When Motherhood Breaks You Open
This morning at drop-off, my almost three-year-old clung to me like a little koala bear. His arms wrapped tight around my neck, his face buried in my shoulder, his tiny voice whispering, “Don’t go, Mommy.”
And here’s the truth: part of me absolutely melts when he does this. I love the affection, the need, the feeling of being his safe place. But the other part of me knows I have to let go. He has to let go. Because even though he loves his day home, his friends, the crafts, the songs, the snacks, he still wants me to stay. And even though I am not working right now, even though I am on stress leave, I know I need these hours. I need the space to breathe, to try to piece myself back together.
And yet, cue the mom guilt. Because there is always that whisper: If you are not working, shouldn’t you just keep him home? Shouldn’t you be soaking up every moment? But here I am, handing him over, kissing his forehead, walking away with tears prickling at my eyes and a lump in my throat, trying to remind myself that needing time does not make me a bad mom.
So, hey. I am back. A lot has changed since the last time I wrote here. My life has flipped upside down, sideways, and back again. Some days I barely recognize the girl who used to sit down and type out her thoughts here. Other days, I feel like I have circled right back to her, only with a few more scars, a baby on my hip, and a great deal more perspective.
And before I go any further, I need to say this: I have been struggling with postpartum since day one. Not just the sleepless nights or the shock of new motherhood, but the deeper, quieter struggles that nobody really prepares you for. The ones people do not talk about enough. Postpartum is not something that fades after a few weeks; for me, it has been woven into every part of this journey, and it is far too often overlooked.
When I became pregnant, everything shifted. It was not the move back to Alberta itself that broke me open, it was the reality of stepping into motherhood without the kind of support I had always imagined. Back in New Brunswick, I would have had parents just a phone call away. Someone to swoop in so I could shower. Friends who would drop by without hesitation, sit with me while I nursed, and remind me that greasy hair, stained clothes, and a messy kitchen were all part of the season.
Here, it was different. I did have a few close people, and I am grateful for them, but they were also in the thick of it themselves. They had babies, toddlers, older kids. Their plates were full too. So while I was not completely without support, it was not the same as home. It was not the kind of “tribe” where people just show up, fold your laundry, or slip a hot meal into your fridge without asking.
And then came Easton. My sweet boy, who also happened to be colicky. Very colicky. To this day, my doctor still shakes her head and says he was the most colicky baby she has ever met. He cried constantly, the kind of crying that demanded to be held every waking, and sleeping, moment. There was no setting him down so I could grab a shower or reheat a cup of coffee. He needed me, always. And I gave him everything I had, even when it felt like there was nothing left.
Mike did what he could, sometimes getting up in the night just to poke his head in and ask if I needed anything. But he was teaching full-time, coaching mornings and evenings, often gone from dawn until after dark. Just a month after Easton was born, he had to travel to Edmonton with his team. Those stretches without him felt impossibly long. And when he was home, I could see how drained he was. As much as I wanted to hand Easton over, I usually didn’t. Because babies feel what we feel. And what Easton needed was calm, steady arms, not the tension that came after a long day at work. So I kept holding him, even when my arms ached and my heart felt heavier than I could carry.
And then there was the witching hour. If colic is hard, witching hour is colic turned up to eleven. We learned quickly: you could not sit down. You just stood, rocked, paced, repeated, for hours. Night after night, until eventually the crying eased, or one of us broke, or morning finally came. It did get better, eventually. But those months felt like an eternity, stretched thin inside four walls, wishing desperately for the kind of support I knew I would have if we were back home.
The months passed, and somehow eleven of them disappeared in a blur. Just as I started to find my footing as a mom, it was ripped out from under me: maternity leave was over. The world expected me to hand my baby to a stranger and return to a desk, as if nothing had changed, as if my whole universe had not been redefined.
I was devastated. Completely undone. I cried endlessly. I was not ready, I do not think I will ever be ready. That was my breaking point. It was not just about being lonely anymore, or grieving the motherhood I thought I would have surrounded by family and familiarity. Now I had to grieve leaving my baby for nine hours a day so someone else could care for him while I sat in front of a computer.
And I hated it. I hated society. I hated the women who had burned their bras for “rights” that somehow left me feeling like my right to be with my child had been stolen. I was angry, furious, that my only choice was to swallow the pain and pretend this was normal.
Everyone around me had the same lines: “This is just the way it is.” “We all have to do it.” “It gets better.” But those words did not help, they made me feel more unseen. More misunderstood. More enraged.
Because this was not just sadness. The grief hit me in my body. My chest would tighten, my heart would pound so hard it hurt, and sometimes it was hard to even breathe. It did not feel right. None of it did. But I felt trapped. We needed the income. And in this world, there is no space for someone’s emotional health or sanity when there are bills to pay.
