The Mother I Was vs. The Mother I’m Becoming

There was a version of me that thought love was enough.

That if I loved them hard, stayed, provided, showed up in the ways I knew how… that it would cover the rest. And for a long time, I believed that. Because I wasn’t trying to hurt them. I wasn’t trying to create damage. I was doing what I thought was right with what I had at the time.

But what I didn’t understand then is that love doesn’t cancel out impact.

You can love your kids deeply and still affect them in ways you didn’t intend.

That’s a hard truth to sit with.

Especially as a mother.

Especially when you start to see things more clearly.

Living with bipolar disorder and BPD added layers to motherhood that I didn’t fully understand while I was in it. The highs where I had energy, where I felt present, where I could take on everything. And then the lows where everything slowed down, where patience was thinner, where even being emotionally available took effort I didn’t always have.

And BPD… that intensity doesn’t just go away because you’re a mom. If anything, it shows up more. The emotional swings. The overthinking. The reactions that feel immediate and overwhelming. Trying to regulate yourself while also guiding someone else emotionally is something I didn’t always get right.

And that’s the part I’ve had to face.

Not the highlight moments. Not the good days.

The ones that didn’t land the way I thought they did.

The moments where I lost patience. The moments where I shut down. The moments where my own internal chaos leaked into the environment I was supposed to keep safe.

For a long time, it’s easier to justify it. To say, “I was overwhelmed.” “I was doing my best.” “I didn’t know.”

And those things are true.

But they’re not the whole truth.

Because my daughters still felt it.

And now that they’re older, there’s no hiding behind that anymore.

We’ve had conversations that I don’t think I would’ve been ready for years ago. Real conversations. The kind where I don’t interrupt. I don’t defend. I don’t try to reshape what they’re saying into something easier for me to hear.

I listen.

And that alone has changed everything.

I’ve told them how I felt during those years. The pressure. The mental load. The ways my own upbringing shaped how I reacted, how I coped, how I parented. Not to excuse anything—but to give context. To connect the dots between who I was then and who I’m trying to become now.

And I’ve apologized. Not in a surface way. Not in a “sorry if” kind of way. But in a way that owns it.

The moments I know I got wrong. The ways I know I could’ve done better. The things I didn’t see clearly until now. And here’s the part I didn’t expect— How much that would heal something in me too.

Because for so long, I carried it quietly.

The guilt. The questions. The wondering if I had done damage I couldn’t undo.

But saying it out loud changes something. Being heard changes something. And even more than that—being met with understanding, even in the hard conversations, changes something.

This mental health journey I’m on, especially going through IOP, has forced me to slow down and really look at myself in a way I hadn’t before. Not just as a person, but as a mother.

It’s made me more aware of my patterns. My triggers. The way I respond instead of react. The way I can pause now, where before I might not have.

I’m not perfect now.

That’s not the goal.

The goal is awareness. The goal is regulation. The goal is repair.

Because I still have moments.

But now I catch them faster. I come back sooner. I say something instead of pretending nothing happened. And that’s the difference between the mother I was and the mother I’m becoming.

One was surviving. One is learning. One didn’t always see it. One is choosing to.

My daughters don’t need me the way they used to. And that used to feel like a loss.

But now I see it differently. Because they still come back.

In conversations. In quiet moments. In the way they still choose to sit near me, talk to me, share pieces of their lives with me.

And I don’t take that for granted anymore.

Not after everything. Not after the growth. Not after the honesty it took to get here.

I can’t go back and redo the mother I was.

But I can be intentional about the mother I am now. And the one I’m becoming.

And maybe that’s what healing in motherhood actually looks like— Not erasing the past. But facing it. Learning from it. And choosing to show up differently moving forward.

~Tj 🩷