WTF, Why Is No One Talking About This?

Hidden wounds of motherhood, the Good Mom trap, + the village you’ve been missing

Mamas, raise your hand if…

✋🏻 You felt shockingly alone in the postpartum haze—even if other people were around.

✋🏾 You replayed your birth story in your head over and over…and maybe shared it with a few friends, but never had the deeper support to process and integrate it.

✋🏿You made sure you got the stroller, the swaddles, and the perrrfect registry…but not the circle of support you actually needed.

✋🏼 The frozen meals ran out (if you even got ’em), the texts slowed down, and suddenly it was just you and the ache of WTF do I do now? Who the eff am I?

✋🏻 You felt guilty for grieving—your old life, your body, your emotions—even though you loved your baby like crazy.

✋🏽 You longed for “the village”…but had no idea how to build one.

✋🏿 You felt like parts of you died in motherhood, and EVERYTHING changed…while your partner just remained the same.

Unfortunately this is SOOO common.

The Cultural Problem

Let’s get one thing straight—this isn’t a “you” problem, it’s a cultural problem.

We live in a society that celebrates the baby but forgets the mother. You went through the most radical transformation a human body and psyche can undergo—pregnancy, birth, postpartum—and the world handed you a few casseroles (if you were lucky) and said, “Congrats! How’s the baby sleeping?!”

Meanwhile, you’re sitting in the ashes of your old identity thinking, How the actual fuck is no one talking about this?!

Part of the answer to this is we exist in a broken culture that doesn’t have the language or the rituals for what you went through/are going through.

There’s a word for the process of becoming a mother: matrescence.

Anthropologist Dana Raphael coined it in the 1970s, but how many mothers do you know who’ve even heard it? Have you? I most definitely hadn’t before I began my avid search for WTF was going on with me and why no one else seemed to be talking about it.

Without marking and honoring the SIGNIFICANT threshold we cross in becoming mother, our experience goes wildly unacknowledged.

We don’t have our elders preparing and guiding us. We don’t have a circle of women wrapping us in care, food, song, and story. We don’t have ceremony to usher us through this threshold.

Instead, most mothers are left carrying the invisible weight of initiation alone. We know in our bones we’re not the same—but there’s no container, no witness, and no sacred space to hold it. So the transformation gets shoved underground.

Meanwhile, the pressure is relentless…bounce back, shrink your belly, silence your grief, and slip into skinny jeans while breastfeeding on no sleep.

In other places and other times, this passage was marked.

✶ In Mexico, mothers are held through la cuarentena—40 sacred days of food, rest, and care.

✶ In Korea, there’s sanhujori—a period of protection and restoration where the new mother is treated like royalty.

✶ In China, there’s zuo yuezi—“sitting the month”—where community surrounds the mother so she can focus solely on healing and bonding.

Contrast that with here. In the West, we hand a mother a baby, a stack of discharge papers, and a stroller off her registry. And expect her to resume life “as usual.”

The result? Three core wounds that almost every modern mother carries…

The Three Core Wounds of Modern Motherhood

When we strip mothers of language, ritual, and real community, three core wounds show up again and again. Maybe you’ll recognize yourself in one—or all—of them.

1. Not Marking Matrescence (Who TF Am I Now?)

You didn’t just birth a baby—you birthed a new version of yourself. Actually, multiple new versions. And yet the world acts like you should carry on as if nothing changed.

Your body feels different. Your brain feels different. Your heart, your desires, your boundaries, your dreams—they’ve all shapeshifted. What used to matter suddenly doesn’t. What you thought you wanted now feels hollow. And in the middle of feeding around the clock and blowouts up the wazoo, there’s the constant question of…Who the hell am I now?

You catch your own reflection in the mirror and sometimes don’t recognize her. There are moments you grieve the woman you were, while also feeling awe and confusion about who you’re becoming.

And because no one names this shift, you start to think it’s just you. That you’re being dramatic. That everyone else is fine, so why can’t you just pull it together? Cue the identity crisis, the guilt, the shame and the incredulous question of WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS?!

This my GLORIOUS, MAGICAL AF MAMA, is matrescence—the metamorphosis of becoming a mother. And when it goes unseen, it can feel like living through a soul-shattering earthquake while everyone else swears the ground is steady.

