The One Who Made Me a Mom

Before I became a mom, I remember a friend describing her firstborn son as “the one who made me a mom.”
I smiled when she said it—but I didn’t fully grasp the depth of what she meant.

Now I do.

There’s no way to explain what it feels like to become a mother until you live it in your bones. It’s not just a new name or role—it’s a complete reorientation of self. A physical, emotional, and spiritual turning. The kind that leaves you a little undone and completely changed all at once.

I felt it in the soft, slow middle-of-the-night feedings. In the first moments of panic and awe. In the tidal wave of love and the undertow of fear. In the identity shift that made me question who I even was anymore.

But something else happened, too—something I didn’t expect.
Becoming a mom made me see other moms differently. All the moms.

The ones I’d passed in Target, bleary-eyed and balancing coffee and diapers.
The ones I’d seen gently rocking strollers at the park, or crying in their cars between errands.
The moms I’d judged, or ignored, or simply overlooked.
The ones who looked like they had it all together.
The ones who didn’t.

And it’s important to say this: it doesn’t take pregnancy or birth to become a mom.
Some of the fiercest, most beautiful mothers I know didn’t carry their children—but they carried them in every way that matters. Through adoption, surrogacy, IVF, loss, or complicated journeys that defy neat labels. The making of a mother lives in the love, the showing up, the quiet sacrifice, the fierce devotion. That’s what defines motherhood—not biology.

Motherhood cracked me open in a way I never expected. I started to notice the invisible weight so many were carrying. I began to recognize the tired smiles, the clenched jaws, the deep-breath-before-walking-in-the-house moments. The quiet courage of just showing up.

And I understood, for the first time, what my friend meant when she said, “He made me a mom.”

He didn’t just give me a new identity—he gave me a new lens.
One that’s softer. More tender. More attuned to the grief and joy living side by side in so many of us.

As a psychiatric nurse practitioner, I see it clinically—how matrescence (the transition to motherhood) stirs up everything: past wounds, new fears, identity shifts, mood disorders that sneak in quietly. But now I see it personally too. I see how deeply this transformation lives in the body and the mind. I see how it changes the way we walk through the world—and how we begin to see each other.

If you’re in it now—if you feel like your emotions are louder, your skin thinner, your heart more breakable—you’re not broken. You’re becoming.
And your capacity to feel this deeply is not a flaw. It’s a strength.
It’s what connects you to every mom who’s ever stood where you’re standing.

With love,

Katie