The In- Between Season

I’ve learned that some seasons don’t arrive with clarity. They arrive with boxes half unpacked, emotions close to the surface, and a feeling you can’t quite name.

I recently moved, and while I expected the physical exhaustion, I didn’t anticipate the emotional weight that came with it. Change has a way of stirring everything at once. Memories. Regrets. Gratitude. Fear. Hope. All of it living in the same room.

This season feels… in-between.

Not broken. Not brand new. Just rearranging.

Motherhood has a way of changing the rules again and again when you least expect it. Especially when your child gets older and begins to step more fully into their own life.

There’s a phrase I’ve been sitting with lately:
I think the saddest part about being a parent is that you're raising the one thing you can't live without, to be able to live without you.

No one really prepares you for how much that hurts.

You’re proud, very much so. And at the same time, there’s an ache in realizing that the center of your world is learning how to orbit elsewhere. Watching your child form a life apart from you is both beautiful and disorienting, especially when being their mother has been your main identity for so long.

It feels like a quiet identity shift no one talks about.

With that awareness comes another layer — the realization that our children don’t just carry our love forward, but pieces of our humanity too. The moments we handled well, and the ones we wish we could revisit with a softer presence. As mothers, we shape them with devotion, but also with our exhaustion, our fears, and the parts of ourselves we were still figuring out along the way.

I loved my child deeply in the years when I was overwhelmed, stretched thin, and operating in survival mode. And I love him deeply now, in this new chapter where he needs me differently. Both things can be true.

There’s a tender grief in knowing you did your best and wishing you’d had more to give. It’s the kind of grief that comes from loving fully, even imperfectly. 

As the new year begins, there’s a quiet pressure to feel renewed. To declare fresh starts. To turn the page cleanly. We love to romanticize new beginnings. Fresh starts. Blank pages.

But real change doesn’t arrive neatly. It shows up layered — gratitude tangled with discomfort, excitement brushing up against grief. You can be proud of the life you’re building and still miss the version of yourself who was needed in a different way.

This isn’t a breakdown.
It’s a recalibration.

A moment where life gently asks you to catch up with who you’ve become. Not every season asks for action. Some ask for presence. For softness. For permission to let things remain unresolved for a while.

The in-between is uncomfortable because it doesn’t demand answers — only honesty. So I’m letting things be unfinished. Letting emotions rise and fall without trying to fix them. Letting this season exist without forcing it into something prettier or more productive.

There is growth happening here, even if it’s quiet.

If you’re in a season where motherhood feels unfamiliar, where change feels heavier than expected, or where your identity is shifting in ways you didn’t plan — you’re not alone.

And sometimes becoming means grieving who you were while learning how to stand as who you are now.

This chapter counts, too.

So I find myself wondering — if you’re in this chapter of motherhood now, what has helped you hold the ache without losing yourself? And if you’ve already lived through it, what do you wish someone had told you then?

If this feels familiar to you, I’d love to know I’m not standing alone in it.

Maybe this tenderness — the ache, the pride, the letting go — isn’t something to fix at all, but something to honor.

As this new year unfolds, I’m learning that not every beginning needs a resolution. Some beginnings simply ask us to arrive as we are — open, honest, and willing to stay with what’s real.