The You Before You Were A Mother And The You After
The overwhelming pressure followed me like a shadow
Hey y’all,
I was going to send this yesterday, but I wanted to stick to our Monday cadence. Just imagine you’ve transported back in time and it’s Sunday again. So, Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas, mamas’ mamas, and baby mamas. We love you, we see you, and we thank you for all that you are and do.
Motherhood has been a big topic lately, whether politically, with the current U.S. administration finding any idiotic way to force women to have more children, or in pop culture, with recent news like Beyoncé stamping her legacy as Blue Ivy and Rumi take the stage on the Cowboy Carter Tour, or with her mama, Ms. Tina Knowles, embarking on a book tour for her debut memoir, Matriarch. Rihanna popped out at the Met Gala to reveal she’s pregnant with baby #3, and women around the world are debating if they want to even be mothers at all.
While everyone continues to be obsessed with how moms are living their lives, the mothers are taking back their narratives and being bad all by themselves. Millennial and Gen-Z moms are showing the world that motherhood is not one-size-fits-all, and whatever form of motherhood (or not) that you want to stand firm in, it’s completely up to you. I love seeing my mom friends still deciding to start businesses, have girl’s weekends with friends, go to therapy, and travel the globe—sometimes with their babies in tow and sometimes not.
This Week’s Story
Remember when every magazine at the grocery store had some cover shot of an ultra-photoshopped new mom with a headline about an “unbelievable snapback”? It was endless, and it set such unhealthy standards for how women are supposed to look and feel after they’ve just done the most miraculous thing a human can do. In this week’s story, Aquilah of
pens a deeply vulnerable essay on wrestling with the expectations around her weight before and after giving birth. This story is a reminder to be kind to yourself. We’re all just human—no snapback necessary.Take care,
Anayo Awuzie
EIC of Carefree Media
The Ghost In The Corner
by Aquilah Jourdain-Donaldson
When I was 13, I had my first encounter with a ghost. I was home doing homework in the basement, ignoring the feeling that someone was watching me. I finally decided to look up as if to prove to my mind that nothing was there. After all, I wasn’t a child anymore. I was big enough to be by myself and not feel fear. I told myself for years that there are never things that lurked in shadows or underneath beds. I was out of that phase and embracing the fearlessness of my early teens.
My brain didn’t prepare me for what to do if there had been someone there. It was a thought that came and went quickly. So I looked up. Staring back at me in the doorway across from the dining room table was a tall brown skin man with hazel eyes.
Our gazes locked and suddenly, my skin was on fire. My brain shot a single warning: Run. And so I did, like my life depended on it. I didn’t know what was scarier, that there had been someone watching me or that he seemed just as shocked as I was that I could see him. I never recognized the man, and to this day, I couldn’t tell you who he was. I will never forget those eyes in the darkness. I had thought that was my first and last ghost encounter.
Then I gave birth.
It had never been my life’s focus to have children, though I had always wanted to become a mother. At 29, I had two degrees, careers I tried and quit, places I traveled to, and a full social life. I felt like I had done and tried everything I wanted. Becoming a mother was a natural progression even though it was a role I was scared of fulfilling despite my desire. One moment it’s noon, and you realize you forgot to take your dog out—you ask yourself how you could ever be in charge of a child as you rush to put on your shoes and head out the door. The next, you’re staring at a positive pregnancy test, thrust into motherhood without warning.
I had been in the middle of getting my body back together after gaining weight during the pandemic. Every week, I was in the gym aiming for a twenty-pound weight loss. When I became pregnant, I started to become concerned that all of the weight I was trying to lose would just pack right on. Between the constant nausea, vomiting, and food aversions, I didn’t realize that within my first trimester, I had lost twenty pounds. It took me two months to do what I couldn’t in six. I never told anyone that despite being miserable all the time, I secretly leaped for joy when I discovered that all the clothes that hadn’t fit me for months were now fitting me just right.
Then the compliments came: Wow, I can’t even tell you’re pregnant! And you look great! Or, OMG, you’re so teeny! When I was six months, I was the size of a whale. Good for you!
