What “The Perfect Mother Myth” teaches all women.

This is my 20th Mother’s Day.

Each year, I’ve made it a tradition to write a journal entry reflecting on what I’m learning in that current season of motherhood. Today, I decided to write to my past self and to anyone else who might need to hear it.

As much as I enjoy my work on Instagram, it was never meant to be my career. I always imagined I’d write for a living. So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to return to that intention for a moment.

There’s something that’s been on my mind for many years now:

“Mom guilt”

I scoffed at that concept before I had kids. But after becoming a mother, that guilt became the air I breathed. Along with every other mother I knew. 

And I think I am finally figuring out why.

Since my first Mother’s Day, my understanding of motherhood has evolved in ways I never expected. What I’ve discovered over the past decade, through painful truths and years of unlearning, is that mom guilt isn’t a cute little phrase. And it isn’t something that belongs just to mothers. It is the lifelong cultural conditioning that tells women they are fundamentally wrong. It is simply more evident in motherhood than in almost any other arena.

When it comes to motherhood, that feeling of “wrongness” that women are infused with intensifies. No matter your path, stay-at-home, work-from-home, working full-time, step-mom, child-free by choice, or childless by circumstance. Society shouts - YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. Why? Because people who feel “less than” are easier to control. And women who realize the magnitude of their power will not stay quiet.

When I struggled to get pregnant and then stay pregnant, I carried a quiet, consuming shame. I couldn’t fulfill the one role I’d been taught in religion was my ultimate purpose. Did my husband experience that same shame? Of course not.

I assumed that feeling would vanish once I finally had a baby.

I was sadly naïve about the world I was entering into.

The judgment, both internal and external, started almost immediately.

My body was destroyed. I was bleeding, broken, sleep-deprived, and trying to keep a tiny human alive who needed me around the clock. In desperate physical pain, I walked her for hours while she cried, latched her to my cracked skin while I cried harder, and still, somehow I judged myself. Mentally I could not comprehend the trauma that I had endured birthing my daughter. And I judged myself for not being mentally all there. 

I hated how my clothes fit.

I felt guilty for my messy home.

I shamed myself for my unwashed hair, my lack of desire for intimacy, my inability to just somehow “keep up”.

Furious at myself that I couldn’t clear the mental fog. 

People around me and on the internet kept telling me these were the most beautiful days of my life. And I saw images everywhere of women just having given birth in immaculate homes, clean clothes, styled hair and speaking of the sheer perfection of it all. And I wondered: What the fuck is wrong with me?

Yes. I felt joy. Yes. I felt overcome with love for this tiny person. Yes. I felt gratitude she had come to us. And all of that alongside the darkness of overwhelm, resentment, terror, and brokenness.

And then came the terrible messages.

“You’d better bounce back quickly, or your husband might lose interest.”

“Now that you’re home all day, surely you have all the time in the world to create a spotless house. If not, you’re lazy.”

“If you aren’t savoring every single moment, you are ungrateful.”

Society was clear. And this was even before the rise of the Tradwives. Women with children should be grateful, glowing, rested, and thin. It doesn’t matter that you are healing from a major medical event, feeding a newborn from a body still in shock. Consumed by the nightmare of hormones in chaos.

The madness of it now shocks me. That I judged myself for anything during that time.

I wish that my current self could have broken through to her. But I didn’t. As much as I send love and comfort and awareness, I was too broken then to receive them. Yet, I still cry into the universe to her. Maybe in some timeline she will hear me. 

“You are surviving. That is more than enough. Don’t let people who want to control you steal your peace. You are perfect.”

But she didn’t get that message. Natalie at age 28 was too swallowed in the darkness.

I didn’t know the game was rigged.

I wasted moments with my newborn daughter trying to prove I was still productive, still valuable, still enough.

I was a full-time stay-at-home mom for a decade. It really wasn’t an option to choose differently in the religion I was raised in. But surely this was the choice society would applaud. The one that finally felt “correct.” But instead, I was met constantly with silence, judgment, and condescension.

At work events, my husband’s colleagues would politely nod and then shift the conversation elsewhere when I said I stayed home with our kids. Former coworkers expressed disappointment, as if I had thrown away my potential. None of them kept in touch when it became clear I wasn’t returning to work. Friends with careers joked about my ample “free time.” FREE TIME? In 28 years I had never worked harder or been more exhausted. Nothing I had experienced - jobs, college exams, crazy hikes through the mountains of Guatemala - had taken more time, energy, or mental fortitude than having a baby. Those things weren’t even in the same stratosphere. I raged at the injustice. And then collapsed at the pervasive thought that perhaps, I was just weak.