…it makes you question EVERYTHING.

…Who am I now?
…What matters to me?
…What parts of myself died in birth—and what parts are clawing their way back to life?
…What do I want to carry forward, and what am I ready to burn to the ground?

But that’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a very good and juiiiicy thing—when you have the right support, holding, and tending to during this transition.

Those cracks you feel—they become fertile ground. They become the openings where your truest self can rise.

Personal story:

It’s so funny…because I remember when we were talking about having children I was SO EFFING SCARED that my business would collapse in the wake of becoming a mother. And I was OBSESSED with my business. It was my everything. My baby. I couldn’t imagine something taking me away from it…

And yet…as life sneakily does sometimes, your biggest fear comes true…

Postpartum was ROUGH for me. I was NOT ok. And I was aching for someone to name what had happened to me—not just physically, but psychically, spiritually, soul-deep. I felt so fucking lonely, lost, confused, and empty. And no amount of numbing out with romantasy books, talks with my husband, or even alone time to work on my business could fix it.

A year postpartum with my first baby, I shut the doors to my 7-figure coaching certification school. And was left soaking in the liminal waters of who the hell am I now? The ego hits of being someone “important” in the industry were no more. And I had to really question who I was beyond titles and accomplishments and come to learn the truth at my core.

But the beauty of all this (which was hard to see in the thick of it, of course) was that matrescence peeled away (ok, sometimes it felt like a ripping and tearing and shredding) everything that wasn’t my TRUTH. All the superficialities, surface-level desires, etc. got taken away to reveal something deeper.

And thank effing God for that, because life has only become more rich, deep, meaningful, magical, and mischievous ;) mwuahaha!

Reflection prompts:

✶ When you look in the mirror, who do you see now? Who feels gone, and who is emerging?

✶ What’s one part of yourself you’ve grieved since becoming a mother? What’s one new part you’ve discovered or are curious about?

✶ What does matter to you now? What no longer matters that once did? What is this making possible for you?

✶ If you could gather a circle of women to witness this exact version of you, what would you want them to see, honor, or say back to you?

2. Alone in the Shallows (Where’s My Village?)

Motherhood was NEVER meant to be a solo activity. And yet, here we are—in nuclear family bubbles, isolated homes, and playdates that skim the surface.

Maybe this sounds familiar…the playground swarming with moms and kids. The talk is about nap schedules, milestones, and the occasional “mommy juice” joke. Everyone is sharing surface-level stories and tips.

But underneath, YOU ARE STAAAARVING.

Starving for real talk about the 4-month dry spell in your marriage, or the grief of losing who you used to be, or the rage that sometimes simmers just under the surface, or that sometimes you fantasize about running away.

You’re surrounded by mothers but feel lonelier than ever, because what you crave is depth—and depth is missing. And the ache of aloneness only grows when you realize the very thing you were told would connect you to a whole new community of women…sometimes makes you feel more cut off than before.

And it’s not just depth you’re missing. It’s the village itself.

No one is showing up at your door with soup when you and the kids are sick.
You don’t have a neighbor who will swoop in and watch the baby so you can nap.
There isn’t a house you can wander into, mascara-streaked, to cry on someone’s couch while they fold your laundry without making a big deal out of it.
Your kids don’t run wild with a pack of other kids while the adults cook, swap stories, and remind each other that “your babies are my babies too.”

Instead, you scroll Instagram at 2am and wonder why the hell this feels so lonely when motherhood was supposed to bring community.

This is the wound of aloneness in the crowd. You’re surrounded by people—but not held.

And without a true village, mothers carry what was always meant to be shared. OOPH.

Personal story:

For me, this part was effing brutal. I tried my best to get out of the house (eventually) postpartum, but found that even when I did, I felt more depressed and alone. I needed and craved so much more than an hour of mommy and me classes or a playdate with another mom where it felt absolutely EXHAUSTING to make conversation.

Not to mention…I felt so tender and fragile and like I needed tending to almost as much as my baby. But I was left to fend for myself and figure it out on my own.

All I came up with was that this SUCKED and surely this wasn’t the way it was meant to be.

