When Wholeness Is Treated as a Liability

It didn’t take long for me to notice how often good motherhood was conflated with self-abandonment. How devotion was measured by willingness to surrender. How visible, unapologetic success was treated as suspicious once a woman became a mother, as though drive and creativity were indulgences rather than capacities. As though wholeness itself was something to be negotiated down.

I wasn't willing to make that trade. Not because I misunderstood sacrifice, but because I understood the difference between sacrificing for your child and sacrificing yourself to an idea of motherhood that requires erasure. One builds a legacy. The other builds resentment under the guise of virtue.