Maybe Motherhood Isn’t Asking You to Find Solid Ground—Maybe It’s Asking You to Become It

Every Christmas morning growing up, there was a tradition in our house. My brother and I would race downstairs to our stockings, and sitting on top of each one was a stuffed animal. It happened every year. Then one Christmas—I must have been thirteen—I came downstairs, looked at my stocking, and there was no stuffed animal.

My younger brother had one. I didn’t. Looking back now, I’m pretty sure my dad was simply recognizing that I was growing up. Maybe he figured I had graduated from stuffed animals and would rather have lip gloss or cool socks or whatever thirteen-year-old girls wanted back then.

But that’s not what happened inside me. I completely fell apart.

I didn't fall apart because I wanted another stuffed animal. I feel apart because something that had always been true… wasn’t. It completely disoriented me.

Looking back now, I don’t think I was grieving the stuffed animal at all. I think I was grieving the loss of certainty. Even as a child, my nervous system found comfort in knowing exactly what to expect. Familiarity felt safe. And predictability felt like solid ground.

Without realizing it, I spent much of my life creating that same feeling. I organized my life carefully. I liked routines and I liked knowing what came next. I built a life where the outside world helped me feel steady on the inside.

Then I became a mother, and something incredibly profound happened. The ground disappeared.

Anyone who has ever raised a baby or young child knows exactly what I mean. Just when you think you’re beginning to understand your newborn’s rhythms, they change. Just when your child finally starts eating the meal you’ve spent time preparing, they suddenly refuse it. Just when you begin to feel like you know what you’re doing, something shifts, and you’re learning all over again.

This is the nature of parenthood. Just as you’re beginning to find your footing, the ground shifts beneath you.

For those of us who have learned to depend on certainty, familiarity, and predictability in order to feel okay, motherhood can feel like free fall. The more uncertain things become, the more we try to control them. We search for answers and we make better plans. We look for the routine that will finally make us feel like we’re standing on solid ground again.

But it becomes a game of chase. The ground keeps moving, and we become exhausted trying to catch it.

For me, someone who had spent most of her life depending on certainty to feel okay, this constant attempt to find solid ground in early motherhood only fed my postpartum anxiety. The more I searched for certainty, the louder my anxiety became. It took me years to understand that motherhood wasn’t asking me to become better at controlling the uncertainty, it was asking me to relate to uncertainty differently.

That feels completely backward at first. Everything inside us says, If I can just figure this out, then I’ll finally relax. But motherhood keeps teaching the same lesson over and over again.

There will always be another transition. There will always be another developmental stage. There will always be another sleepless night.

There will always be another moment you didn’t see coming. The invitation isn’t to eliminate uncertainty, it’s to discover that you can remain steady in the middle of it.

Now, don’t get me wrong…There’s absolutely a place for structure. There’s a place for routines. Most humans need some sense of rhythm and organization to feel safe. Children certainly do, and so do we.

It’s okay to have preferences, hopes, plans, and values. Of course we do. But those things are very different from believing we need life to unfold according to plan in order to be okay.

Here’s what I think motherhood is really trying to teach us: The steadiness we’ve been searching for isn’t found in a baby who finally sleeps through the night, or a toddler who stops having tantrums, or a season of life that finally feels predictable.

Those moments come and go.

The steadiness we’re searching for has to come from within us.

Maybe motherhood isn’t asking us to find solid ground. Maybe it’s asking us to become it.