I found it HILARIOUS (ok, devastating) that I had spent HOOOURS creating the perfect registry—agonizing over which stroller, which swaddle, which bottles, which blah blah blah…Only to find myself sitting alone in a pile of stuff when what I really wanted was…

Yummy, nourishing meals.

A trusted friend who would come hold my baby while I could take a shower or nap.

An elder to look me in the eye and say, “I’ve been there. It’s hard, but you are HELD. I’ve got you. You’re not alone in this”

Someone to reallllly listen to my birth story and not try to fix me or say “at least you and baby are healthy, yay!” But to really see me and support me in this life-altering experience and help me extract the medicine from it.

A circle of women and mamas I could gather with to LET GO. Be real with. Be held by. Connect with. And offer my support to.

But those weren’t on the registry.

Reflection prompts:

✶ Who would you call if you were sick in bed tomorrow? If no one comes to mind, how does that feel?

✶ When was the last time you let yourself really lean on someone else—for food, for childcare, or for emotional holding?

✶ Imagine you could make a registry for you, not just for the baby. What would be on it? (Meals? Circle time? A postpartum doula? Someone to listen to your birth story and support you in making peace with it? A friend on speed-dial who just “gets it”?)

✶ If you could design your own “village,” what would it look and feel like? What’s the one piece you crave most right now?

3. Martyrdom Over Motherhood (The Good Mom Trap)

Mothers are praised most when they’re invisible.

Enter…The Good Mom Myth.

She’s selfless—to the point of disappearing into her kids. Always grateful. Never resentful. Never needy. She puts herself dead last and wears exhaustion like a badge of honor. She has a spotless house, an Instagrammable baby, a thriving career—but doesn’t work too many hours and never misses a school play or bedtime. She doesn’t grieve the woman she once was, she doesn’t rage at the changes in her relationship, she doesn’t question who she’s becoming. And when she wants more—for her body, her creativity, her purpose—she’s hit with guilt sharp enough to slice her open.

When real mothers inevitably don’t match this impossible standard, we’re left drowning in guilt and silence.

Dr. Sophie Brock calls this the cultural pedestal we’ve placed mothers on—a pedestal that’s impossible to balance on, but one that leaves us trying anyway, at the expense of our sanity, our relationships, and our wholeness.

Personal story:

I fell for the Good Mom Trap, too…and continue to!

Entire days were spent feeding, soothing, cleaning, and tending. My business, my body, my dreams alwaaays came last or “later.”

And under the surface, I was simmering. RAGE at how my partner’s life looked eerily unchanged while mine had been ripped apart. RAGE that everyone noticed how much I was giving, but no one saw how much I was disappearing. RAGE that people were telling me “you look great!” or whatever instead of asking, “Lex, how are you…really???”

And even in the moments when I tried to give to myself—whether that was a nap, a solo shower, or GASP! A walk alone. Wham. The guilt hit.

It was a vicious loop: sacrifice → resentment → guilt → sacrifice again.

And here I was, a strong, independent woman who “knew better.”

Which, naturally, only piled on more shame. Shame for feeling rage. Shame for wanting more. Shame for not being able to bypass the trap even though I could see it. Shame shame shame shame shame.

WOOF.

That’s how sneaky this myth is. It worms its way into even the women who know how to call bullshit on it.

Reflection prompts:

✶ Where have you been praised for sacrificing yourself in the name of being a “good mom”?
✶ What parts of yourself have been pushed so far to the back burner you almost forget they exist?
✶ When was the last time you did something purely for you—and what came up in your body afterward?
✶ If your kids saw you living fully—not as a martyr, but as a whole, alive woman—what might that teach them about love?

These wounds don’t just live in your mind. They seep into your marriage, your friendships, your business, your sense of self. But what if these wounds aren’t inevitable? What if they’re symptoms of a culture that’s failing mothers—and what if there’s another way?

At some point, I couldn’t keep pretending it was fine. I needed answers. I needed medicine. So I went searching.

My Turning Points

My search lead me to find some brilliant women, mentors, and experiences…

I reallllly struggled with my birth experience. So much so that I kept playing it over and over and over in my head. I would even share it with people, but for whatever reason, its grip didn’t seem to loosen.

