I became a mother before I became an adult.

Navigating through the burnout, joy, grief, love, and everything in between.

I became a mother before I became an adult. Since I was 19, and for the entire duration of my 20s I have been learning what it means to be a woman, mother, wife, and adult all at once.

Now don't get me wrong, even though becoming a mother at 19 was a HUGE shock, I felt that it was very aligned and that I was ready to take on the lifelong journey of mothering.

What I was not prepared for was the continual waves of grief that seemed to resurface again and again in my experience of motherhood. I think truly at the beginning of my journey, I really had no way to know just how much mothering would ask of me, and how it would radically shift each and every aspect of my life.

I was no longer just my mother's daughter, I was no longer allowed to be a child myself, and initially, I was overjoyed by the idea of it all. I took on the new title of mother with pride and enthusiasm. But what I couldn't see at the time is how much of a load I was carrying in trying to establish complete independence, while also undergoing the deep transformations of pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

About 6 or 7 months pregnant with Veya <3

It sounds cliche, but I truly believed I could do it all. Charged by the powerful and enchanting energy of new motherhood, I was firmly convinced that I had it in me to consistently be the perfectly patient nurturing mother, while also providing financially, and maintaining harmony in the home.

At the time I didn't really have the space to focus much on myself, but I didn't mind. The bliss of motherhood was like a balm that soothed all the frayed and frazzled areas of my life. I felt that I'd awakened a powerful and highly aware aspect of myself, almost like an inner mother goddess that could carry me through it all.

In the beginning, I enjoyed having a family to pour into. It felt so purposeful to have people to feed, to hold, to care for. But slowly over time, I started to lose sense of healthy boundaries. How was too much? I didn't really know. As my husband and I worked tirelessly to manage our lives as new parents, I began to feel as if many of these tasks and responsibilities were the only things that I could do. And in a large way as the mother, some things truly were left solely up to me. The birthing, and the breastfeeding of course, but what about the cooking? The cleaning? The soothing? The money-making? The organizing and planning?

When did I suddenly take on the weight of all of these things? How had I not noticed before just how much I was holding in my own two hands?

Around 2 years postpartum or so, I felt as though I had been thrust into the throes of burnout and grief. I was exhausted every day and dreamed of a time when I could be alone for longer than an hour or two, of a time when my body felt like my own.

I mourned the loss of my childhood, I mourned the simplicity I once knew when I was just my mother's daughter. I mourned the feeling of just being cared for, of not having to do it all myself.

Easeful memories of the sweetest childhood

At the time I was convinced that my irritability, lack of motivation, and fatigue were symptoms of a nutritional deficiency of some sort, and I spent thousands of dollars with a holistic doctor in an attempt to figure out what I needed to restore my vitality. After several visits without much to show for it, it all hit me at once. It wasn’t more nourishing meals, multivitamins, or probiotics that I needed, it was a more nourishing way of life.

I saw that the past 3 years of my life had been lived almost entirely in service to my family. I had no real boundaries in my work, or in my home, and it was draining the joy right out of me.

Almost instantly the clarity of my realization filled me with hope and inspiration. Shortly after this, I received a sizable check from a modeling job I had recently booked, and on a whim, I decided to use a portion of it to book a family trip to Costa Rica, somewhere that I had never been but always dreamed of going.

My little lovie and I soaking up the beauty of the Costa Rican beaches :)

After that trip I was on a steady track of pouring into myself, I was journaling more, yoni steaming regularly, furthering my studies in birthwork, and taking lots of time to slow down and be present with the beauty of life.

After a rough couple of months, my husband and I were strengthening our relationship, and my daughter was thriving in the midst of it all. Things were looking up, and then of course, life presented us with yet another big challenge (aka an opportunity to grow).

4 months after our trip to Costa Rica my husband and I unexpectedly conceived again. Unlike our first pregnancy, we knew at the moment of conception that we had just created a new life. We were already planning to have another baby sometime in the coming spring, so we felt mostly prepared, and more or less happy with the idea of having another, even if it was a little sooner than the timeline we had discussed.

Little did we know that we were gearing up to face one of the most challenging periods of our lives thus far.

In our pregnancy we were forced out of our home, we lost our car, and my work was not flowing like it once was. Things were very tight financially, and as a result, many of the small comforts of our lives were swiftly stripped away from us. I was working hard to make do with the bare bones of what we had, while simultaneously journeying through the great depths of the underworld to unearth all that would be needed to bring this new baby into the world.

Physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally I was being pushed to my limits. Every day I felt as if I was at the end of my rope, and yet I was continually being asked to go further. It’s as if Spirit was telling me, “We need you to be stronger, to hold more, to do more if you are to be prepared for your life as a mother of two”.

