Motherhood Is Hard! You Don’t Have to Love It All The Time
Your Permission Slip to Feel Your Feelings Has Arrived
Editor’s note: This was originally published in 2020, but it’s gotten a 2026 update to reflect new resources and links.
May is a big month for mothers with Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month and Mother’s Day, but my not-so-hot take is that we should be recognizing the importance of women’s mental health 365 days a year.
Maternal Mental Health Counseling and Coaching
Supporting moms in my perinatal mental health counseling and coaching practice is my specialty, and you’ll frequently hear me speaking about this topic on podcasts and contributing my expertise in other media features.
I’ve been in the field for over 20 years, so it’s muscle memory at this point.
Whether it’s coaching via voice notes, walk and talk therapy in Wake Forest, NC, or virtual counseling in NC, SC, and MI, or advocating for policy change, women’s mental health is always top of mind.*
Any time is a good time to talk about making sure moms have the support they need, including giving moms permission to prioritize their own self care!
Normalizing, Safe, and Nonjudgmental Support
Women need a safe place to be completely honest about how overwhelming, lonely, and difficult motherhood can be. Let’s just acknowledge how things really are.
Not as a competition (you know those people who are always all, “oh yeah, well my life is way worse than yours!”)
Not in a positive or negative / good or bad way — we don’t have to label and judge everything
And not to feed into more negativity or the opposite of that, toxic positivity
(Extremes may be our brain’s default for categorizing our experiences, but it isn’t healthy, and you can learn to recognize when you’re doing this and redirect your thoughts. My Coach In Your Pocket service is particularly effective for real-time help with negative self-talk and emotional regulation!)
This is about reflecting on and processing our experiences in an honest way because your story matters! Ready to prioritize your mental health?
Motherhood Is HARD
So here’s my opinion on being a mother:
I do not love it most of the time.
There, I said it.
I don’t love being the default parent. It’s a lot of pressure. And you know what, I continue to do it anyway.
When I feel like I’m failing, I try to gently remind myself that being a mom is hard, complicated, unscripted work. Maybe you’re feeling similarly and beating yourself up about not loving motherhood. If so, you have permission to face these feelings head on and accept them as simply how you feel, not as a deficit or flaw.
We are not saints. We do make sacrifices, but who doesn’t? We have to be very intentional about putting ourselves first sometimes, modeling self-care for our partners and kids.
Mothering doesn’t have to be martyrdom, and it isn’t nagging to simply ask for what you need from the people in your life.
Here are a few of the most challenging parts of motherhood for me in no particular order. As you’ve probably noticed in your own experience, these are all usually happening at the same time anyway.
Constant Interruptions
As a highly sensitive introvert, interruptions are probably the most irritating part of this journey and something I’ve accepted but never fully embraced, and that’s A-OK.
I can acknowledge what I don’t like, put up with it, and savor the rare moments that are uninterrupted.
Motherhood in a nutshell (rough estimate):
50% distress tolerance + 40% exhaustion + 10% tiny sporadic moments of joy
When children are tiny, you really feel like a prisoner to their hunger, moods, bowel movements, and poor decisions. At any point, they could fall and hurt themselves, scream at you, catch a virus, or decide they’re never napping again.
As your child gets older and becomes more independent, parenting changes. It isn’t as demanding in the same ways, but it’s still challenging.
You won’t hold your child for hours while they’re sick, but you will still have to leave work early when the school nurse calls to tell you your child has vomited and is running a fever. And you will definitely still have to manage big feelings — yours and theirs.
Emotional Labor and Decision Fatigue
I had a lot of time between the age of 20-ish and 35 to do what I wanted (within reason). Sure, I made tons of stupid decisions, dated the wrong guys, worked in unfulfilling jobs, and spent money on unwise purchases, but I managed to learn from the consequences, grow up, and figure out how to be more intentional with my choices.
When I was single, I was responsible for myself only, and being indecisive didn’t carry the same weight as it does when you’re responsible for another human being’s physical, emotional, and educational wellbeing.
Molding a child’s sense of individual and collective responsibility, morality, and values is a lot of pressure. I frequently try to remind myself that much of this development happens naturally, and my job is really to step back and allow it. Typical results are not catastrophic; they’re most commonly a minor injury, mess to clean up, disappointment, or emotional meltdown.
Your heart aches as you listen to your child tell you no one wanted to play with him at recess or how a kid told him he was going to hell for not believing in god (I mean, are these really the lunchtime conversations of first graders?!? Yes, in a small NC town, these are the hot topics.)
And the next day, you get up and drop him off at the same location where this occurred, hoping for the best.
What feels like an urge to decide how to react or control a situation is just your brain trying to keep you safe. You may not actually need to step in at all other than to model healthy emotional regulation, listen, validate, give a hug, and reassure them that you love them all the time.
As a mom of a teenager, parenting often looks like encouraging my son to ask questions, think critically, seek to understand others, be curious about the world, express his feelings, explore different interests, make time for physical activity, cope when things don’t go his way, and communicate assertively (e.g. standing up to bullies or lunchtime evangelists who try to force their beliefs on him; BTW, that kid actually moved to a different school, so this problem took care of itself).
Oh, did I mention there’s also A LOT of repeating myself.
Other times we do have to step in, such as when your intuition is telling you your kid may need extra attention at school, when it’s time to register for summer camp, or when your kid has no interest in riding a bike (the answer to this last one for me was to just back off and accept that this one was on him; when he decided he wanted to ride his bike, he got on there and just took off!)
We have to decide if the illness of the moment requires a trip to the doctor or if it’s just a cold.
We schedule the annual well visit with the pediatrician and trust the recommended vaccination schedule because trusted experts have spent their careers studying and developing these lifesaving scientific breakthroughs.