It was the exact dopamine hit I needed. As the months went on, I played with my style. Belly showing, belly covered, heeled boots and skirts, baggy jeans, and tight tops. It was a type of freedom that I had never experienced before. I was in a place where my body was changing, and it was being praised, even as the weight started to come back. I was addicted. The closer I got to giving birth, the more frequent my doctor appointments got. Every week I gained more weight, and I told myself I would have to lose all of it. The overwhelming pressure followed me like a shadow. I cried in the car on the way home from the anxiety of having to confront something I had hidden during my pregnancy: I had no self-confidence, and maybe I never had it in the first place.
After my son was born in March of last year, I was in bliss. Momentarily, all of the thoughts and fears I had with my body image were put on hold. Now I had a child to take care of, and I was doing parenthood with the love of my life. Despite that, I was cautiously waiting for postpartum depression to take me like all the other mothers on TikTok said it would. In between moments of uncertainty and the most joy I’ve ever felt in my life, I knew that although I didn’t want it to, something dark was slowly creeping in. The only question was, when would it consume me?
It started small with whispers swirling whenever I stood in front of my bedroom mirror. I initially ignored them, because I was ignoring myself, or at least trying to. Trying to ignore my swollen feet and hands. I tried ignoring the anxious feeling I had when someone wanted to take my photo or the absolute terror I felt when I realized I was tagged in a picture on social media. I didn’t want anyone to think that I was having a bad time being a new mom and I didn’t want to admit to myself how this change had been affecting me. After all, I didn’t feel depressed, my social life had stayed steady, and my marriage wasn’t negatively impacted.
With the summer came the awareness that I was being haunted by a ghost of my creation. She looked like me, spoke like me, laughed like me. Yet she wasn’t me. She was scared to go out — what would people say if she wore shorts and a tube top? What would they say if she wore jeans and a T-shirt? Were they noticing her B-shaped belly and arm fat? Were they talking about how round her face had gotten? More importantly, what were they not saying? That is what scared her the most: the judgment people passed behind closed doors. The snide comments and the shade, the glazed look in their eyes when she said she was loving being a mother. Did they know there was a part of her that was silently suffering? Did they know she was only telling half-truths? Maybe they nodded politely and went home and told someone else how full of shit she was. No new mother was that happy.
The reality was that no one was paying as close attention to her as she was convinced they were.
In December, a week after I turned 30, I was in Guatemala celebrating a friend’s wedding. I had spent all week before that in Costa Rica uncomfortable in my bathing suits and dresses. The one birthday photo I did post to Instagram was at the encouragement of my husband, who reminded me that I’d only be in Costa Rica celebrating this milestone once. It was then that I finally admitted what I had been too scared to say: it wasn’t having a baby that tanked my confidence. I just never had confidence. It’s hard to say to yourself, “I don’t think I ever truly felt okay with my appearance.” Even worse, it felt like I was hiding behind motherhood as an excuse for why I was feeling so horrible. The truth was that becoming a mother had illuminated all of the ways I had been abandoning myself.
At a wedding in Guatemala, I found myself ready to say goodbye to this constant feeling of dread. At the close of the night, after the bride and groom and their guests had eaten, drank, and danced to their heart’s content, we were led outside to a gorgeous display of fireworks. Finally, after months, I was slowly letting go of that self-hate. I knew that if I wanted to come back to myself, it was going to be hard and it was going to take some work. I wanted to feel pieces of that moment every day, to see the light and stars in the darkest of nights so that I’d always know I hadn’t disappeared yet. Aquilah was still here.
These days, I still see the ghost from the corner of my eye. She lives in dark shadows, in corners, and in the recesses of my mind. Sometimes I still hear her, whispering to me.
But this isn’t my first ghost encounter, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Now, as I did last year, I am preparing for the oncoming spring and summer seasons. The only difference is, this time, I won’t be afraid to bask in the sun.
Aquilah Jourdain-Donaldson is an NYC-based writer, librarian-in-training, and book lover. She writes essays about motherhood and being an eldest daughter, but writing crime fiction has her heart. You can read more of her essays and stories on her Substack, Stacks & Stories.
 | A guest post by
|