One Burnt Out Momma: My Story of Leaving, Healing, and Starting Over
The beginning of everything I thought I lost.
There was a time when I thought I knew exactly how my life would unfold.
I was going to become a mother, which was my greatest ambition and purpose in life. I wanted to raise my daughter in a stable home have a happy marriage on my family land, and have a homestead.
I imagined us living a simple happy life, hunting and fishing, and children running around on the land. I was going to be a stay at home mom,and I wanted to do things differently than I’d seen in my own childhood.
Growing up my own mother escaped abuse to protect us, and struggled as a single mother through trauma, addiction, and loneliness. I feared being alone, more than I feared staying and being unhappy, but I felt like something was always off in my life. I knew deep in my spirit that something needed to change. I thought we’d break generational cycles, keep our family intact and live happily ever after. I was chasing the golden image of a stable family with a mom and a dad who stayed together. The last thing I wanted for my daughter was a broken home.
Part of my dream did come true. I become a mother to a sweet little girl, and we are breaking generational cycles. But none of it happened the way that I had envisioned. Because life rarely plays out how we expect. God has a way of protecting and preparing us that often goes unseen.
I went into motherhood with high hopes. I planned a home birth and I envisioned a calm, sacred experience.. one where I would feel safe, and I would step fully into motherhood on my own terms.
But that story changed unexpectedly.
In my mind I had done everything right. I found a local midwife, I ate nourishing whole foods, did prenatal yoga, meditated, prayed, and created the ‘perfect’ birth plan. The day I went into labor seemed like it was unfolding exactly as I wanted. I was in a state of bliss, swaying on my birthing ball, as my daughter's father filled up the birthing pool, my midwife arrived after my water broke. She checked on me and discovered my daughter was breech. At that moment everything changed, I had to decide to go to hospital and take the “safer” route or risk it all and birth at home despite my midwife's concerns. Panic overtook me, and we headed to the hospital, and almost instantly the pain increased, and I was in a state of emotional distress. I laid on an operating room table with bright overhead lights, and Oceans by hillsong in my ears, as a stranger (the nurse) tried to comfort me. My daughter entered the world and was given to me for a brief moment, then handed to her father. Tears streamed down my face as I asked him if she was okay. I fell in love with her instantly.
What began as a home birth became a traumatic hospital transfer and then a cesarean.
And something in me cracked open. Not just physically,but emotionally and spiritually. The kind of breaking that doesn’t happen at all once but slowly unfolds over time. The kind you don’t even fully understand until much later. I was lucky to not struggle during Postpartum, but I had lasting trauma that I found myself working through within the next year after my daughters birth.
Then, just as I had begun to adjust to new motherhood and put the trauma of a traumatic birth behind me, my world shifted again. When My little girl was only a year old, her father confessed he had been having an affair. Just like that, everything we had built, the life I thought that I wanted collapsed. I went from being a stay-at-home mother planning a future, to a divorced- single mother with a one-year-old baby.
My life didn’t just change.
It unraveled.
In a matter of months, I found myself the residual effect of birth trauma and new motherhood, and now betrayal, divorce, and the overwhelming responsibility of raising a child while barely holding myself together. I was burnt out, broken, emotionally exhausted, and grieving a life that no longer existed.
And underneath all of it was a quiet, persistent question:
“How did I end up here?”
A great man (Jordan Peterson) once said “to understand our present, means to fully understand our past and how we ended up here.”
As I rebuilt and processed, glimpses of my past flickered through my mind. There were so many signs that my marriage was never the safe place I desperately wanted it to be, and my fear of being alone, being a single mom like my own mother, fogged up my worldview and prevented me from really acknowledging what was right in front of me. In that marriage there was addiction, abuse, gaslighting and unfathomable pain. Many nights I cried myself to sleep, I felt alone inside that relationship. I spent almost every day being the only sober and present parent and partner and I slowly grew resentful and bitter of the person I once loved. But I believed loyalty to be the greatest virtue, and I believed in the power of change.. so I stayed devoted through all of it. The irony of my marriage ending in infidelity was at first, to me some cruel joke that God was playing on me, but soon I realized that it was God’s grace that allowed it to happen. Because only then did I have the courage to walk away and stop fighting for a life that was never meant for me.
I remember wanting change so desperately that I sought it out in any way I could. From changing jobs and choosing to stay home,we contemplated moving and chose to try and homestead. For many years I believed that if I just became the best wife I could be that eventually things would fall into place, and then when I became a Mother I believed he would change for his daughter. Little did I know through each step God was shaping my identity as a woman and leading me to the change that I truly needed.