We express concerns about developmental milestones even though it feels vulnerable, and if the doctor refers your child to occupational therapy, you try not to shame yourself and blame your lack of parenting skills as the reason why things didn’t go as planned.
Not to mention meal planning, childcare, summer camp, vacation, balancing career and family, carving out time for social connection, date nights, navigating the relationship with your partner, and managing the endless list of household tasks.
Having all of this stuff on your mind is what we call emotional labor, and it can be draining, leading to decision fatigue.
Most importantly, my job is to love my child and make sure he knows it by communicating it in healthy, respectful ways so that he grows up to do the same for the people he loves.
When I found out I was having a boy, I recall staring at the ultrasound image and thinking to myself, “OH NO, HOW DO I MAKE SURE HE DOESN’T GROW UP TO BE AN ASSHOLE?!?” The emotional labor starts waaay before the actual labor.
It’s overwhelming and sometimes isolating to have all of this on a loop inside your head. The good news is you can have the support of a licensed therapist and certified perinatal mental health specialist (that’s me) in your corner. You don’t have to go through this alone.
NEVER Being Off the Clock
Sure, you get breaks. If you have a supportive spouse, family members, and a village, you may often have time to work, hang out with your friends, participate in a hobby, exercise, or even enjoy an occasional mom-cation. But your kid is still your responsibility.
The term weekend just doesn’t have the same ring to it when you have a family.
Part of the adjustment to parenthood involves redefining the terms ‘breaks’ and ‘vacations’ and ‘time off.’ You never get to just do what you want. There’s always another human being depending on you for something.
You still get to relax and have interests that are yours, but these things look very different than they did in your previous life. It’s ok to have a hard time with the adjustment.
And the adjustment never ends because life is always changing.
Feeling the Need to Add “I mean, of course, I love my child, but . . .” Every Time You Complain
Can’t we all just agree that loving your child ≠ enjoying your child? In my experience, children are some of the most difficult people to enjoy. They learn by exploring the world, and this means that without supervision, they will surely injure themselves or worse.
Come on, your child is not a good hang, and that is fine.
They are incapable of managing their emotions, a skill that takes years and years to master. I love my child, and he annoys the shit out of me. BOTH are true. I love my child, and I need time away from him. Same goes for my spouse.
There are so many ways to be a good mother.
Good mothers don’t have to breastfeed their newborn.
Good mothers send their babies to daycare.
Good mothers don’t volunteer for the school PTA.
Good mothers don’t host a birthday party every year.
AND other good mothers do do all of these things.
Good mothers get frustrated with their children.
Good mothers fantasize about a life without children.
Good mothers dream of running away from it all. As Karen Kleiman says in the title of her wonderful book, Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts.
If you take nothing else from this post, remember this one thing:
Life is mostly BOTH/AND (not either/or).
Two very different feelings can be true at the same time.
You can be BOTH completely in love with your child AND extremely frustrated that he or she won’t sleep through the night.
You can want to be BOTH a mother AND a _________ (pharmacist, doctor, marketing executive, entrepreneur, teacher, nurse, landscaper, aspiring YouTube star, real estate agent, CEO, therapist, crafting enthusiast, skydiver, . . .)
You can want BOTH a family trip to the mountains AND a romantic getaway without your kid (AND a solo retreat for yourself to recover!)
Playing Pretend
I understand the importance of play, and I love certain types of play, but I had to include this one because I know how common it is for highly sensitive and/or introverted moms to really dislike pretend play with their child.
I enjoy playing cards and board games, drawing and coloring, doing Mad Libs, and solving puzzles.
When my son was younger, I enjoyed watching him perform a play he’d written with his stuffed animals or play a song he wrote on his keyboard or ukelele.
But if he asked me to be involved in a war between the dragons and lego men, or “play school” (which was basically his way of getting to be the boss), I had a very hard time being present.
It’s totally fine to not love playing pretend and to be grateful when your kid grows out of this stage. Personally, I found it very taxing. As an anxious introvert, I have a hard time with on-the-spot spontaneous creativity.
Playing pretend is basically improv, and I have never had the desire to do that. Did I do it anyway? Of course, sometimes.
When he was younger, I’d allow my son to lead us on a journey or quest into the woods or a tour of his “castle grounds.”
I’d push myself to go along with being a student in his classroom. But it’s really draining, and I didn’t enjoy it.
Now that he’s a teenager, we can enjoy different activities together, such as strength training, discussing history and politics (when he’s talking to us, that is), traveling to new places, and watching old episodes of “The Simpsons” or “The Good Place.” We can enjoy a lot of the same entertainment, and that’s extremely freeing in a way.
Final thoughts
Basically, I’m encouraging you to acknowledge and accept your feelings.
Do your best to cope with the stuff you don’t really like about motherhood.
Talk to your partner about how they can take some things off your plate, or just ask them to listen to some of the worries keeping you awake at night.
Don’t compare your wants, desires, situation, feelings, and thoughts to those of other women. Remember Amy Poehler’s mantra from her book, Yes, Please: “Good for her, not for me.”
Think about your values, what matters for you and your family, what you want to teach your child about living a full life.
And then figure out how to practice gratitude that you are here, and you are amazing simply because you’re YOU.
Remember, progress over perfection.
Let me know what you despise about motherhood! Let’s rant a little together AND celebrate the moments of joy with gratitude.
I can’t wait to find out if we hate all the same things!
Wherever you are in your motherhood adventure, I’d love to support you. Check out my Coach In Your Pocket service to learn more.
*Wondering about the difference between coaching and counseling or confused about the kind of support you need? I got you. Schedule a call, and we’ll decide together.
