“You chose this.”

Three little words that hold such big power.

Three little words that keep so many mothers struggling in silence under the weight of motherhood.

Sometimes they’re said out loud. In moments when a mother might dare to admit that she’s tired, overwhelmed, touched out or simply finding things hard. Other times, they arrive unspoken but still deafening. Bouncing around inside our own heads when we feel anything less than grateful for the life that we longed for.

And in many ways, it’s true. We did choose this. We chose to become mothers. We chose to bring life into the world. Whether through pregnancy, adoption or another path. We chose. Often with great hope, intention and love.

But even if we did make a choice, motherhood isn’t a neat and tidy, one-size-fits-all experience. One that locks us into a lifetime of permanent bliss. It’s an ongoing, complex and ever-changing reality. One that brings just as much joy and beauty as it does relentless challenge and chaos. And pretending otherwise is costing us.

There is a strange double standard that exists in how we talk about choice. No one tells a marathon runner that they have no right to feel pain because they chose to enter the race. And no one tells a surgeon that they can’t feel stress because it’s the nature of the job that they chose. But for mothers, choice is often used as a silencer. As if the presence of choice should erase the reality of challenge.

But we forget that we are complex, full-feeling human beings capable of holding multiple truths all at once. You can be profoundly thankful for your children and still grieve the parts of your old life you lost in the process of becoming. You can love your family fiercely and still find the relentlessness of daily care exhausting. You can delight in the joy your children bring and still feel rage when you haven’t slept for what feels like years on end. One experience does not cancel out the other. Both are true. And both deserve to be spoken out loud.

When we internalise the message that gratitude must be the only soundtrack to motherhood, we learn to silence ourselves. We stuff down the harder feelings, telling ourselves they’re not valid. We stop reaching out because we don’t want to sound ungrateful. And instead, we perform. It’s the “all good here” script. The one we follow even when we’re crumbling inside.

But suppressed feelings don’t disappear. They seep out in other ways. They show up in the burnout, rage, anxiety and disconnection. When we’re not allowed to admit the fullness of our experience, we’re left holding it all alone. And that loneliness is far more damaging than the messy truth our feelings ever could be.

What if we told a different story? One where choice isn’t used as a weapon to silence mothers but as a starting point for honouring the complexity of their experience? What if it was a doorway? An opening into a life that might be messier, harder and more beautiful than we could have ever imagined. A life where joy and struggle, gratitude and grief, could sit side by side, as they often do.

Because when mothers are allowed to admit the fullness of their reality, they don’t love their children any less. If anything, they’re able to love more honestly. More freely. They’re able to show up with less performance and more presence. And they’re able to teach their children what it means to be fully human. To feel it all. To name it all. To carry it all. What a privilege that is.

Maybe the real strength of motherhood isn’t in plastering gratitude over every crack but honouring what’s true. I chose this. I love this. And sometimes, this is really, really hard. Allowing ourselves to sit with the complex reality of motherhood doesn’t make us ungrateful.

It makes us human.

Tuesday sharing a special early motherhood moment; feeding her baby.