You Were Never Meant to Bounce Back
I hear it from mothers all the time, and I’ve said it myself too.
“I just don’t feel like myself anymore.”
I think I speak for most mothers when I say that the rhythms we once held are gone. Sleep feels broken. Your body doesn’t move or feel the same. It’s not only that life looks different; you feel different - changed.
There can be a quiet ache in that. A longing to find your way home again.
The Bounce-Back Illusion
I recently watched a video of a male fitness “expert” explaining how women who “do the work” can bounce back after birth. I felt my whole body tighten with irritation - for a million reasons not to mention another man mansplaining on women’s experiences.
The idea that we need to return somewhere misses the truth entirely. The woman who existed before pregnancy isn’t gone, but she isn’t meant to stay the same. Birth and motherhood rearrange everything—your body, your energy, your sense of self.
I get it, there are times when we miss our pre baby body or the ease and freedom that once was. But when I really listened, what I missed wasn’t the old life. I missed the feeling of being at home in my body.
And that feeling isn’t lost. It’s being re-formed, quietly, through the body that now carries a new kind of wisdom.
A New Kind of Grounding
Motherhood changes your inner landscape. The body doesn’t simply heal from birth; it re-organises.
Your nervous system, once centred on your own needs, now pulses in rhythm with another heartbeat. You are literally being rewired for connection. It’s powerful and exhausting.
There’s this strange pull between worlds: the woman who once moved freely, and the mother who now moves while listening for the smallest sound.
When I began to sense this shift, I stopped trying to find my old self. Instead, I began to listen to my body.
Some days that meant standing barefoot in the garden, breathing the morning air.
Other days it meant crying in the shower, letting the water hold me when words couldn’t.
Slowly, these small, ordinary rituals became ways of coming home.
A Somatic Way of Remembering
In somatic work, we often talk about the ventral vagal system, which is the part of the nervous system that lets us feel safe and connected.
You don’t have to know the science to feel it. You’ve known it your whole life. It’s the moment your shoulders drop, your breath deepens, and something inside says, I’m safe.
You can nurture that through simple acts:
Feel your feet against the floor while feeding your baby.
Take one longer breath before speaking.
Step outside, look at the sky, let your eyes rest on something beautiful.
Whisper quietly to yourself, I’m here.
Tiny moments, but together they build a sense of belonging in your own skin again.
Becoming, Not Returning
There’s no version of you to get back to. The woman before motherhood hasn’t disappeared; she’s changed form. She lives inside the woman you are now, layered and wise.
Rather than losing yourself you are becoming, evolving and emerging.
So, no need to bounce back. You’re already moving forward into a new sense of self.
In Gestalt therapy, there’s a principle called the Paradoxical Theory of Change. It teaches that true change doesn’t come from trying to be something we’re not. It happens when we can finally accept what is here. For you that might be the fatigue, our longing, our changing body, our messy tenderness.
When we stop fighting the transition and begin to meet ourselves inside it, something softens. The nervous system loosens its grip. The body begins to trust again.
And that’s when transformation can happen, often quietly, naturally and in its own rhythm.
A Simple Practice
When that ache for your “old self” shows up, pause.
Place one hand on your heart and one on your belly.
Feel the rise and fall.
Ask softly, Who am I becoming right now?
Let whatever comes be enough.
You’re finding your way slowly, gently, through the body that has carried you this far.
