-An Honest Confession
My story - many times told, never written before…
An early morning. Life of a dream came true. Early spring, we just moved into our 3rd house. I have everything I ever could wish for: freedom to be, our children home with me, a house I dreamt of, wonderful partner, nights full of sleep. We bake pancakes over fire all day long, walk barefoot around, explore the forest in our backyard. The air smells of pine needles and possibility. On paper, it's perfect. I had it all and yet I felt I don't have anything.
I am brewing first cup of coffee, the rich aroma filling our kitchen, when I hear the steps on the top floor. Tiny feet moving slowly above my head, like a countdown to my daily overwhelm. Each creak of the floorboards sends ripples of anxiety through my body.
I freeze, my stomach twists into knots, I want to cry: they are up, one more day of being someone's everything - constant work, asking, answering, serving, preparing, cleaning, wiping tears off, brushing teeth, more games, more food, more plates to wash... The endless cycle that starts before I can even take my first sip of coffee. The morning light streams through our windows, highlighting the fingerprints on the glass - a testament to the little lives that depend on me, that both fill and drain me.
I love them. I love being a mom. What is wrong with me? The guilt of these thoughts weighs heavier than all the laundry baskets combined. Each moment of resentment feels like a betrayal of the life I'd dreamed of, the mother I thought I'd be.
I remember the day we walked in the forest with our friends, the leaves crunching beneath our feet, children running ahead like wild creatures. I confessed to my friend how poor I feel, how horrible I am. The words tumbled out like autumn leaves, impossible to catch or take back. She told me her story of her burnout, and the more she kept telling about it, the more things from my own inner fight I could recognize in her words. It was like looking into a mirror I'd been avoiding.
I knew, there and then, how it was nothing wrong with me, my life or my kids. But I knew too I didn't want to be this version of myself. I didn't want to be the tired, used, angry, yelling person not enjoying the most precious moments of my own life. The realization hit me like a wave - both devastating and cleansing.
I went back home, I cried for many days and I decided to do something about it. My friend recommended her therapist, who would become mine too. It is to this day one of the best decisions I have ever made and best invested money, for sure.
Sometimes the most important investments we make are in the parts of ourselves that nobody else can see.
I started my therapy in April 2020. It was many early walks before kids were up. My therapist (and now mentor) lives in Australia so the time difference made us find impossible time gaps in our calendar. Those early morning therapy sessions became my lifeline. Sitting in the dewy grass, phone in hand, whispering my truth while the world slept. Sometimes a bird would join our session, its song a reminder that beauty exists even in the broken places. My therapist taught me to see my burnout not as a failure, but as my body and soul crying out for attention after years of putting others first.
It was the most beautiful therapy I could ever wish for: I took her into nature with me and she took me on the inner journey. Through screens and across oceans, we wandered through the landscapes of my past, present, and possible futures.
I learned so much in that period: my childhood wounds, traumas, triggers, forgiveness and self-love. Most of all it was about self-love - finding all inner pieces and giving them love and attention needed and accepting myself for exactly who I am and not the one I am trying to be. Each session was like archeology of the soul, carefully dusting off buried pieces of myself and holding them to the light.
With my inner acceptance came long-wanted love: I found my home inside of who I am and I started giving myself what my heart whispered. I grieved over the loss of my father, my own identity loss after moving abroad, my need to fit in and all the time and energy I spent trying to be someone I thought the world wanted me to be. Grief, I learned, isn't just about death - it's about all the versions of ourselves we leave behind.
Along with my inner changes came the need for movement. I came back to yoga. At first it was 10-15 minutes a day. Small pockets of time in such a busy life. The kids were small and needed so much back then. But with the time I used on my own needs came much more peace, love and understanding. Each stretch, each breath became a way of reclaiming my body as my own.
After many months, the joy came back in my everyday. I was living the best life ever: we homeschooled, had a lot of connections and deep healing came with those bonds. Our days took on a rhythm of their own, less rushed, more intentional.
