If I’m Honest about … motherhood
Reflections of mothers
With my mother in NYC
I read a Substack this week by Jeanette Winterson about mothering. She’s not a mother herself but has observed many in the role. Her reflections were so striking, they hit me right in the solar plexus.
“Motherhood is a beginning without an end. They are always your children. Whether you feel close and loved, met and understood, or exasperated and misunderstood, permanently judged, never appreciated. And whatever happens, the outcome can’t alter the connection. Death can’t alter the connection. The child is yours and you are the child’s. It might be wonderful. It might not.
Forgive yourself.”
I have found motherhood incredibly rewarding and horrifically enraging at times. For me, it is an intensity of love and protection like no other, and equally a source of immense frustration and sometimes emotional devastation.
Maybe it’s about managing (or not!) my own expectations. Motherhood often arrives with an image of a soft-lit version of womanhood that is selfless but still beautiful, exhausted but never undone, devoted without ever disappearing. A standard set by the patriarchy and f-ing impossible to meet.
For a while, I pictured myself as capable and calm, moving through the seasons of raising children with grace and quiet confidence. I LOVED babies, so it was not a stretch to think with enough laughter and patience, paired with the right sprinkle of boundaries that, somehow, I would rise to meet every moment exactly as it deserved. Much like my own mother (most of the time!).
And then there was the reality.
One ordinary morning many years ago, I was standing at the bathroom vanity applying makeup, while my then 3-year-old daughter watched intently. She was all wide-eyed curiosity, a perfect blend of innocence and possibility. She asked me what the cracks were in my face. After trying to decode the word she used, I realised she meant wrinkles.
My face, like anyone who has truly lived, has lines etched into it, but there was also a heaviness I didn’t recognise in that reflection. A version of myself I hadn’t expected to meet so soon.
It’s a confronting thing, realising you are no longer who you thought you would be.
The mother I held onto in my mind was unshakeable and endlessly present. She moved through chaos without raising her voice. She balanced work and family like a pro. She nurtured without depletion, never lying awake at night replaying moments, wondering whether she had done too much or not enough.
The mother I held onto in my mind was unshakeable and endlessly present.
Photo by Xavier Mouton Photographie
The real me is more complicated.
The lines on my face are not simply the passing of time, they are the accumulation of 20+ years of invisible labour. The ‘mental load’ spoken of so often now it has almost lost its meaning. Emotional vigilance is probably more accurate, for me. The constant, low-level hum of wondering if my children are okay, not just today, but in the long arc of their lives. I analyse their words, their moods, their silences. I question whether I am building their confidence or contributing to the fractures that might one day form in them too.
Those questions leave their mark.
The effort of trying to be everything at once—a present and loving parent, a capable professional, a supportive partner, a functioning human—actually just feels like I’m falling short in all directions.
Perfection in motherhood is a myth we weaponise against ourselves and a way the patriarchy keeps us in line. When we fail, we blame ourselves, instead of the system that set us up to scream in the pantry.
There are amazing days of course, where things seem to run smoothly and I think, I’ve got this. We’re finally set. Then the barrelling in of days shaped by sleep deprivation and overwhelm. The sharpness in my voice that arrives before I can catch it and then the guilt that follows close behind. The moments where I feel stretched so thin I barely recognise myself. The fear that I am not doing this well enough, that I am not enough.
Motherhood, I’ve learned, exists in that tension between grace and discontent. Between who we are and who we hoped we would be.
For a long time, I tried to smooth over that tension, not so much to present myself in a way that felt more acceptable, more polished, or more in control, but as a tactic to convince myself (and my kids) that with enough effort, I could erase the evidence of the struggle.
But the truth is, the evidence matters.
Those lines, those cracks, are not signs of failure. They are proof of caring deeply. Of showing up, again and again, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard. They tell the story of a woman who has been stretched by love and responsibility. Who has navigated frustration and joy, often in the same breath. Who has kept going through exhaustion, doubt, and the relentless demands of raising small humans into whole ones.
There is nothing smooth about that process and perhaps there shouldn’t be. Too often, our complaints about motherhood become tangled up in how others perceive our love for our children. As if exhaustion means we’re ungrateful and frustration cancels out devotion.
But loving our children and enduring the conditions of motherhood are not the same thing, and we should be allowed to say that out loud.
Motherhood is not the polished image I once imagined. Being a mother is messier, heavier, and far more human than that. But within that humanity is something significantly more meaningful than perfection.
It is truth. And if we are lucky, we get to wear that truth on our faces.
Kylie
