Every mother has a story, but I think a lot of us have learned to tell only the parts that feel acceptable.
We share the joyful milestones, the funny memories, and the moments that look the way we thought motherhood would look, but the harder parts tend to get softened around the edges. We say, “It wasn’t that bad,” or “Other mothers have been through worse.” Sometimes we even dismiss our experience before anyone else even has a chance to hear it.
I recently had the chance to talk with Kim Marshall on The Parenting Lab Podcast. Kim is a parent coach and the creator of Motherhood Expanded, an anthology filled with real stories from women in many different seasons of motherhood - from birth and the early years to empty nesting and grandparenthood.
As I read the book, what stayed with me wasn’t how different the stories were. It was how often I found a piece of myself inside them.
Why Do Mothers Minimize Their Stories?
I think many women have become very good at telling the edited version of their lives.
The version that doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable. The version that protects the people we love. The version that lets us say, “I’m fine,” even when an experience changed us in ways we’re still trying to understand.
Maybe you loved your baby deeply but struggled through the newborn stage. Maybe you wanted to become a mother for years and then felt lost when it finally happened. Maybe parenting brought parts of your own childhood to the surface. Maybe watching your child grow has held more grief than you expected, even alongside all that love.
Those experiences can be hard to name, especially when we’re surrounded by ideas about how a “good mother” is supposed to feel.
But your story doesn’t have to be the hardest story in the room to matter. It doesn’t have to be dramatic or unusual. If something shaped you, stretched you, confused you, or changed you, it belongs in your story.
And when one mother is willing to tell the truth, another mother often hears the words she has been searching for. There is something powerful about realizing, “Oh. It wasn’t only me.”
Motherhood Changes More Than Your Schedule
We talk a lot about what motherhood asks us to do. We talk less about who it asks us to become.
Motherhood changes your routines, your relationships, your body, and your priorities. But it also changes the way you see yourself.
You can miss the woman you were before you had children while also loving the woman you are becoming. You can want pieces of your former life back without wanting to undo the life you have now. You can feel grateful and disoriented at the same time.
I don’t think the goal is always to “get back to yourself.” Maybe the invitation is to make room for more of yourself - to carry forward the parts of you that still fit while getting to know the parts that motherhood has uncovered.
And that process doesn’t end when the baby years do. Our children keep growing, and motherhood keeps changing with them. Each new stage asks something different of us. Sometimes it reveals a new strength. Sometimes it brings us face-to-face with something that still needs our attention.
What If Parenting Is an Inside Job?
One of the ideas I loved most in Motherhood Expanded was that the children in these stories were allowed to be children. The biggest changes didn’t come because the children finally became easier, calmer, or more cooperative. The changes happened inside the mothers.
That felt important to me.
So much parenting advice starts with, “How do I get my child to stop doing this?” And that’s an understandable question. Parenting can be exhausting, and behavior can feel urgent.
But sometimes there’s another question underneath it:
What is this moment bringing up in me?
Why does this behavior feel so threatening? What am I afraid it means? What support would help me stay present? Who do I want to be while my child moves through something difficult?
Looking inward doesn’t mean everything is the mother’s fault. It isn’t supposed to turn into another way to blame ourselves. It just helps us notice where our influence actually lives.
When we become more supported, more aware, and more grounded, we bring something different into the room. Our children experience us differently. The emotional environment begins to change—not because we forced them to change, but because we changed the conditions around them.
It Is Never Too Late to Begin Differently
There is a certain kind of grief that comes with understanding something years after you wish you had known it.
I know that grief personally.
My relationship with my daughter, Georgia, called me into healing in ways I didn’t expect. For a long time, I wished I had done that work before my patterns affected her. I wished I could have offered her the mother I was still learning how to become.
But Georgia was also part of what woke me up.
She saw me recognize the pattern. She watched me begin to unravel it. And together, we learned how to create something different in our relationship.
We didn’t erase what happened, and I didn’t complete all of my healing somewhere out of sight before returning as a perfectly healed mother. She witnessed the process. She saw accountability, apologies, repair, and different choices.
That matters too.
Our children should never be responsible for healing us. But there is a difference between asking them to carry our work and allowing them to see us do it.
Whether your child is 7, 17, or 27, your relationship is still alive. You can’t begin earlier. But you can begin here.
And here still matters.
Sometimes We’re Waiting for Someone to Ask
During our conversation, Kim and I also talked about how much mothers need places where their stories can be heard.
Not every experience needs advice. Not every hard moment needs someone to find the lesson or point out the bright side. Sometimes we need a person who is willing to ask a meaningful question and stay for the answer.
Sometimes connection begins with something as simple as, “Will you tell me your story?”
Being witnessed doesn’t change what happened. But it can change how alone we feel while carrying it.
That may be what I appreciated most about Motherhood Expanded. The stories are personal, but they don’t only belong to the women who wrote them. They create space for the rest of us to think about our own motherhood stories—the parts we celebrate, the parts we grieve, and the parts we may still be learning how to tell.
Every mother has a story. Not because every experience needs to become a book or be shared publicly, but because every mother deserves the chance to understand her own life honestly.
And maybe, when we stop dismissing what we’ve lived, we can begin to recognize how deeply motherhood has expanded us.
Listen to Episode 74 of The Parenting Lab Podcast, “Every Mother Has a Story: How Motherhood Expands Us with Kim Marshall,” for our full conversation. Motherhood Expanded is available on Amazon, and you can find Kim at Roots & Wings or on Instagram at @RootsandWingsChildhood.
