On Growth, Discomfort, and the Quiet Initiations of Motherhood
A week ago, I traveled to Sardegna.
I carried my camera but didn’t feel the need to document. Not because there was any lack of beauty, in contrary, the island offered it in abundance but still my compulsion to capture had dissolved. Some journeys are not meant to be documented. They ask, instead, to be lived in full presence.
Each day unfolded smoothly. The hours were shaped by long walks, sudden changes in weather, and the quiet undoing of routine. I found myself meeting unfamiliar mornings without the familiar scaffolding of ritual, those small sacred acts that often tether me to a sense of self, especially now, as the architecture of that self is shifting.
At nearly twenty weeks pregnant, the terrain of the journey extended beyond the landscape. It moved through my body, through the quiet fatigue of breath, through the emotional undertow that accompanied each moment. And yet, as with all true thresholds, what first appears as depletion often reveals itself, in hindsight, as initiation. A rite not defined by ceremony or clarity, but by sheer endurance. Uncelebrated, perhaps, but no less sacred for its lack of spectacle.
Before motherhood, growth felt more straightforward, a conscious shaping of the self. A process of refinement and inward tending. I could retreat, reflect, expand. Life bent to accommodate that becoming. But motherhood, especially this time, reveals a different law. One not of expansion, but of gravity.
The first pregnancy arrived like a gentle teacher. The unknown felt tender, even mystical. It whispered of change, offering the soul time to adapt. But now, with a second life growing within while another already holds my hand, the weight is fuller. Not only in the body, but in the intricate choreography of care as my breath feeds more than one rhythm. My regulation becomes hers, my gaze; her mirror, my calm; her ground.
And there are days I cannot meet it all.
Days when patience wears thin, when softness is replaced by the sharp edge of fatigue. On those days, I begin again. Repair, not perfection, becomes a rhythm. Forgiveness is a daily act, to her and to myself.
This dissonance is not merely physical, it reaches into the creative and spiritual realms. For those whose work arises from subtle attunement like artists, writers and empaths pregnancy can obscure the internal instruments of perception. The energies and time once directed toward vision, clarity, and meaning are rerouted toward the deep, unseen labor of sustaining life.
The creative current slows and the sacred rituals lose their cadence. They must now adapt, stripped of performance, stripped of ease. What remains is the raw practice of staying, of making room for what is.
And so, I begin to understand something I had only touched before: true growth is not always radiant. Sometimes it is cellular, heavy, slow. It does not announce itself with clarity or promise but teaches through discomfort and through holding steady in the overwhelm, through listening when silence feels unreachable, through remaining open even as every instinct seeks retreat.
Returning home felt like a soft landing. I am so grateful to be back in the familiar cadence of life with my daughter, and to reclaim the simple morning rituals that anchor me.
With maturity, meaning no longer arrives as epiphany but gathers quietly, through repetition and attention. Through remaining with what is real.
And joy, when it comes, does not arrive alone but tethered to meaning, anchored in presence.
This phase is definitely not a glow, but a gravity.
And I am learning, slowly and deeply, to trust its pull.
