A Moment I Almost Gave Up (and What Pulled Me Back)
On motherhood, identity collapse, and slowly finding my way home
After I had my first child, I had a plan.
Eight weeks. That’s how long I had given myself to rest, recover, and return; to my therapy practice, to my doctoral program, to the version of myself I had worked so hard to become.
Eight weeks.
Because that’s what the world had told me was reasonable.
Because I had been strong, organized, high-achieving for as long as I could remember.
Because I believed I could will myself through anything.
What I hadn’t planned for was the birth that left me raw.
The anxiety that gripped my chest when the world got too loud.
The panic that came in quiet moments, when the house was still but my body wouldn’t rest.
The unfamiliar edges of myself that showed up and asked:
Who are you now?
The Version of Me That Nearly Let Go
When I say I almost gave up, I don’t mean in a dramatic, cinematic sense.
It was quieter than that.
It was the dull ache of watching my old self drift out of reach and wondering if she’d ever come back.
It was the pile of unread books, the unanswered emails, the feeling that I might never again be the therapist, the student, the person I once was.
Giving up looked like walking away from everything I had built.
Not because I didn’t care anymore, but because I couldn’t find myself inside it.
I didn’t know how to be her—the one who could hold others, analyze theory, meet deadlines—while also trying to survive inside a body that didn’t feel safe anymore.
I had spent a lifetime building an identity that gave me purpose.
And then, in an instant, I couldn’t find my way back to it.
What Pulled Me Back
There was no single moment. No lightning bolt.
Just a slow return. A quiet unfolding.
A homecoming.
I began to understand that I hadn’t failed.
I had changed.
And that change, while disorienting, was not a loss, but an opening.
A call to expand.
To breathe deeper into parts of myself I had long ignored.
To let go of the idea that I had to be exactly who I was before in order to be worthy, in order to belong, in order to matter.
What pulled me back was grace.
Time.
Curiosity.
A deep, mothering kind of compassion for myself.
I didn’t have to give up the things I once loved.
I just had to make space for the person I was becoming.
If You’re There Now…
If you’re in that place—the messy, weepy, unraveling place—I want you to know this:
You are not broken.
You are becoming.
It’s okay to take your time.
To not know.
To cry on the bathroom floor and laugh at the ceiling and feel like a stranger in your own skin.
It’s okay to rest.
To ask for help.
To not bounce back, but grow differently.
You are still you. Even now. Especially now.
And the parts of you that feel lost?
They are not gone.
They are waiting to be re-met, with tenderness, not urgency.
With love and knowing,
Sahar