A LETTER TO THE MOM I WAS BEFORE MOTHERHOOD

Dear Kim,

You have no idea what’s coming. You’re dreaming of tiny socks and sleepy cuddles, imagining how sweet and magical it will feel to finally become a mom. You assume that if you prepare enough, plan enough, love enough—it will all unfold the way you hope.

I wish I could sit beside you and tell you what’s really ahead. I wish I could protect you from the parts that will break you open, while also gently preparing you for how strong you’ll become because of it. I wish I could preserve your naivety—or at least tell you to soak it all up now, before everything happens.

Your path to motherhood won’t look like the one you pictured. It will be marked by physical scars and emotional ones—birth trauma, the NICU, recurrent pregnancy loss, failed IVF cycles. You’ll find yourself saying words you never imagined would be part of your story. Words that come with, “this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”

You’ll live in constant disbelief, holding grief for the version of motherhood you thought you’d have—and grief for the story that actually unfolds. And the beautiful thing is: despite it all, you won’t ask, “Why me?”

Instead, you’ll lean into trusting the process—believing that this journey, however unexpected, is meant to inform who you are becoming. And trusting that even if you don’t understand why this is happening to you now, you will see one day.

It’s still your story. Even though it will unfold in ways you didn’t choose, it will shape you into a version of yourself that’s deeper, wiser, and more alive than you ever knew possible. You’ll change in ways no one prepared you for. You won’t “bounce back”—you’ll become someone entirely new.

There will be days when you feel like you’ve lost yourself. And truthfully, in some ways, you will. You’ll let go of pieces of who you were: the spontaneous plans, the quiet mornings, the predictability of a life that centered around your own needs.

You’ll grieve that version of yourself—and the grief will show up at times you don’t expect or want it to. But what grows in her place will be softer. Stronger. More rooted.

It will be the you you’ve been waiting for.

Motherhood will hollow you out in moments that feel unbearable. And yet, somehow, the joy will fill those same spaces.

You’ll live with an emotional range that stretches you in every direction—feelings you didn’t know existed, but now can’t imagine living without.

You’ll feel guilt and gratitude in the same breath. You’ll feel love and loneliness, peace and panic, pride and self-doubt—sometimes all before lunch.

It’s a wild rollercoaster—beautiful and exhausting in equal measure.

You’ll look around and wonder how no one warned you about this part. The identity shift. The internal unraveling. The loss of self that happens in the becoming. The parts that changed you—even though you weren’t ready or didn’t want to be changed.

And yet, it all shapes who you become. You’ll carry the grief and the grit. The heartbreak and the hope.

You’ll carry all the versions of you—and that will inform how you mother, and who you are as a mother, in the most beautiful ways.

And when you look in the mirror and barely recognize the person staring back, I hope you remember this:

You’re not lost. You’re just becoming.