I felt everything. Bitterness, resentment, anger, rage, anxiety, fear. All of it in waves, all of it at once, sometimes unrelenting and cruel in its intensity. In my exasperation, I laughed at the irony of it all, but was grateful that I had just spent months filling up my cup so that I would have a reserve of energy to pull from in these hard times.

Around the 7th month of our pregnancy we learned that we would be forced out of our home, and something broke within me.

Something shifted inside me forever, and since that moment I have never been the same. Up until this point, my whole life (comparatively speaking) had been quite comfortable. There had not been a single day where I'd ever had to worry about meeting my basic needs, and now here I was wondering where I was going to live, how I would be able to feed us, and where we would birth our baby.

I felt my emotional and mental health slipping into dangerous territory. This was a state of being I was totally unfamiliar with, and it scared me to know that the fate of my family's livelihood hung in such uncertainty.

I could go into great detail about the dramatic saga that played out in the final months of my pregnancy…roaming nomadically around southern California with my swollen belly like a small gypsy family that had lost their caravan…. but instead I will simply say that in the end we encountered many angels on our path, and it was revealed to us that we were far more loved and supported than we had ever imagined. We ended up finding shelter and refuge in the most beautiful places and found that there was never a need to worry, only a need to trust.

Our incredibly turbulent pregnancy served as medicine for my family and me. The trials and tribulations guided me back to my inner worlds, where the deep work I had accomplished within produced the exact results that Spirit had asked of me. I had expanded my limits, I had strengthened myself, and I had deepened my capacity to hold it all.

Taken on my birthday, about a week before I went into labor. Feeling so in tune with spirit, and ready to open to the power of birth.

When it came time for our son to be born, I was an open portal. I was ready to surrender myself fully to birth and become a vessel for the ancient forces of life and death to do their work. His birth was even greater and more magical than I had envisioned. It was gentle, healing, and so empowering

After so many months of strenuous soul work, I was all too ready to settle for my 6 weeks of deep rest in postpartum. We had communicated the postpartum plan to my friends and family, and we had an incredible birth team that knew the ins and outs of traditional postpartum healing. All of the support systems were in place, now all that was left for me to do was be.

Reveling in the bliss, a few hours after Ausar’s birth

The first couple of weeks started off well, filled with newborn sweetness and nourishment on every level. It was calm but simultaneously very full.

There was so much to adjust to within our own family dynamic, every day felt like a fresh start as a family of four. It was all so interesting and fun, watching the babies start to learn one another, and seeing my husband play his role as a father of two. The first three weeks flew by, and then we decided to a new place in the quiet suburbs of LA.

The environment was a beautiful change of pace, and exactly what we needed, but the hustle and bustle of moving to a new house stirred up old feelings of restlessness within me. I tried my best to reconstruct the dreamy postpartum bubble I'd been living in for the past 3 weeks, but I couldn't deny that something felt different about being in a whole new place.

As the days went on I watched as this feeling of restlessness continued to grow. Although physically I was hardly doing anything, there were many days when I didn't feel relaxed or restful at all.

All of a sudden it's like I didn't really know how to rest anymore.

Once I had this realization it was only a matter of time before I began retraining my mind to naturally gravitate towards stillness. Within a few days, I was able to settle into full presence with my body, my baby, and the perfection of the moment. When I was able to completely let go of it all (the money, the cooking, the cleaning, my social media, the organizing + planning) I entered into a state that was nothing short of pure bliss.

Returning to stillness was a return to an aspect of my most original self. In quieting the inner dialogue of my restless mind, I was able to enter into a state of being that was truly restful in mind, body, and spirit.

Pregnancy, birth, and postpartum are all altered states of mind, and when we can slow down, we can become present with how open we are to messages and insights from the Spirit. Because of this, my postpartum time was filled with the most incredible revelations. In this slowness, I finally found that I had the space to process so much of my mothering journey and gain further clarity on what I actually wanted for myself as a woman and a mother.

As the weeks went on, we grew closer and closer to the end of the first 40 days postpartum. I began slowly integrating myself back into the swing of life and mothering, this time with a greater awareness of the need to honor my limits and take my scared rest when needed. And yet even with this intention, I found myself all too soon back in a cycle of selflessly giving with no end in sight.

I was angry, I was frustrated…but with who? Was there some person in my life that I could freely cast my blame upon? No. (maybe myself?)

I couldn’t help but wonder how all of a sudden I was back to making multiple meals a day, working from home as a full-time SAHM, cleaning day after day after day, all while barely having a moment to take a breath…when I had JUST promised to myself that I would live a more balanced life.

Completely exhausted, I had exerted myself to the point of becoming physically ill in my second postpartum

Was this really just the workload that was required of mothers all around the world? Did my comfortable and financially privileged upbringing leave me ill-prepared for the harsh realities of life?

What was the key to simplicity and slowness in mothering? Was it getting more help in the home? Maybe connecting with a village of mom friends? Or making more money?

