I am proud to have my friend - Aubrey Vick, MFT intern, therapist, and owner of Maryville Wellness Center - as a guest blogger this month.

Mamas, please read her insightful and gracious words.

Everyday women come into my office, sit on my couch and trust me with their innermost thoughts and fears. As a therapist who specializes in Perinatal Mental Health - most of those women are pregnant or postpartum. All of my clients are unique individuals who have completely different upbringings, life experiences and traumas, but after a while I started to realize that I was hearing much of the same material.

I had to ask myself the question- why?

Why do all of these Moms believe they are not good enough?
Why do all of these Moms feel like they are failing as Moms?
Why do so many of these Moms have similar birth traumas?
Why do all of these Moms struggle with self care?
Why do all of these Moms struggle with simple questions like: what are your hobbies? What do you like to do for fun?

This question really started to eat away at me.

Granted, I have a sample size that is biased- they are all women who are in the perinatal period and seeking therapy. I started to listen to Moms in general and as a Mom myself around the same age as most of my clients, I already found myself in conversations with plenty of other Moms. I found that I heard the same troubles outside of my office and this was not a phenomenon only occurring amongst Moms in therapy - this was affecting Moms in general.

The ones in therapy just happened to have the resources, support, privilege, etc. to be able to go to therapy. Once I had this realization the questions only grew - why are so many Moms experiencing the same feelings of unworthiness, exhaustion and existential confusion?

Most of the Moms who sit on my couch are burnt out, have no idea who they are, think they are failing and believe they are not good enough. Commonly the cherry on top is some sort of traumatic birth or baby related trauma experience, although this is not the case with everyone. As I started to zoom out and look at the way our culture treats Moms/Women the answer to all of my questions was simple:

Moms are not getting Motherhood wrong- we as a culture are completely failing Moms.

From the very top of our governmental systems down to the bottom person to person interactions- we are unequivocally failing Moms.

Before I give an example I want to mention that this example will be of a cisgender, white, middle class Mom. My intention is not to leave out anyone - my intention is to shine light on these issues reflected in the way I personally have experienced Motherhood and in the way most of my clients have. It is fair to say that Women of color, those with less socioeconomic privilege, and those within our transgender and LGBTQ+ communities experience our failure of Mothers at a much larger and more severe level.

Imagine this scenario: you are married and find out you are pregnant.

It was a planned pregnancy and your family and partner are supportive. At first the pregnancy goes very well but you experience some medical issues later on in the pregnancy which causes a lot of anxiety. You are told that your birth plan will no longer work and although the birth was medically a success - you are left feeling disempowered. You felt unheard and like you had no say in the way you experienced your birth into Motherhood; but when you expressed these emotions you were told by well meaning family and friends that the baby was healthy and that is all that really matters. Already, your mental health and experiences are being sacrificed and gaslit and you have not even left the hospital.

Once you are home you quickly realize that the 6 week paid leave your work has given you is not nearly enough. Your body is wrecked, and your partner has no paid leave, so as you try to recover from birthing a human being out of your body you are waking up every 2 hours. You hurt all over. You are exhausted and the little human you just met is very demanding. You do not feel warm and fuzzy like you thought you would- which makes you think that something is wrong with you. Why are you not connecting right away with your baby?

Your 6 week appointment comes and your doctor sees you for 5 minutes, just enough time to clear you for sex and send you on your way. Meanwhile, you are lugging your infant to their appointments every week or two, constantly stressing over their weight gain. Breastfeeding has been a disaster but all of the blogs you read up to this point say it is important, plus the ACOG just came out and said you breastfeed till 2 years old, so you wince and your nipples bleed and you tough it out.

As the day your maternity leave ends looms closer your anxiety heightens. How can you possibly go back to work? You can barely form coherent sentences. Yesterday, you almost brushed your teeth with diaper cream, how can you function in a fast paced work environment? Plus, securing childcare has been an absolute nightmare and you have not been able to find a reliable provider.

After many tears and talks with your partner you decide you have no choice but to quit. You figure you can go back once you get this whole being a Mom situation under control and once you can secure childcare. You try your hardest. You clean, you feed the baby, you cook, you change the baby, you read to the baby, you buy the brain challenging toys for the baby, you purée sweet potatoes once the baby is old enough and you do all of this on very little sleep. You tell yourself since your partner is the one who has to be at work he should sleep and not do night wakings. But as the days, then weeks, then months go by and you grow more and more exhausted - you start to feel bitter and resentful towards him.

Under that resentment is jealousy. Jealousy that he also just had a baby yet his sleep, his work, and his life seem to be almost exactly the same while your body has completely changed, you forgot what sleep was, you had to quit your job and your entire life now revolves around the nap schedule of someone who is 14 pounds.

Your entire existence and identity have shifted and you have no idea who you are.

As time goes on you are fueled by the idea that you are not doing enough. You could be homemaking all the baby food instead of just some. You could be better at sticking to all of the sleep schedules you have tried and that have failed, you could figure out a way for the baby to nap in their crib instead of on you, you could work out and fit into a smaller jean size if you just tried hard enough. Every time you scroll Instagram you get ads for weight loss programs but you do not have the energy to sign up. You are failing, and you have completely lost yourself. How do other Moms do it? Why can’t you be more like them? Why are you so bad at this?

These thoughts cause anxiety and/or depression until one day you cannot take it anymore and you call to make an appointment with a therapist and you land yourself on my couch.

If any of this resonates with you I will tell you what I tell my clients: this is not a you problem, this is an us problem. From the very beginning you embarked on this journey into Motherhood on a road that is full of gaping potholes and land mines. Our medical system is failing Mothers. Our political and governmental systems are failing Mothers. Our patriarchal views are failing Mothers. Our outdated ideas about what Women’s roles and bodies should look like are failing Mothers. Our baby-centered culture is failing Mothers.

You are not flawed, you are paying the price for our society’s flaws.

You are enough.
You are not a failure.
Your wants and desires matter.
You are worthy of love and care.
You matter.
You matter.
You matter.

Without someone to carry and birth human beings we as an entire world would crumble.

We would cease to exist. Yet we treat the people who take on the most important task of our existence like they are worthless. Instead of treating them with the reverence and tenderness they need in their most vulnerable time - we cast them aside the moment the baby is born. We gaslight them when they tell us how hard it is to care for an infant. We make them believe they must completely give up who they were before for Motherhood, and if they don’t they are labeled as selfish. Sometimes we expect them to drag themselves back into the workforce but still carry all of the invisible load of being the main parent.

After we unpack some of these truths together in my office, we start on a different path to Motherhood than the one laid out to us by our culture.

A path that is free of shame. A path that is gentler and kinder in its internal dialogue. A path that validates the identity shift and integrates who you were with who you are. A path that demands self care, that requires more help and support from partners, a path that requires less of you and that celebrates all of you.

Because you- in all of your beautiful glory, deserve celebration.

Instead you have been cast aside and made to believe your only worthiness is found when you measure up to our culture’s completely unrealistic and damaging expectations of you. Almost every single Mom comes into therapy and when I ask why they decided to start therapy now they say, “I want to be a better Mom to my baby because they deserve a Mom who (fill in the blank)”.

One of my first goals for my clients is to just help them merely see themself again. See themself as a human being who actually matters.

It is so hard for them to see themself in a culture and society that does not see them and who does not make policies that give any indication that they matter. If you have gotten this far and this resonates with you- just do one thing for me - find a mirror, stand in front of it, look into your eyes and tell yourself, “I see you, you are enough and you matter”.