I used to hold space and listen as women spoke of grieving a part of themselves as they stepped into motherhood.

I thought I understood.

Perhaps I did, intellectually, but now I find myself understanding with every part of my being.

There is grief that can come with motherhood.

Grief for the women we once were.
Our freedom.
Our time.
The parts of our lives that belonged only to us.
The village that is no longer there.

After my first daughter, I found women who became that village.

There were texts at three in the morning, reminding me I wasn’t the only one awake, desperate for sleep. The relief of being seen by women moving through the same disorienting terrain.

The second time around, I have felt that village’s absence more deeply.

Motherhood shouldn’t be so isolating. Yet mothers spend their days behind closed doors, holding their children’s needs without the community that once helped carry them.

When the weight becomes too much, we turn the blame inward.

We tell ourselves we should be coping better. We should be more patient. We should be more grateful.

Naming the missing village is painful, yet it brings a softness too.

Perhaps we are not failing. Perhaps the load is simply too heavy for one person to carry.

I often hear mothers say, “I know I should be grateful.”

But gratitude should not make us deny that the initiation into motherhood was never meant to be walked alone.

I can be immeasurably grateful for my children and still grieve what motherhood has asked me to leave behind.

I can love the woman I am becoming and still mourn the freedom of the woman I was.

Neither truth needs to diminish the other.

As Francis Weller writes, “The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them”.

Perhaps this is what motherhood asks of us: not to choose one feeling over the other, but to be stretched by both.

To let grief and gratitude sit beside one another.

To trust that, together, they may ripen us.

I grieve the woman I was.

I grieve the village that is missing.

And I grieve for all the women who have mistaken the loneliness of mothering alone for a failure of their own.