The Grief We Don't Talk About in Motherhood

I recently sat down with Not Another Onesie to have a conversation about something that's often invisible: the grief woven through motherhood.

🪷 Not the grief of death, but the grief of who you were before children.

🪷The birth story that didn't unfold as imagined.

🪷The version of motherhood you pictured.

🪷The relationships that shifted.

🪷The freedom, the time, the finality of watching your only child grow, or the impossible pull of being divided between multiple children.

"What if grief in motherhood isn't something to fix, but something to witness?"

These losses are ambiguous and hard to name, especially when they sit alongside deep love and gratitude. But after over a decade of working with grief, I can tell you this: just because a loss is invisible doesn't mean it's not real.

In the conversation, we explored why our culture struggles to recognise these kinds of grief, how to hold contradictory emotions without needing to resolve them, and what it means to navigate matrescence when it feels like you've lost yourself. We also talked about how grief shows up in the body, the pressure of social expectations (especially during the holidays), and the intersection of grief with postnatal mental health.

Most importantly, we talked about permission.

Permission to acknowledge what's really happening. Permission to grieve while also loving. Permission to be fully human in the midst of one of life's most profound transformations.

If any of this resonates, I invite you to read the full interview on Not Another Onesie.

It's an honest, in-depth conversation about the hidden grief of motherhood and how we can start making space for it.

And if you're carrying your own invisible grief in motherhood, know that you don't have to do it alone.

🪷 Support is available, and your grief deserves witnessing. 🪷