Sure, all of these things would definitely create a more easeful experience of motherhood, but it would be naive of me to blame all of my struggles on lack of support, or financial stress alone. In truth, I think that my experience (maybe everyone’s experience?) of motherhood is just incredibly multilayered and super complex.

For me, mothering at times can feel so intense because it’s not just this separate aspect of myself that I can step away from when I need a break.

It permeates into every part of me, it touches every facet of my life. It is a beautiful thing, to have something so purposeful be apart of my life, but in a way, it has become all-consuming.

Motherhood has swallowed me whole.

I see now that time and time again I have allowed all the constant sacrifices, and my undying devotion to my little ones drain me to the point of depletion.

In addition this realization, to I’m *finally* acknowledging that a big part of my burnout cycle as a mom comes from the fact that I am in a continual process of grieving. It can feel so overwhelming at times…living with the weight of all that mothering is, and the massive responsibility it requires. In my case, going from being a child to being a mother (practically) overnight was a huge transition that I’m still unpacking.

I’m just about 5 years into the game and with each step I take on this path, I learn more and more about what it means to bear the title of “mother”. In this stage, it is filled with fulfilling every need of these two small people I created. It is filled with unpredictable sleep, so many big emotions, lots of diapers, and lots of deep breaths through the ups and downs of potty training.

It’s been filled with lots of self-mothering too.

I’ve been teaching myself to be more patient, and how to work through my own emotions so I can set a better example for my children. It’s very deep, this undertaking of motherhood, and I often have to remind myself that the difficult parts of these stages are temporary. The babies will not be babies forever, and one day I know I will surely miss when my biggest challenges in motherhood were simply picky eating and temper tantrums.

And yet, as I write this I am currently going through another grief spiral, a funk if you will, and in this round of my descent, I am coming to see that I am simply exhausted by the mental load of motherhood.

This month has been especially tough, as the kids and I have all been moving in and out of a seemingly relentless sickness. I have been working from home through it all, and tending to the 24/7 demands of our very full lives. Our usual routines are all out of wack, and my body has been screaming for deep rest. Here I am learning again that it is exhausting to be needed when your basic needs are not being met.

This month it feels as though I’ve just been stuck herewith my thoughts, shouting into the void, “Does anyone feel me? Does anyone hear me? Are the other mothers of the world going through the same things?”

In my darkest moments I’ve allowed that little voice in my head to tell me that I’m just selfish and ungrateful. I’ve felt such immense guilt for being so consumed by my own grief. It’s felt like time is just slipping through my fingers and I’m missing out on experiencing the unadulterated bliss of mothering my children…but then eventually I had a break through into a moment of clarity and remembered that like life, motherhood is a full spectrum experience and it is NORMAL for me to feel a total range of emotions in my mothering.

In my cycles of grief I’ve learned again and again that life is a part of motherhood and motherhood is a part of life. The two are inseparable, and it is unrealistic of me to expect nothing but happiness on my journey. At this phase in my mothering, my greatest wish is for me to be a healthy example for my children. I want them to see me and learn from my actions so they can know what it means to take care of themselves well. I want to be able to show them how to FEEL deeply, while still being able to move through and transmute their emotions in a way that allows for growth, integration, and clarity.

The message of this month has been loud and clear.

This deep work begins with me.

The generational healing begins with me.

Which is why I am choosing to make a change TODAY. I am committing to showing up for myself, so I can show up for my family. I am finally going to carve out the time to just indulge in all the little luxuries I forgo day after day in my life as a mom.

I will make a little breakfast just for me before the kids wake up. I will take long walks, and go for runs just to feel the thrill of life coursing through my veins.

I will write unhurriedly in my journal. I will drink my tea while it’s actually hot. I will no longer rush through my showers!

Sneaking away in this stolen moment to write (while the children sleep of course) is like a balm that soothes the aching of my weary soul, and as I sit down to finish this article one week after I've started it I've noticed some big shifts in my life already.

I’ve stuck to my commitment, and I’ve included a few things in my daily routine that are just for me. I've been moving my body with love and intention. I've been taking long barefoot walks around the neighborhood, and making herbal tea in the mornings. I’ve been writing again, and am happy to report that I’ve taken 3 whole showers without feeling anxious and hurried. This past week has made me believe that there is some hope left in the chronicles of my mothering after all.

Did this article resonate with you? Let’s chat, let’s connect, let’s relate together.

I’d love to hear a bit about your own experiences of mothering in the comments. <3

Until next time my loves,

Sydney

p.s. A special thanks to Sarah Orbanic, Tiffany Abdul, Jesse Golden, Synmia Rosine, the whole team at Sugar Heal Gang, and everyone who supported us through the wild ride of our second pregnancy + postpartum. May you forever be blessed and deeply loved.