There’s a version of motherhood that gets all the attention: the cute milestones, the matching outfits, the curated chaos. But there’s another side that often stays hidden. It’s the part where you’re doing everything for everyone else and wondering, “What happened to me?” The moment you become a mom, a subtle unraveling begins. Of who you were. Of what you believed about love, identity, safety, and self-worth. And beneath the practical chaos—snacks, schedules, sleep deprivation—there’s an emotional reckoning.

This isn’t just the transition to parenthood. This is matrescence, the psychological, emotional, and often spiritual transformation of becoming a mother. It’s the part no one prepares you for—the part where your own childhood shows up right in the middle of your child’s meltdown.

As a therapist in Hermosa Beach working with new moms in individual therapy and couples therapy, I see it every day: the raw, unspoken truth that many women are learning how to re-parent themselves while raising their children. This is the quiet, powerful work of self-parenting.

What Is Self-Parenting, Really?

Self-parenting isn’t about being perfect or endlessly self-soothing. It’s about recognizing the younger parts of you that were never fully seen, held, or understood—and choosing to show up for them now. Not because it’s convenient, but because ignoring them keeps you stuck in patterns that don’t serve you or your kids.

It looks like:

• Noticing when your fuse is short and pausing to ask: What does my system need right now?
• Making space for your anger without swallowing it or exploding it.
• Naming your grief without guilt—grief over lost time, lost self, lost freedom.
• Meeting your needs instead of constantly dismissing them.

Why It’s So Difficult for Moms

Because so much of motherhood still asks women to disappear. Be easy. Be accommodating. Be grateful. And if you were raised to be the fixer, the calm one, the one who didn’t make waves—it’s easy to slip right back into self-neglect dressed up as selflessness.

Motherhood activates everything. Your nervous system doesn’t differentiate between your child’s tantrum and your own unresolved fear of rejection. The pressure to stay regulated while everyone around you is dysregulated is not just hard—it’s holy work.

Self-Parenting Is Also About Repair

You’re going to mess up. You’re going to lose your cool. You’re going to feel like you’re failing. But self-parenting invites you to repair with yourself, too. It says: You don’t have to do it the way it was done to you. You can take a breath, take accountability, and try again—with your child and with yourself.

In Therapy, We Pause the Pattern

In therapy for moms here in Hermosa Beach, we slow down long enough to notice the pattern: where you learned to shrink, where your nervous system got stuck in survival mode, where your worth got tied to being needed but never needing. We get curious about the story underneath the stress.

Sometimes that story says: “I have to hold it all together.” Sometimes it says: “If I rest, everything will fall apart.” And often, it says: “I’m only allowed to exist if I’m useful.”

We rewrite that narrative, not with affirmations, but with presence. With truth. With compassion. And with time.

Self-Parenting Isn’t a Luxury. It’s a Lifeline.

You don’t have to earn the right to care for yourself. You don’t have to justify your exhaustion. You don’t have to keep repeating what you swore you’d never pass on.

You’re allowed to be a work in progress while parenting. You’re allowed to matter.

And if your inner child is showing up in the middle of motherhood asking, “Who’s going to take care of me?”—I want you to know: it doesn’t make you broken. It makes you human. And it means you’re ready for something deeper.

If you’re a mom who’s exhausted, disconnected from yourself, or overwhelmed by the emotional weight of trying to “get it right,” therapy can help you come home to you.

Let’s begin there.

—Your therapist in Hermosa Beach