motherhood: between instinct and inheritance

Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.

Maya Angelou

I welcomed my sweet baby boy earlier this year. So, mom of two, here I am.

What a world of a difference it is going from one to two.

Yes, the physical strain is real. Mom brain is brutal. And wanting to be everything each of them needs is a comical balancing act, at times.

But, the most important truth that’s been revealed to me during postpartum this time around is that, they will, without a doubt, feed off my energy, good or bad. They will watch me. They will absorb my responses. They will learn what the world is through the way I experience it.

I continue to be reminded of the fact that I am their guide. One of the loudest voices in their heads. The person they will depend on most.

Loving my daughter was so easy for me. But now she’s actually watching me. Waiting for my reactions to things. Studying my demeanor. Gathering up my spirit like it’s her own.

It feels different with two than it did with just one. There are so many moments where I catch each of them searching my face when we encounter new things—new people, new environments, new experiences. They’re looking to me for all the answers. It’s like they’re asking, Mom, how should we feel in this moment?

What a beautiful gift that is. But, oh man, what an intense pressure and responsibility it’s been to somehow know how I feel about the world and the people in it, be confident in that, and express that to my kids all while I’m learning beside them.

The paradox of knowing and unlearning

Maternal instincts are real. I didn’t fully understand it until I had my own experience.

That deep-rooted knowing of how to nourish, protect, and fiercely love your kids is a privilege women carry. What an underrated superpower that pours out of us so freely. And gives life and sustains life.

We’ve all seen the viral clips of animals protecting their young: guarding, watching, and even sacrificing themselves to keep their babies safe from perceived threats.

It’s primal.

But I’ve learned that motherhood doesn't just awaken our maternal instincts. It exposes our conditioning.

For me, it exposed the distance I'd created between my own knowing and my willingness to trust it. Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing my intuition was enough.

There wasn't a single traumatic moment I can point to. It was a slow accumulation of experiences that taught me to look outside myself for answers—to systems, communities, and people who seemed more certain, more authoritative, and more qualified to tell me what to believe, what to feel, and how to move through the world.

At some point, I learned that listening to myself could cost me connection, and even safety. So I learned to quiet my own knowing in order to preserve what I thought was peace.

That quietly shaped the way I moved through life.

Then I became a mother.

And the very role that awakened my deepest instincts also illuminated the patterns that had been shaping me all along. The parts of myself I had learned to quiet became the very parts I needed to understand.

As motherhood asked more of me than ever before—more responsibility, more vigilance, more of myself—it also asked me to become more emotionally regulated, more resilient, more grounded, and more present than I’d ever had to be.

And I couldn’t do that work without making space for the parts of me I had learned to leave behind.

In that growth, I’ve had to truly examine what I want to carry forward.

The very thing my children instinctively do—looking to me for safety and direction—is what I am learning to offer myself.

I am learning I am capable of being my own guide.

The gift of becoming

What a complex world we live in—to be our mother’s daughters while becoming mothers ourselves. To honor the women who shaped us while learning to trust our own voice.

Becoming a mother creates a unique kind of tension. We want to honor the women who made us who we are—the values they carried, the sacrifices they made, and the love they gave us. And yet, we also feel a deep responsibility to look inward and decide what feels true for the family we are creating.

Sometimes it can feel like choosing ourselves means rejecting them. But maybe the work is not separation; it is differentiation.

It is learning that we can honor where we come from without being confined by it. We can hold deep gratitude for those who raised us while giving ourselves permission to become the mothers our children need.

Not because something was broken before us, but because every generation is given the opportunity to grow, evolve, and create something new.

Our children are not meant to simply repeat our stories. They are meant to have the freedom to write their own.

To trust themselves. To listen inward. To become their own guide.

Maybe that is one of the quiet gifts of motherhood: it allows us to see the women who raised us with new eyes. Not because we suddenly understand every choice they made, but because we now know the weight of what they carried.

As my appreciation of mothers in my life has grown, so has my compassion for my younger self. And with that compassion has come a deeper, more profound joy in mothering my own children.

I think that is the beauty of integration. It allows us to embrace every version of ourselves that carried us to this moment. The daughter. The woman. The mother. The parts we are proud of and the parts we are still learning to understand.

The template my mother was handed is not the template I was handed. And the template I was handed is not the template my children will receive.

Every generation gets the opportunity to write their own chapter.

By addressing my own conditioning, I’ve been given the chance to be more intentional about who I want to be for them.

And it’s in that chasm—the space between what I inherited and what I consciously choose—that I’ve gotten to experience the irrevocable joy of watching my kids become.

I get to notice the moments I might have missed.

I don’t just get to raise them. I get to take part in life beside them.

My kids don’t need me to give them everything. They don’t need perfect meals, perfect routines, or a version of me who never struggles. They need a mother who believes she is worthy of care, too. Because the way we love ourselves becomes part of the story they learn about who they are.

There are times that I’ve found myself disappearing into the act of mothering. But I’ve learned that the greatest gift I can give my kids is a mother who remains connected to herself while loving them.

Maybe motherhood was never asking me to become someone else. Maybe it was simply inviting me to return to myself.