The Honest Mom Project

If I’m aware, I can catch myself thinking, “I should be softer,” or “Why don’t I know the words to any nursery rhymes?” Or my personal favorite: “You should be speaking a foreign language to your baby right now.” (Spoiler alert: I only speak English

Why do we put this pressure on ourselves to be the perfect mother? Where is it coming from?

I’d guess some of it comes from wanting to outdo our parents—to halt the generational patterns that caused us pain. (Mom, if you’re reading this, I know you were just doing the best you knew how.) And the rest of it? We just don’t want to mess up our kids.

It wasn’t about 2–3 hours after giving birth, I had already made parenting mistakes. Maybe 2–3 weeks into motherhood, I started to accept that I’m flawed—and that I would keep making mistakes. And maybe 6–7 months postpartum, I learned to embrace it, if you will.

Somewhere along the way, I welcomed the messy.

I stopped trying to keep my house perfectly clean. I stopped caring if all my baby’s toys were beige. And I mostly stopped listening to my own worst critic. But, what was motherhood going to look like for me?

Being catapulted into new motherhood forced me into a deep kind of self-reflection. I teach little ones, so I know how brutally honest kids can be. They see you—really see you. And I knew my daughter would see me, too. She would see me exactly as I am.

And that scared me.

It made me ask, Who am I? What am I good at? What actually matters to me?

Before I even realized what was happening, I spent months in a whirlwind of self-discovery. I started sourdough, gardening, and even banjo lessons—all while navigating diapers, feeding schedules, and sleepless nights. Crazy, right?

At the time, I didn’t fully understand it. Part of me thinks I was avoiding something—avoiding some really big feelings.

Either way, I had taken on too much. I was to trying to be “complete” before my daughter could see who I really was… talentless, anxious, and covered in stretch marks.

I could never live up to that type of pressure.

All of this to say: somewhere along the way (probably sick and tired of all the failed sourdough bakes) I realized my daughter was going to love me exactly as I am.

Everything I hadn’t learned yet? We could learn it together. And she wouldn’t respect me any less for not knowing it before becoming her mom.

My daughter would see a person that was allowed to make mistakes. Messy mistakes too.

And if I want to clean my house and keep all beige toys, I’m allowed to do that too.

If I spend half the day in my head instead of fully present, that’s okay too.

All of it is going to be okay.

Because at the end of the day, I am the one who gets to offer myself grace.

And the sooner I came to terms with the fact that social media, comparison, and my own shame were quietly defining what motherhood should look like, the sooner I was able to let go.

Let go of the expectations.
Let go of the noise.
Let go of the version of motherhood that was never really mine.

And in that space, I was finally able to see my daughter—

the way she has always seen me.