to struggle.
You are allowed to question.
You are allowed to want more.
And you are still enough.
Not because you did it perfectly.
But because you kept showing up.
One day, your child will look at you—not as the all-knowing, all-sacrificing parent, but as a beautifully flawed, real human—and they’ll say something that will stay with you forever:
“Thanks for being there, Mama.”
Not for doing it all. Just for being there.
That will be enough. And you will believe it.
With love,
The version of you who made it through
And found her way back home
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