Some mornings I’d stand in the kitchen holding a spoon, not remembering if I’d already stirred the oatmeal or if I was just staring at it. The kids would be yelling. The baby would be crying. My coffee would be cold. Again. And I’d wonder if this is what being a mother was supposed to feel like — like disappearing one piece at a time.
I wasn’t new to motherhood. I had three kids under seven. I loved them more than air. But love doesn’t cancel out exhaustion. And my husband? He was always “busy.” Busy at work. Busy on his phone. Busy avoiding the weight of this life we were supposedly building together.
I tried to explain. I’d say, “I need help.” He’d say, “What do you mean? I go to work every day.”
I’d say, “I’m drowning.”
He’d laugh like I was being dramatic.
He didn’t see the piles of laundry that I folded while rocking a baby on my hip. He didn’t notice when I hadn’t showered in three days. He didn’t hear me cry at night because I did it quietly, in the dark, after everyone was asleep.
It wasn’t just the lack of help — it was the absence of witnessing. I felt like a ghost in my own home.
One day, I screamed. Not at anyone. Just out loud. In the laundry room. It scared me — how loud it came out. I sat on the floor, shaking, hugging my knees like a child. That’s when I knew I couldn’t do this alone anymore.
A friend suggested therapy. I almost didn’t go — I didn’t think I had the time, or the right, or the energy. But I went. And that’s where I met Teo.
Teo looked me in the eye the first session and said, “You’ve been carrying everything. And no one is carrying you.”
I broke. Right there. In that chair. Because it was true, and no one had ever said it out loud.
Week by week, Teo helped me unravel the tight knot I’d become — this woman who apologized for needing rest, who kept quiet to avoid being “too much,” who mistook self-sacrifice for love.
She helped me see that I was allowed to want more than survival. That motherhood wasn’t supposed to erase me. That asking for partnership isn’t nagging — it’s a right.
With Teo’s help, I learned how to speak with clarity instead of guilt. I stopped padding every request with a soft landing. I started saying, “I need you to parent, not babysit.” I started giving my husband choices instead of doing everything myself and resenting him for it.
He didn’t transform overnight. But I did.
I began carving space for me. I started writing again, in the tiny hours after bedtime. I took walks alone. I let the kids watch cartoons so I could breathe. And I stopped calling that “lazy.” I called it “healing.”
I’m still tired. The kind of tired that settles in your bones. But I’m not invisible anymore.
Because I see me.
And that’s where it starts.
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