I constantly thought about what could’ve gone differently and ping-ponged between guilt-tripping myself (and even speaking HORRIBLY to myself—”What kind of woman can’t even give birth?! You had to have a c-section…so much for your ‘natural’ empowering birth. HA.”) and blaming the team that supported me (“if they had noticed the baby was sunny-side up…if they had moved me more…if they hadn’t run out of epidural…if they had just let me keep going…”).

I knew I wanted to have more children but I also knew I had a LOT to move through, especially in terms of my birth experience before that was even a consideration.

I came across Birth Story Medicine, a creation of Pamela England, and thought I’d give a session a try. It was so profoundly healing and cracked something open in me. For the first time, my story was held—not judged, not compared, or rushed through. It was honored and I truly felt peace and learning from the experience. It was so powerful I became a certified Birth Story Medicine Facilitator myself.

Shortly afterwards, I stumbled across the Motherhood Studies Certification with Dr. Sophie Brock and enrolled. It finally gave me words for what was happening—not just in me, but to all of us mamas. That motherhood is a rite of passage, as profound as puberty or menopause, and that the reason it felt so earth-shattering was because…it is. I could see clearly how society fails mothers and how that failure gets baked into every corner of our culture.

I felt SO much personal healing and deep mental understanding for what I had experienced, but I could still feel there was a missing piece. And for me, that was community and circling.

Finally, I joined MotherCircle™ an 8-week experience guided by Kimberly Ann Johnson. And SO MUCH shifted. For the first time, I sat in a circle of women who weren’t trading milestone updates or hiding behind “I’m fine.” They were naming the truth and sharing their stories and witnessing mine. I experienced community, connection, and recognition. I felt seen in the messy, wild, multidimensional identity of mother. That circle was so powerful, I knew I had to bring it to others—so I became a certified MotherCircle Facilitator, too.

From there, it was soooo clear: I couldn’t not share this.

I had to make sure other mothers got to experience what I almost missed out on—being witnessed, celebrated, and deeply supported in their becoming.

What Real Support Looks + Feels Like

As I’ve hinted and explicitly shared, mothers don’t need more swaddles, soothing sound machines, or “bounce back” workout plans.

What we need is recognition. Witnessing. Ritual. A circle that says, “I SEE YOU, BITCH! You are not alone. I’m with you. I’ve got you.”

Real support looks like:

✶ Understanding the cultural waters we’re steeped in—seeing clearly that it’s not you who’s broken, but a society built on patriarchal, capitalist systems that thrive on mothers disappearing into unpaid, invisible labor. Naming the system is liberation. It frees you from shame and gives you permission to grieve what you never received—and to imagine something different.

✶ Being witnessed in your story—having every twist, turn, and truth of your birth or motherhood initiation honored, without someone rushing to fix or compare.

✶ Sitting in circle with other mothers—speaking your truths out loud and hearing “me too” echo back until your loneliness dissolves.

✶ Rites of passage and ceremony spaces that mark what’s been lost, what’s been born, and who you’re becoming. Because despite what you’re told or have experienced, you don’t just need to survive motherhood, you deserve to be celebrated in it.

✶ Community weaving—rebuilding the village, one gathering, one meal, one circle at a time, so you’re held not just for six weeks postpartum, but for the long haul of motherhood.

And here’s what that kind of support feels like:

Like your nervous system can finally exhale.
Like your tears aren’t too much, your rage isn’t wrong, and your joy isn’t frivolous.
Like you can unclench your jaw, soften your belly, and let yourself be held for once.
Like you belong—fully, messily, gloriously—in all the versions of you that are emerging.

This Is Exactly What I Offer

Through my work, I create what our culture forgot—MotherCare™.

MotherCare™ is the modern mother’s holistic support system. It’s the new registry, the missing village, the ceremonies and circles that mark your becoming. It’s where we tend to the mother, not just the baby.

That looks like:
✨ 1:1 sessions where your story is witnessed and honored.
✨ MotherCircles™ where you sit in community that sees the real you.
✨ Rites of passage and ceremonies that mark the seismic shift of matrescence.
✨ Community weaving that slowly rebuilds the village around you.

