Twists, Turns, and Motherhood: Healing My Inner Child While Raising My Own

Some nights, I wake up to the sound of her fussing in her sleep, searching for her pacifier and still think: How did I get here? How did I become a mom?

The same girl who had so many challenges during her senior year of high school, made questionable choices in college, cried over heartbreaks and late-night mistakes—she’s now somebody’s whole world.

I think about all the roads I didn’t take. The friends I kept too long, the relationships I should’ve left sooner, the nights I stayed out when I should’ve gone home. I wonder: would my life look different if I’d chosen differently?

And yet, here I am….living in this apartment with my fiancé and our daughter; realizing maybe every wrong turn, every heartbreak, every stumble led me exactly where I was supposed to be.

But motherhood didn’t come wrapped neatly in joy for me. When I saw that positive pregnancy test, I wanted it to be one of those picture-perfect moments. The kind filled with excitement, happy tears, and planning how I would tell my partner.

Instead, my chest tightened. My eyes welled up with anxiety more than joy. Will I be enough? Can I really do this? Even in that fear, though, there was a flicker of hope I couldn’t ignore.

I’ll be honest: having a daughter first scared me. As the eldest daughter myself, I know the weight that role can carry. Growing up, I often felt like the “third parent” in my house—helping raise siblings while still trying to be a child myself. It shaped me, but it also left scars. It left a weight behind that honestly, I should never know the experience of until I was having my own children.

So when I found out I was having a little girl, part of me worried I’d unknowingly pass down the same burdens I once carried.

My daughter has three older sisters from her father’s side, but they’re not under the same roof as us. It’s different. And it’s different from my own upbringing too—with one sister, two brothers, and a stepbrother all tangled together under the same roof. Our family structures wouldn’t look alike, but somehow, every twist and turn of mine brought me here, to this moment of worry.

And yet, the questions linger: How do you know when you’re ready to do it again? To bring another life into the world. To stretch your body, your patience, your bank account one more time. Could this apartment hold two kids and two adults, or would we need to uproot everything again? These are the quiet questions that live in the back of my mind.

Motherhood is messy. It’s healing and triggering, often in the same breath. Some days, being a mom softens old wounds I thought would never close. Other days, it awakens the little girl inside me who still feels unseen and overwhelmed.

But here’s the beauty I’m learning: being a mom hasn’t erased the little girl I once was, it’s teaching me how to love her.

Every laugh, every tantrum, every bedtime story teaches me how to mother not just my daughter, but myself.