Becoming Me Again: A Memoir of Motherhood, Healing, and Holding On

There’s a moment I come back to often. I’m standing in the middle of my kitchen – unshowered, in pajamas, a baby on my hip, a toddler pulling at my leg, and another wailing somewhere nearby. Crumbs are everywhere. The laundry pile is overflowing. The noise is loud, but somehow, inside me, it’s quiet. Almost numb.

In that moment, I feel like I’m unraveling.

But underneath the exhaustion, something else is happening too. A remembering. A reckoning. A kind of becoming.

Becoming a mother cracked me open in ways I never expected – and in ways that forced me to face the things I thought I had long buried.

I grew up in a home where safety was questionable, and where I kept my emotions and fears silenced. There were moments of tenderness, yes, but also moments of fear. Of confusion. Of shame. My nervous system was trained early to brace for impact – there was a constant fear and feeling of abandonment that I held deeply. I always had a lingering feeling of being not enough – that sense of abandonment weighed heavy.

For years, I coped by pushing forward. I chased achievement, relationships, and distractions – anything that kept me from sitting too long with the ache. I didn’t call it trauma then. I called it normal.

But motherhood has a way of pulling the curtain back.

I had my first baby in 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic. The isolation was brutal, but what hit even harder was the flood of emotions I wasn’t prepared for. When my son cried, I sometimes heard my own childhood cries echoing back. When he clung to me in fear or frustration, I felt the weight of every time I had felt invisible as a child.

Then came my twin daughters – two and a half years later. Three kids under three. My body was exhausted, my identity was in pieces, and I was suddenly face-to-face with patterns I swore I’d never repeat. I wanted to parent gently, consciously, to break the cycles. But I was still trapped in them. Not always in how I treated my children – but in how I treated myself.

And underneath all of it was a fear I didn’t want to name: what if what happened to me happens to my girls? That thought haunted me in quiet moments, sneaking in when I watched them sleep or held their tiny hands. The idea that they might ever feel unsafe, unheard, or unloved the way I once did filled me with both terror and determination. It made me more protective, yes – but also more intentional. I knew I couldn’t shield them from every hurt the world might bring, but I could make sure home felt different. I could give them a foundation of safety, empathy, and love so steady that even if life shakes them, they’ll know they can always come back.

Motherhood amplified those old echoes. When my son cried, sometimes I heard my own childhood cries. When my daughters clung to me, I felt the weight of every time I had longed for comfort and instead felt invisible. I wanted to parent gently, consciously, to break the cycles. But I was still trapped in them. Not always in how I treated my children — but in how I treated myself.

The critical voice in my head? That wasn’t mine. It was from far too many years of unresolved trauma. Internalized. And it was loud.

I spiraled. I numbed. I drank more than I should have, told myself it was “just to cope,” even when I knew better. Postpartum depression crept in silently – like a fog I couldn’t find my way out of. I remember looking in the mirror and not recognizing the woman staring back. Not just physically – emotionally. I felt like a ghost of the woman I used to be.

But I also knew this wasn’t the end of my story.

Eventually – I reached out. I started therapy. I began the painful process of unlearning. I got honest about my relationship with alcohol. I got honest about the trauma I had been through and started to work on discovering how it has impacted me, and my life – and how it (my behaviour because of it) had an impact on my loved ones around me. I cried in rooms where it was safe to cry. I stopped pretending I was fine when I wasn’t. And I began to speak to myself the way I now speak to my children: with softness, with compassion, with truth.

I enrolled in school to become a community services worker – not because I had it all figured out, but because I knew what it was like to feel broken and still keep going. I wanted to be the kind of support I never had. To help others name what they’ve been through and know it doesn’t define them.

Now, when my five-year-old tells me I’m “the meanest mom ever” for setting a limit, I no longer hear the voice of my inner child whispering, You’re not lovable when you say no. I breathe. I remind myself – boundaries are love. Regulation is love. Repair is love.

Motherhood didn’t erase me. It revealed me.

And healing – well, healing is messy. It doesn’t look like perfection. It looks like whispering “I’m sorry” and “I love you” in the same breath. It looks like showing up again, and again, and again. Not because I always get it right, but because I believe I – and my husband and children – are worth the effort.

If you had told me years ago that I’d be building a life rooted in gentleness, presence, and purpose, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here I am. Still healing. Still growing. Still becoming.

And that, finally, feels like enough.

With love – Jenn