This is what I’ve devoted myself to creating—for the mothers who are pregnant and standing at the threshold, for the ones freshly postpartum and cracked wide open, and for the women years down the line who still feel the ache of an unacknowledged transformation.

I deeply believe that MotherCare™ is NOT a luxury. It’s the essential tending of your story, your soul, your spark, and your support village.

Here are the deets of how I bring MotherCare™ to life:

Birth Story + Soul Spark Sessions

✶ 1:1 In-Home or Virtual (one-off session and ongoing packages available)

In these sessions, I listen deeply to your birth story as a certified Birth Story Medicine Listener, helping you integrate the beauty and the ache of what you’ve been through. Whether you’ve experienced the birth of your dreams, had a difficult and unwanted experience, or a loss, these are for every birthing mama.

I also bring my background as a Master Practitioner of the Transformational Arts (NLP, EFT, TIME Techniques, Hypnosis, Parts Work, Shadow Work, Astrology, and more) to support your becoming as you move through the postpartum portal (aka after birth and beyond!). Because you don’t lose yourself in motherhood—you come closer to the truth of who you are. YUM.

Think: a mix of reflection, deep transformational work, ritual, and a good cry.

MotherCircle™

✶ An 8-Week Journey of Connection + Ceremony (in Bermuda or online)

This is not another mommy-and-me class. This is a mommy-and-her-baddie-mommy-friends gathering.

These circles are for the mother—to be held, witnessed, and celebrated in community with other women walking the same wild path. We follow an 8-week arc from Kimberly Ann Johnson’s MotherCircle, which I’m certified to facilitate. You can expect to:

• Reconnect with your body, cycles, and sexuality in this new season.

• Explore the real-talk side of grief, rage, love, and desire (all welcome here).

• Reclaim your worth, boundaries, and values as a mother and woman.

• Root into your lineage + legacy—what you carry, what you release, what you pass on.

• Close with ceremony + celebration to anchor your transformation and send you forward with more clarity, support, and community.

Rites of Passage + Ceremonies

✶ Thresholds Marked with Meaning

Modern culture claps for the baby, claps if you look “good” postpartum, and then moves on. BARF. Meanwhile, you’ve crossed a threshold SO radical it’s reshaped your body, your psyche, and your soul. When passages like these are left unmarked mothers often feel unseen, unanchored, and alone.

Ceremony changes that.

I craft Mother’s Blessings, Postpartum Ceremonies, and bespoke rituals to help you honor your thresholds with your community (no matter how big or small) in a way that’s deeply meaningful and wildly personal.

Sometimes it looks like candles, flowers, sisterhood, and tears. Sometimes it’s laughter, dancing, and feeding each other cake while blasting Lizzo. Either way, you leave feeling seen, celebrated, and anchored in your becoming.

Because you deserve waaaay more than just surviving this transition. You deserve to be crowned in it, QUEEN!

Community Weaving

✶ The Mother’s Registry, Reinvented

Sure, baby registries are cute. But where’s the registry that YOU really need?! I

Together, we design the support you actually crave with a bespoke intake experience where we map out what would make you feel held. Maybe it’s:

• Friends on a meal train where you choose the recipes.

• A massage + solo time while someone else handles the baby.

• A circle of your closest women gathering weekly to be together.

• A day where your besties conspire to spirit you away for fun.

Whatever your heart wants, we weave it in. Then we give your people a way to show up that doesn’t suck. No more vague “let me know if you need anything” texts. Instead, you get a swoon-worthy village that delights them to give and saves you from doing motherhood alone.

Because your people do want to help. They just need someone to show them how—and that’s where I come in 😉

This is the support I went searching for and couldn’t find. Now, I offer it to you.

This work is for you if…
✶ You’re pregnant and want to enter motherhood with support, not just a registry.
✶ You’re freshly postpartum and aching for someone to witness you, not just the baby.
✶ You’re years into motherhood but still carrying the weight of an unacknowledged initiation.

It’s never too early—or too late—to be held.

If your body is whispering (or screaming), yes, this is what I’ve been missing, here’s your next step:

DM me on Instagram @lexidangelo if you’re ready to receive—or gift—the soul-level support every mother deserves.

You don’t have to carry this alone. You were never meant to.