Not the life I had planned.
But a life that is real.
The day my ex-husband confessed his affair was the most broken I'd ever felt. I remember laying in bed with my one year old daughter, breastfeeding her, looking down at her sweet innocent face, with tears streaming down mine. I told her at that moment that we would get through it, I didn't know how, but she was my strength. I remember saying “it's just me and you now, but we are gonna be okay, as long as I have you, we are gonna be okay.”
It took time, courage, and lots of tears, but we moved through that difficult season. Slowly we rebuilt. I walked through those courthouse doors, with my mom by my side, and my daughter on my hip. I filed for divorce, I fought for sole custody of my daughter and her father signed over the deed to the land to me. I walked away from that marriage and gained freedom.
None of it was easy, I had to rebuild my whole life. I fell in love again (which is another story i’d love to share here one day) and it took time to learn what trust and safety looks like in a relationship. It’s taken time to heal and discover what parts of me were real and what parts were born out of survival. For months the emotional exhaustion was hard to push through. But I promised myself and my daughter that we would be okay. So every day I woke up, did the next right thing, while putting one foot in front of the other. Finally.. one day things were easier, and life felt lighter and soon everything just fell into place like God and the universe had been waiting for me to take the that first step towards change so everything could align.
Today, my daughter and I are thriving.
Our home feels safe.
There is stability where there once was chaos.
There is softness where there once was survival.
And I met a man that embodies safety, someone who even in anger does no harm, and prides himself in taking care of the people he loves. I’ve learned to release the past, and now that life feels like a distant memory. I can finally say i’m excited about where our life is heading.
The real transformation didn’t happen around me. It happened within me.
I discovered something I wish more mothers were told, something I’m compelled to tell you now.
You are allowed to want a different life.
And you don’t have to wait, like I did, for something to force you to make a desicion.
Even if It doesn’t look like what you planned, even if It doesn’t look like what others expected of you and even if It requires you to start over and It asks you to let go of what you thought you needed to hold onto.
If my story speaks to some part of you, I want you to know. You are not broken, Healing is possible, and You are allowed to start over.
When your gut tells you its time for change, don't wait until you have no other choice.
And If you are in a season where everything feels uncertain. If your life doesn’t look the way you thought it would, If you are carrying more than you ever expected to..
I’ve been where you are, run down, burnt out and looking for a way forward
There is a pathway through, and it starts with you.
If you feel something shifting deep within you, a quiet discomfort, a longing for more, a sense that the life you’re living no longer fits, that is not failure.
That is your inner knowing.
Your intuition is guiding you, and nothing you have walked through has been wasted.
Here, we honor motherhood in all its complexity not just the beautiful, peaceful moments,
but the hard, raw, unseen ones too.
The moments where you feel stretched beyond capacity.
The moments where you question everything.
The moments no one talks about.
From wherever you are starting, whether from trauma, divorce, abuse, or simply the quiet overwhelm of being a mother in today’s world
Healing is possible.
A different life is possible.
A softer life.
A life that actually feels like your own.
And you don’t have to walk that path alone. Below is my one of my greatest resources for us burnt out momma’s looking for change and healing.
‘You Are Safe Now’ is a gentle yet powerful healing workbook/guided journal for mothers navigating trauma, including birth trauma, divorce, emotional healing, and nervous system regulation. Created for women who are breaking generational cycles, this guided journal combines reflective prompts and somatic exercises to help you reconnect with safety, rebuild self-trust, and move forward with compassion.
Relearning safety, and nervous system work was and still is my greatest learned tool for passing through difficult seasons and overcoming the overwhelm that comes with trauma, and early motherhood. Let me walk with you out of that season and into a life that feels right for you.
You Are Safe Now is a gentle yet powerful healing workbook for mothers navigating trauma, including birth trauma, divorce, emotional healing, and nervous system regulation. Created for women who are breaking generational cycles, this guided journal combines reflective prompts and somatic exercises to help you reconnect with safety, rebuild self-trust, and move forward with compassion.
What’s included: 55 page workbook, with guided journal prompts, somatic nervous system healing exercises, reflection pages and practices to carry with you in daily life.
DISCLAIMER: This product is a supportive resource and tool for self-help and NOT a substitute for professional mental health advice or treatment. This workbook does not constitute mental health treatment, therapy, or medical advice.