Going back to work felt like stepping into a different life. There were friendly faces on Zoom and colleagues I had grown to call friends, mostly in Ontario, who were kind and welcoming in that pixelated, post-pandemic way. That warmed me for a minute. But company changes had happened while I was gone and I did not adapt well. What used to be me, the sales shark who put in extra hours and lived for the numbers, felt distant. Nights were still broken by feeds. I was up before the sun, and all day I watched the clock, waiting to get back to Easton. My metrics slipped. I stopped making the money I used to. And honestly, I did not care. All I wanted was to get the day over so I could hold my boy.
When the mass layoff came, part of me breathed. It felt like a strange, guilty relief, finally some space to try and find myself again, to live a little on my terms with Easton while I looked for something new. But job hunting is its own kind of torture. I found myself dropping him at day home to spend hours applying for roles, only to get silence or rejection after rejection. Months went by where jobs I knew I was qualified for never even bothered to call. It beat me down. My ego cracked. The confidence I used to carry into meetings was gone.
I eventually found something and went back. But the months of being overlooked had already done their damage. I lasted about six months before I basically started tearing up all the time. I could not get through a day without crying or having a panic attack. Simple questions like “how are you?” felt impossible. My manager would ask for one good thing each week and I could rarely think of anything without holding back tears. I was trying, so hard, but I was frozen more than I was productive. I would sit, stare into the abyss, and feel swallowed by catastrophic thoughts that made me wonder if I was losing my mind.
By the time our annual family vacation to New Brunswick came around, I was desperate. I needed my family and friends in a way I cannot even put into words. But even that became a battle. I had to go through three different people at work just to get approval to go home. To plead my case for the chance to see my family. And that was the final crack, the realization that I was so broken, yet still had to ask permission from a company to simply be with the people who ground me.
I finally got the approval, went home, and found the perspectives I needed from the people who love me most. That is when I took stress leave. My employer did not push back, probably because it was not their problem if I was not being paid. But then came the insurance company.
The first call was brutal. What I thought would be questions about my ability to perform at work turned quickly into questions about how I care for my son. I made the mistake of sharing that I was in Toronto with Mike for his national hockey tournament, not because it was a vacation, but because in the darkness I needed to be with him. Still, they grilled me. Their tone, their assumptions, their line of questioning, it felt less like an interview and more like an interrogation. I hung up sobbing, terrified that if I said the wrong thing, Child Protective Services would show up at my door.
A week later, another case worker called. Same questions. Same heaviness. Same sobbing. And then, the call that broke me all over again: “Your claim has been denied.” When I asked why, the first words out of her mouth cut me to my core, she basically said to me: “If you can be a mother and raise your child, we believe you can work.”
I lost it. Rage poured out of me. Did they want me to be an unfit mother? Did they want me to neglect my son just to prove how bad things had gotten? I had been clear from the beginning: Easton is my priority, always. His well-being comes before everything, including work. But they twisted my words to fit their narrative, ignoring my doctor’s diagnosis, generalized anxiety disorder and depression, with catastrophic thinking and inability to focus or complete tasks.
And the part that still haunts me? They would never have asked a man those questions. Not once.
Instead of being given the space to heal, I was denied, judged, and left spiraling deeper into depression. And now, while I am technically on stress leave, the reality is I am making no money. Instead of focusing on recovery, I have a new layer of stress pressing down on me, finances.
And that brings me here. To mornings like today, standing at the door of the day home with Easton wrapped around me like a koala, begging me not to go. His grip tight around my shoulders, my heart breaking in two.
The irony is not lost on me: I am not even working right now. I am on stress leave, and yet I am still dropping him off. Part of me feels guilty as hell for it. What kind of mother leaves her child when she technically could be home with him? That voice in my head hisses, “You are selfish. You are weak. You are not enough.”
But there is another voice I am learning to listen to, the one that says, You need this time. You need space to breathe, to gather yourself, to remember who you are outside of being “Mom.” And maybe that does not make me a bad mother at all. Maybe it makes me a human one.
Life has changed so much since the last time I wrote here. Some days I still grieve what I thought motherhood would look like, being surrounded by family, having that unshakable tribe. Some days I still feel the anger at systems that fail women again and again. And some days, like today, I just feel the ache of letting go of my little boy’s arms so I can try to hold myself up for a few hours.
I do not have all the answers. I do not have a neat bow to tie on this story. What I have is this: honesty. The truth that motherhood has been both the greatest love and the deepest unraveling of my life. And the hope that in giving myself a little room to heal, I can eventually come back to both, my son and myself, whole.
Closing it out…
If you have made it this far, thank you for reading my heart. If you have ever felt the same grief, the same rage, or the same exhaustion, please know you are not alone. Maybe this is not a story with a tidy ending, but maybe that is okay. Maybe the point is that we are still here, still loving, still fighting to breathe.
This is just an overview of what I have been through over the past three years. I know so many people can relate and need a space like this to find common ground. I want to go deeper in future posts, into specific moments, feelings, and events, and also into my healing journey.
Because at the heart of this, I want to shine a light on postpartum, how it lingers, how it changes us, and how often it is overlooked.
And if you ever need to chat or just want someone who understands to listen, please feel free to reach out. 💛
Pony Tails High and Messy Buns 