Loving Motherhood, Even When It’s Heavy

The love for being a mum, for me, is all consuming. I love this role. I love these little humans I have. I love feeling connected to them. I love being the person who gets to make them feel safe, loved and seen. I love their little smiles, giggles, and the way they reach for me when they are struggling. Motherhood, for me, is my favourite thing that I do. It is another thing that no one can prepare you for in parenthood: the intense love you will feel for your children that compares to nothing else. You cannot know this affection and how it feels until you are living in it.

Motherhood exists in complexity. Motherhood can be so beautiful and heavy. You can be so full of joy, and exhausted. You can love the life you have and feel like it is hard work. All this deep love that you feel and surrounds you and your children does not cancel out the effort that you put in, and on some days feels deeply tiring. You can need rest and feel incredibly fulfilled by your life. You can long for more sleep, time to yourself, and moments of quiet and also feel such gratitude and love for your little humans.

The weight that we feel alongside all of this profound love in motherhood often comes from the lack of a village around you. You are carrying so much more without support for yourself, and that is about not having as much to hold you, not a lack in what you feel for your children. Far from it. You love your kids so much that you are pouring into them all that you have, while quietly needing more for yourself. You are holding so much internally, and that is why the exhaustion lives alongside the great love and joy you have as a mother.

You can carry all of these heavy emotions amongst moments of everyday magic. Like giggling with your kids over something silly. When they hug you and tell you they love you randomly during the day. When you see their face light up over something they enjoy. When your baby babbles enthusiastically to you or your toddler tells you a long story about their favourite thing that happened that day. When they quietly take you by the hand, rest their head on your shoulder or sing softly to themselves as they play. These moments make up the joy that we feel in motherhood, that sits alongside the heaviness that we feel without wider support.

Loving motherhood does not mean it is easy, and feeling the challenges of it does not mean you are wishing it away.

Finding it heavy is not complaining or being ungrateful, it is feeling and being in motherhood, in all of its spectrum of colour.

Other parents feel this too and you are not alone. So many mothers feel intense love and joy in motherhood whilst feeling intensely tired. This complexity is common, especially without your own mum or the support of a traditional village or network.

Your love for your children is steady and encompassing, and you can carry emotional weight alongside it without it being diminished. Both of these things are allowed to be true. This space is for joy too.

Be gentle with yourself this week.