Motherhood: Rising and Falling, Day by Day

Motherhood is a strange, beautiful, and often brutal landscape. It reshapes you in ways you can’t predict, tethering your sense of well-being to the small, everyday triumphs and heartbreaks of your children. It’s a role that doesn’t come with a map, just an instinct to keep moving forward, even on days when you feel hopelessly lost.

For me, being a mother is less about identity and more about connection. It’s not a label I wave around, but it is woven into the fabric of my emotional life. When my kids are happy, I feel whole. When they’re not, nothing sits right. It’s as though their moods control my internal weather patterns. Although I can reflect on this dynamic now with some level of detachment when you’re in the thick of it, when you’re sleep-deprived, second-guessing yourself, and drowning in self-doubt it doesn’t feel profound. It just feels hard.

I didn’t experience the euphoria of early motherhood that some people describe. I was certainly astonished at the magnitude of love I could feel for such tiny humans, but I was also terrified. I worried constantly that I’d somehow fail them. That anxiety clung to me like a second skin, making everything feel heavier than it needed to be. If I could go back and whisper to my younger self, I’d say: “Relax. You’re going to get plenty wrong, and it will still be okay.”

Now, raising teenagers, the stakes feel different but no less intense. The emotional demands of adolescence have replaced the small, physical needs of babyhood. And while I might have more experience, I’m still making plenty of mistakes. As a psychotherapist, you might think I’d be better at this parenting thing, but no. I sometimes overanalyse when a simpler explanation would do. When my daughter repeatedly had stomach issues, I immediately assumed it was stress or anxiety. I kept asking her about her feelings, convinced it was emotional. It wasn’t. She was lactose intolerant!

I’ve learned that there’s no such thing as a perfect mother, and clinging to that myth only makes the job harder. I’m sceptical of the idea that mothers have some divine superpower. It’s a lovely sentiment, but, in reality, it lets everyone else off the hook. I once had a man tell me he couldn’t handle his babies crying, but he believed mothers had a special gift for tolerating it. As if we were magically wired to endure the screaming while fathers were not. I stared at him in disbelief. Mothers don’t have a superpower; we just don’t have the option to walk away.

There’s a lot of talk these days about the pressures of modern motherhood, and rightly so. The expectations are relentless. In the age of social media, every decision you make feels subject to judgment. When my kids were small, I was thankfully oblivious to platforms like Mumsnet, where mothers now share their every parental misstep and are met with a torrent of criticism. I didn’t discover social media until my children were older, and I’m glad. Had it been around during those long, monotonous baby years, I know I would have been endlessly scrolling, looking for validation, finding judgment, and feeling even more isolated.

Motherhood is full of contradictions. It reveals both the best and worst of you. It will make you feel powerful one day and painfully inadequate the next. It demands everything and offers no guarantees. And yet, we rise to it, even when we’re exhausted, terrified, and convinced we’re failing.

This Mother’s Day, if you’re feeling stretched thin or questioning whether you’re doing enough, let me tell you this: you are. You don’t need to be perfect. Being present, being human, and being good enough is more than enough.

Listen to my full interview here: BBC Radio Ulster – Sunday Sequence