Author: Emily Harper
Date: April 26, 2025
I’ve been a mother for three years, and each day I find myself further from the joy I thought would come with it. Everyone always says that it’s the best thing you’ll ever do, that the love you feel for your child is something unimaginable, like a light in your life. But all I feel is the weight. The suffocating weight of responsibilities I didn’t ask for.
From the moment I found out I was pregnant, it was like a switch flipped. I’ve never felt this way about anything before. People told me that it would change everything for the better, that I would finally have purpose, but I just feel lost. Lost in the day-to-day routine of parenting—feeding, cleaning, picking up after a little human who doesn’t even understand how much they drain me. It’s not that I don’t love my child, but I can’t help but feel like I was never meant for this. The endless cycles of never-ending tasks feel like a prison I can’t escape.
Every morning when I drop my child off at daycare, I can’t help but feel a sense of relief. I get to breathe again, if only for a few hours. I don’t miss my child when they’re gone. I know it’s terrible to say, but it’s the truth. The quiet, the time to myself—it’s the only time I feel like I’m actually alive. When I pick them up later, I feel my shoulders tense up again, preparing for the constant demands and questions and the emotional exhaustion of trying to be a good mother, even though I don’t know what that really means anymore.
And the guilt. Oh, the guilt is always there, gnawing at me. Everyone tells me that this is what motherhood is, that these feelings are normal. But every day, it feels less like a phase and more like something that I’m just not equipped to handle. I’ve tried everything—talking to other moms, therapy, reading books about parenting. They say it gets easier. They say it gets better. But it doesn’t. It just gets harder, and I get further from the joy I thought I’d feel.
I don’t want to say it out loud, but there are times when I wish I hadn’t had my child. I wish I could turn back the clock, make a different decision, and live a life where I’m not constantly drained, constantly overwhelmed, constantly wondering if I’m doing enough. I’m not sure what’s worse—the idea that I’m failing as a parent or the fact that I don’t even know what success looks like anymore.
I love my child, of course I do. But there’s this part of me, buried deep down, that wishes I could run away from it all. To live a life that’s just mine again. To not feel trapped by the demands of motherhood, to not feel like I’m losing myself piece by piece. I don’t know if that’s something I can admit to anyone without being judged or misunderstood, but it’s the truth.
The worst part? I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling this way. And that scares me.
