surviving motherhood

i've been hiding. from the truth of what motherhood has become for me. from the reality that most days, i'm not thriving as a mother—i'm surviving.

and there's so much shame in that word.

survival.

like it means we're not grateful enough, not present enough, not evolved enough to transcend our circumstances and become the mothers we imagined we'd be.

but here's what i've learned about survival mode and motherhood: it's not a personal failing. it's a systemic reality.

survival mode happens when your nervous system is constantly activated, when you're operating from a place of threat rather than safety. for mothers, this can look like a hundred different things. it's the single mom working two jobs who falls asleep putting her kid to bed because she hasn't stopped moving in fourteen hours. it's the mother dealing with postpartum depression who can barely get through the basic tasks of keeping everyone fed and clean. it's the mother fleeing an abusive relationship, trying to create stability while everything feels unstable.

it's also the mother carrying intergenerational trauma, whose own childhood wounds get activated every time her child cries or pushes boundaries. it's the mother without family support, without community, without the village that was supposed to help raise this child. it's the mother living in poverty, where every decision is about scarcity rather than abundance.

when you're in survival mode, you can't access the parts of your brain that want to be creative, patient, and emotionally available. you're operating from your reptilian brain—the part that's solely focused on keeping everyone alive. and that's not sustainable for the kind of nurturing, attuned parenting we desire to be doing.

the cruel irony is that survival mode often creates the very thing we're trying to avoid: our children feeling unseen, unmet, or unloved. not because we don't love them—god, we love them so much it physically hurts—but because love alone isn't enough when you're running on empty.

i was aware as it was happening. aware that i couldn't respond to my children the way they needed, the way i wanted. aware that the demands of just living—of surviving—made it impossible to tend to their softness. i could see their tender places, their need for something gentler, something more present, but the relentless requirements of keeping us all afloat consumed everything. day after day, year after year, i watched myself be unable to meet them in those soft spaces because survival demanded all of me.

my children are grown now. and the truth i carry today is heavier than the exhaustion i carried then. now i live with the responsibility of what i couldn't give them. the weight of seeing how they learned to expect less because that's what i had to offer. the way they developed coping mechanisms around my limitations. the way they became the children of a mother in survival mode.

we talk about the mother wound as something our mothers gave us, but we rarely talk about the mother wound we create while we're drowning. the wound that forms in real time, in the space between our love and our capacity. the wound our children carry forward because we couldn't heal our own in time to show up differently for them.

this isn't about blame. it's about recognizing that motherhood under these conditions—without support, without resources, without healing from our own trauma—is an impossible task. we're asked to give from wells that have run dry, to nurture from places within ourselves that were never nurtured.

survival mode motherhood for me wasn't just about being tired or overwhelmed.

it was about living in a state of constant hypervigilance where every interaction felt like a threat to navigate. it was having my nervous system so dysregulated that my children's normal needs—their crying, their questions, their very presence—could send me into a spiral i couldn't control. it was the terror of recognizing my own mother's voice coming out of my mouth, the same harshness, the same emotional unavailability, and feeling powerless to stop it. it was dissociating during bedtime stories, being physically present but emotionally gone because staying present hurt too much. it was the shame of knowing that my unhealed trauma was spilling onto these innocent beings who deserved so much better than what i could give them.

but here's what i'm learning: survival mode doesn't make us bad mothers. it makes us human mothers trying to do an impossible job under impossible circumstances.

the real mother wound isn't just what was done to us or what we're doing to our children. maybe it's the wound of a society that expects us to mother in isolation, without support, without acknowledging that we need care too.

maybe healing starts with naming this reality. with refusing to pretend that love conquers all when we're drowning. with acknowledging that sometimes, survival is the most radical act of love we can offer—keeping ourselves and our children alive.

the storm outside is getting closer now. i can hear the thunder. and maybe that's what we need—something powerful enough to break open the silence around what survival mode motherhood really looks like. something loud enough to demand that we start supporting mothers instead of just expecting them to figure it out alone.

because we can't love our way out of systems that don't support us. we can't nurture our way out of our own unhealed trauma. we can't positive-think our way out of survival mode.

but i can start telling the truth about it. i can start by openly saying i failed, i failed myself as a mother. i failed my children, and maybe that's where healing begins.

Photo: Ana Mendieta. Alma, Silueta en Fuego, 1975. Color photograph. © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co. Licensed by the Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York