I found "The Power of Now" by E. Tolle and listened to it on my long walks with a toddler in the pram. I found myself so present I didn't even know was possible, I went to women's circles and cacao ceremonies, I had my first kundalini awakening (the one I didn't know I had before long time after) and everything was intense, vivid and alive. Colors seemed brighter, emotions deeper, connections more meaningful.
It was that life I knew I would never give up on. Not even seeing my partner in the deepest dark and pain, not even standing in the middle of renovations and work. It was such a messy and hard period of our lives - the one that would eventually push us into traveling adventure and change everything. Sometimes chaos is just transformation in disguise.
But my inner changes wouldn't stop there. I experienced very powerful work of Somatic Experiencing and Peter Levine's work will forever stay in my personal and professional imprint. The anger had lived in my body like an unwelcome guest, tensing my shoulders, clenching my jaw, shortening my breath. Learning to release it felt like finally exhaling after holding my breath for years. It wasn't pretty - sometimes I would go to the forest and scream into a pillow, or write furious letters that I would later burn. But each release made more room for peace, for patience, for presence with my children.
I found how much investing in my own invisible account brings goodness in all our lives. I learned too how work isn't just the one that brings a paycheck every month but can be so much more and so many different contributions. The work of becoming ourselves might be the most important work we ever do.
My kids will say how I stopped yelling after I started to practice yoga again. I will know how I stopped yelling after I understood my anger and all the years of accumulated anger that never was allowed to come out. I found my own ways of accepting that anger: allowing it to be, to come out away from others while I hold my own space and acknowledged it for what it brought to me. My inner peace came along with anger being accepted.
I learned to love all emotions and I stopped seeing them as good and bad ones. I see emotions now for what they are and I accept them all: both my own and my children's. They're like weather patterns passing through - some stormy, some sunny, all necessary.
It was back there and then that I decided to be a coach and space holder, yoga teacher and later meditation teacher too. I took many workshops and 2 mentoring programs and I worked with people from different backgrounds and cultures all together in what I love most: being the listener I am: empathetic and loving one. My own healing became a bridge to help others cross their difficult waters.
I entered my 40's this year and I still look back on the 30's as the best decade so far: being a mother I always wanted to be, loving partner and a wonderful person I accept myself to be. So much good came out of that one burnout and my own honesty and a bit of bravery to take the first step to recovery. Sometimes we have to break open to become whole.
I have many personal stories before that time: hard periods, depression and a lot of guilt. I was not always able to be with my own children and their feelings as it was too much for me - not knowing how to deal with my own emotions disabled me to be with theirs too. I hated when they cried, I hated when they had tantrums and I hated when there was everything in between. Each outburst was like a mirror showing me my own unprocessed pain.
Being a mother isn't easy: being a mother comes with mirrors that our own children hold in front of us and the reflection we meet in them isn't pretty or pleasant. But maybe that's the point - they show us exactly where we need to grow.
Now, watching my children play in the same forest where I once felt so lost, I see how far we've all come. They're more confident, more expressive, more themselves - because I learned to be more myself. The burns of burnout became the fire that forged a stronger, more authentic way of being. Every day isn't perfect - there are still moments of overwhelm, still dishes in the sink, still chaos in the corners. But now I know that it's all part of the beautiful mess of motherhood, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
What they taught me so far is to try and to be honest: not knowing everything is ok, failing is ok, learning is ok and standing there in those moments is ok as long as we try and do our best, say "I am sorry" and try to do better in the future.
I am not perfect and I know that perfection doesn't exist. I don't try to reach that, that isn't a goal at all. The goal is following on this journey and learning along the way. Each day is a new page in our story, written in playground sand and sticky fingerprints, in tears and laughter, in small victories and gentle beginnings.
I know how little I know, but that only makes me want to know more. And maybe that's the greatest lesson of all - that motherhood isn't about having all the answers, but about being brave enough to keep asking the questions, brave enough to keep growing, brave enough to let our children see us learn.
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