There are certain chapters in our lives that reveal their meaning slowly over time. For me, one of those chapters has been motherhood — and becoming a mother without my own mother beside me.
My mom died when I was 22. This year, as I turn 44, I’ve realized I’m entering a new chapter of my life: one where I will have lived longer without my mom than I lived with her in my life.
There is something quiet and powerful about recognizing that shift. Not dramatic. Just something that slowly settles into your bones over time. It has made me reflect on how grief evolves alongside us. How love, loss, identity, and motherhood are not things we simply “move on” from, but experiences that continue shaping us throughout different chapters of our lives.
As a therapist specializing in women’s mental health, I see versions of this every day. Not always grief in the traditional sense, but women carrying invisible emotional weight while still functioning, caregiving, working, volunteering, and showing up for everyone around them.
Many of the women I work with are incredibly capable. From the outside, they often look like they are handling everything well. Yet underneath, many feel disconnected from themselves, overwhelmed, lonely, or quietly unsure why life feels harder than they expected it would.
One of the biggest things I encourage women to pay attention to is whether they still feel connected to themselves outside of the roles they carry for everyone else. So many women become experts at coping while slowly losing connection to their own needs. Often, healing does not begin by doing more, but by allowing yourself to slow down enough to notice what you are carrying and letting yourself receive support without guilt.
What I hear over and over in my practice from my clients is how fragmented women’s healthcare is, especially during major life transitions like motherhood, caregiving, grief, or identity shifts. Women are often left trying to navigate disconnected systems while also carrying the emotional labour of daily life.
In many ways, this understanding became part of the foundation for MARSHA Care Inc. the next evolution of my mental health practice: a women’s mental health care initiative based in Simcoe County, named in honour of my mom. It grew from the belief that women deserve care rooted in connection, community, support, and advocacy. We need more spaces where we feel seen as whole people, not just symptoms to manage.
Some parts of our stories are sentences. Others are volumes. And perhaps part of healing is realizing we are still allowed to keep writing the story where we are the main character.
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