Even other stay-at-home moms didn’t offer the validation I longed for. When I admitted I felt like I was losing myself, I was told I was selfish, that motherhood should be enough. At church I was told to “lose myself to find myself.” I didn’t know yet that I was surrounding myself with the wrong women.

It felt like I had done what I was supposed to do, and still, it wasn’t right. I was judged for choosing it. And judged again for questioning if there was a better, fuller way to live it.

I felt painfully alone. So I started writing. Created one of the first mommy blogs, in fact.

I shared a view into my chaotic world. I dared to write honestly about the emotional and domestic labor of motherhood. I started to build a community around naming those unseen, unpaid efforts. The unbelievable joy and the total hell of it all.

And the backlash was swift and loud.

I was told I should just be grateful.
That motherhood was a privilege, not something to critique.
That expressing the difficulty meant I must love my children less than the mothers who smiled through it all.

What a horrific lie to keep women quiet.

Another baby came three years later. And then another four years after that. I gave myself as much time to recover as I could. Time to savor each baby phase. I was so happy they were here. I wanted them so much. I loved being a mother. And I was crumbling under the pressure of impossible standards.

Meanwhile, my husband, a truly loving, supportive partner who did what he could within the demands of his career, was often praised simply for showing up. “What an amazing father,” people would say, whenever he was visibly involved in parenting or domestic work. You would think he was Father of the Year the way people spoke about him. For simply participating.

And me? I was working myself to death and sometimes into insanity. Up before the kids, down late into the night. Non-stop cleaning, planning, cooking, comforting, teaching, remembering the school notes, making the doctor’s appointments, supporting my husband. And still, I was merely seen as “an adequate mother.” If the house was messy? Failure as a housemaker. Not put together? Failure as a wife. Temper tantrum? Failure as a mom. Not taking care of myself? Failure as a woman.

I was exhausted, depleted, trying so hard, and still wondering why I didn’t feel like I was enough.

I didn’t recognize how society had conditioned me to chase an unreachable, self-erasing ideal. I didn’t yet understand the “Perfect Mother Myth.”

We demand you break and reshape your body in pregnancy, but honey, we expect you to look untouched. (She let herself go.)
We demand you give endlessly of your time and energy, and never need rest, personal satisfaction or solitude. (How selfish. To need something other than your family.)
We demand you be a servant-hearted, cheerful wife who wants for nothing and asks for less. (How ungrateful you are to want him to be a partner.)

When I transitioned to working from home, the judgment only grew sharper.
To my face, from people who claimed to love me, I was called selfish. Neglectful.

My desire to contribute financially and honor my own ambitions was treated as a threat and a failure.
Even choosing a flexible job so I could be present with my children using absolutely zero child care, somehow that, too, was wrong.

“I just wish motherhood was enough for you, Natalie,” people would say.
Friends. Family. Strangers.
Even colleagues, frustrated by the boundaries I had built to honor my family’s rhythm.

But by then, a decade into this lie of the “perfect mother,” the cracks were showing.
And for the first time, I was starting to see through them.

The rage, the injustice, the refusal to submit to being “less than” the rest of my family. 

I finally saw it.

There was never going to be a “right” way to be a mother.

The game was rigged for failure. Of course it was. Women who strive towards unattainable standards lose all their power. 

So I made a choice.

To become the version of woman I wanted to be.
Without waiting for permission.
Without chasing approval from a system that never had space for me in the first place.

What if the most powerful thing I could do for my children was to show them what empowered womanhood looks like?

What if choosing myself made my marriage stronger?

What if I could find satisfaction and joy outside of being a wife and mother, while still being deeply devoted to both?
What if... I just tried that for a while?

As time went on, I began to understand more and more how motherhood had been weaponized. Slowly, I began to remove the weapon’s biting claws from my life.

When my career started to grow, it revealed everything.
I saw who celebrated me.
Who grew distant.
Who grew quietly resentful.
The men that recoiled from my confidence.

I walked away from spaces and systems that demanded my servitude and dismissed my gender. I sought out new ones that honored the full spectrum of womanhood.

I stopped accepting the watered-down, pat-on-the-head kind of validation that I had received in my church. I left those organizations completely. 

Churches where men were leading and making every decision while extending the women a sweet little condescension - “You’re important too.” 

FUCK THAT.

We aren’t important “too.” WE ARE POWER. WE ARE THE CREATORS OF LIFE. And you are fucking afraid of us. So you make us question ourselves until our dying breath. Make us desperate to make ourselves small and fit into a palatable box for your consumption. 

The message I so desperately want to send to my younger self. To all of our younger selves -

Mom guilt isn’t about motherhood.

It’s about being taught for your entire life that there is something fundamentally wrong with being a woman.

