Unspoken Postpartum Thoughts

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Apr 6

Written By Esmeralda Cardenas

I stood in a room full of expecting and postpartum mothers and expressed difficult and unspoken words that I once carried with me through my postpartum experience.

I told them that through my postpartum journey, I didn't want to be a mom. That I wanted to return my baby. That I often closed my eyes and daydreamed about my old life, wishing I could go back to it.

I said it out loud. And the room was still. There was nodding. I knew I was not alone.

I know some may wonder, How could she feel that way?

I questioned that about myself for a long time too.

Speaking My Truth

The few times I shared this thought. I was met with “there are so many people out there longing, aching, sacrificing everything just to become a parent.”

I hear that. My heart is with those women and men. Their journey is valid.

Here is what I also know: my pain did not cancel theirs. And theirs did not cancel mine.

We are allowed to hold both.

What was happening inside of me during that season was not simple. I was a therapist in training, carrying guilt for the awareness of the struggles I faced. I was a Christian mother carrying the weight of what I believed a Godly woman should be, while feeling like I was failing at every turn. I was a Mexican mother wrapped in cultural messages that told me no one else should be raising my baby, that my home should be spotless, that meals should be homemade, that the baby weight should disappear quickly, and that my child should speak Spanish— because anything less felt like a betrayal of who we were.

I was also a wife navigating real fractures in my marriage. A woman whose body felt foreign to her. A new mother, in a new city, with little to no support around her.

Unspoken Thoughts

In the middle of all of that–I believed I was ruining my child. That I was too broken to be what he needed. That it would be better, somehow, if the weight of it could just be lifted from me.

So I dreamed of returning him.

Not out of cruelty–out of exhaustion.

Out of love so tangled in fear that it didn't look like love at all.

Those thoughts–the ones you haven't said out loud–they are more common than you think.

They live in the silence between feedings.

In the bathroom with the door locked–or with the little one sitting by you.

In the car after drop-off when you finally exhale.

They come dressed in shame, in guilt, in the relentless question of “when will this feel different?”

And the tragedy is not that you have them. The tragedy is that most moms carry them completely alone, often in spaces where judgment comes faster than grace, where the culture around them has already decided what a good mother looks like, and where the unspoken rule is: don't you dare say it out loud.

Not a Bad Mother

Today, I carry so much compassion for the woman I was in that season. She was not a bad mother. She was an overwhelmed one. She was unseen, unsupported, and doing her best inside a storm no one prepared her for. I don’t even know anyone could.

And if you are in that place right now, if you are reading this and recognizing yourself somewhere in these words, I want you to know this:

You are not a bad mother. You are a mother who needs to be held, not judged.

The thoughts you carry deserve a safe place to land. Not a living room where someone shifts uncomfortably. Not a culture that hands you a script and expects you to perform it. Not silence.

Sharing Your Story

It took me three years to seek therapy, and when I did, it became the space where I could finally say the unspoken. I began to understand why I was there, not just feel ashamed that I was. I began to heal, to redefine myself and to grow confidently into the mother God created me to be–precisely through the difficult times, thoughts and emotions–that is where God met me and led me.

If you are ready to stop carrying this alone, I would be honored to walk with you. At Willow Path Collective, this is exactly the work we do, helping mothers move through the fog of postpartum, process what they've been holding, and step into their motherhood identity with clarity, compassion, and confidence.

You don't have to have it figured out to reach out. You just have to be tired of carrying it alone.