From the time we’re young, we’re told that to be feminine is to change ourselves.
To shrink. To soften.

We’re told that our beauty is our greatest currency. That we are to curate ourselves for the consumption of men. But only a version created for us to mold into. That our natural hair, our bare faces, our real bodies aren’t femininity. They're falling short of it.

To be a “correct woman” we must CHANGE from our natural state. Shave, pluck, paint, lift, pinch, starve, smooth, squeeze. Never let the natural states of motherhood or age show.

Society’s obsession with thinness, hairlessness, and zero wrinkles?
It was created by men who fear powerful women and sexualize powerless ones.

To be loved and valuable, we must deprive ourselves.
To be seen and relevant, we must exhaust ourselves.
o be a good mother, we must lose ourselves.

The lie that we have been sold is we must edit ourselves into acceptability.

Once I understood this - my eyes cleared, and my rage exploded.

And even then, being acceptable is not enough.
Women must be extraordinary to be worthy. TO BE EVERYTHING TO EVERYONE.

An average man is applauded. An average woman is a failure. 

All within a system that was never designed for us to thrive.

We are not taught to rest when our bodies need it. The truth of thousands of years of moving within our cycles was lost to bros with podcasts telling us we all have the same 24 hours.

Our health is under-researched. Our symptoms dismissed.
Our bodies misunderstood because they are simply not prioritized.
We are treated in medicine like smaller men.

When we demand to be taken seriously, we are called dramatic. Hysterical. Just go back to the role of servitude and shut up already. Or practice “self-care.” Yet another way to put it back on us to fix the problem,

As if bubble baths, a romantic novel, or more beauty routines fix systemic sexism.

How dare we demand the real self-care of being supported.
To delegate responsibilities without guilt.
To carve out time and space to exist completely outside of our roles as mothers, partners, or caregivers.
How dare we want a partner who actively participates in creating a thriving household.  Because they are grown ass adults and because it’s their household too. Partners who don’t need a list. Because we aren’t their mommies. How dare we want to rest and take time for ourselves without our households falling apart while we are gone.

We demand the freedom to take up space, reclaim time, and breathe deeply - without having to earn it first.

And now, as birth rates fall, we are being asked to do more.
Have more children. Take on more risk.

But where is the support? The safety? The healthcare? The respect?

We are not offered what we need to carry life responsibly.
We are offered judgment instead.

Our most basic human needs are framed as burdens.
As unreasonable demands.

As if asking to be protected during childbirth, supported during postpartum, and allowed to thrive in motherhood is too much instead of the bare minimum.

So what is the message I would send to that 28-year-old new mother? Here I am 20 years down the path, and understanding so much more.

I’d take her hands and say:

Perfection is a lie. And a weapon designed to make you small.
Be the woman and mother you want to be.
Make your own rules. Don’t act from guilt.
Act from the unwavering confidence of knowing who you are.

Help your children feel safe, seen, and deeply loved.
Guide them gently, allowing them to choose their own path, while also living your own beautiful life. Give them the gift of seeing you find your own joy.

Budget for help. Hire the cleaner. Order takeout. Ask for what you need. Make yourself just as much of a priority as your kids and your partner.

Delegate more.
Say no more than yes.
Find power in rest.

The house doesn’t need to be spotless. Enjoy the signs of life within it.

You are not the sole keeper of domestic duties, even if you don’t bring in a paycheck.

You do not have to take on other people’s priorities just because they ask.
You are not responsible for managing your husband’s family relationships.
That’s his responsibility. Your family is yours.

Make meals that nourish, and let them be simple unless it brings you joy to do more.

You are learning all of this for the first time. Give yourself the same love and grace you would extend to anyone you love deeply.

Put your kids in daycare once a week and go chase something that lights you up.
And yes, let it come out of the family budget.

Protect yourself financially. The lie that you will always be taken care of by your partner has ruined women's lives and left them helpless. 

That voice saying you should feel "guilty" for these choices? That’s not your voice. That’s control.

You don’t need to be productive all the time.
You don’t have to constantly evolve.
You are allowed to simply be.

Your time holds equal value to everyone else’s in your home.

Being whole means having hobbies, ambition, quiet space, and firm boundaries.
You deserve to feel whole.

That guilt you feel? It was put there to keep you in service to others.

“Does a man feel guilt for this?” No? Then don’t allow it in. 

Stop explaining your choices to people who think small.
Let them stay small without you.

Motherhood is sacred. It is an incredible thing. It will bring you so much joy.
But it should never cost you yourself.

This is your responsibility now. To stop this cycle. Allow your son to see you choose yourself so that he becomes the kind of partner who supports, not controls. Give your daughters the gift of watching you choose yourself, so they know they have permission to do the same.