About Kerry · Held by the Village

You put down the desires, the edges, the spontaneity, piece by piece, and you fill the space with what you were told a good mother looks like. What your own mother modeled. What the algorithm sells you at 11pm while you're nursing.

And it looks like devotion. It gets called selflessness. But underneath it, if you're honest? It's self erasure wearing a halo.

Here's my actual question for you: who the F are you, underneath the role?

Because I promise you, that person isn't gone. She's not "who you used to be before kids." She's all you were and all you're becoming, and she is not the enemy of good parenting.

She's the source of it.

And here's the thing about sharing her: our kids are attuned to us. When they see that part of you come alive, even if it looks weird to them at first, because everything about their parents looks weird once they hit tween and teen years, they get it. Somewhere underneath the eye roll, it gives them permission to be fully themselves too.

Here's the part most people don't know

Before I was anyone's mother, I was already a Waldorf early childhood teacher. Eight years in the classroom. I understood infant care, brain development, attachment, all of it, before I ever held my own baby.

I had also been a postpartum doula and completed my maternal mental health certification.

So when my son was born, I did what I knew. Slow recovery. Nourishing foods. No screens, no plastic, no battery operated toys. Silks and sticks and stones. Everything from scratch, organic, sugar free. Natural fibers. I built him a beautiful, intentional, open ended childhood, and I don't regret a single piece of it.

But somewhere in there, believing in the pedagogy turned into performing it. I was so busy protecting his softness that I buried mine. The hip hop in the car. The karaoke. The kitchen dance parties. I used to take women into the Colorado backcountry on the full moon, eat mushrooms, and ski down mountains under the stars. I was a wild woman long before I was a mother, and somehow, even with all my training, even knowing exactly what a baby needs, I still lost myself finding out how to raise one.

That's the part that matters. It wasn't a knowledge problem. I had the knowledge. It was a permission problem. Nobody told me the wild parts were allowed to come with me.

Let me tell you about the day I got it back

My son and I got in the ocean in Costa Rica, and I started crying.

Not sad crying. The other kind. The kind that shows up when you're years deep into being somebody's mother and you suddenly realize you're also still just... you. Wild. Curious. A little reckless in the good way.

We'd taken a wrong turn down an unmarked jungle road looking for a beach I'd only seen on a satellite map. No cell service, no plan. I speak enough Spanish to get by, and we picked up a mom carrying groceries and gave her a ride, my son held her baby the whole way. We found ceviche in a fisherman's front yard because a hand painted sign told us to. Somebody told us "turn left at the chickens." We turned left at the chickens.

And then we found the beach, and we swam with the fish, and I lost it right there in the water.

My son asked why I was crying. I told him: because I'm so damn happy. Because this, right here, is a dream come true. This is what I used to picture when I imagined my life, and I'm actually living it.

He hugged me so tight. "You're the best mom ever," he said.

Not because I made his lunch that day. Because he got to see me alive, in my full expression of self.

What I actually believe

Parents don't need fixing. They need more support, and about a thousand fewer people telling them there's one right way to do this.

Birth is the most primal, powerful thing you will ever do. And you deserve a village on the other side of it, not silence and a six week check up.

You deserve to be seen, really seen, for the transformation you just went through. You need people around you who recognize it, who can name it back to you when you can't see it yourself.

Because you will hit the swamp. Every parent does, over and over, for the rest of their lives. And it's your village, your ride or die people, who remind you of the parts of yourself you've set down without noticing. Not to fix you. Just to say, hey, I see that piece of you, don't lose it. That's what a real village does. You reflect each other back, and you keep growing into yourselves, together, not just growing your kids.

I'm not interested in helping you become a calmer, more optimized version of a role that was handed to you. I'm interested in helping you find the parts of yourself you put on a shelf, and get them back, because when you can lead from that true source, you model that permission to your community.

That's what tending the village actually means. It's not a nice metaphor, it's how we don't get lost. When you step into leadership of your own life, you're not just changing your own story. You're giving every other mother in the room permission to do the same, to shine, to be fully herself, to be seen and held instead of quietly disappearing. That ripple is the whole point.

Kerry

Waldorf early childhood educator · Postpartum doula · Maternal mental health advocate · Former foster parent · 20+ years

Ready to stop performing and start changemaking?

Somebody has to build the village. Somebody has to be the one other mothers look at and think, oh, I could do that too, I could be that seen, that held, that real. That's not a job for the perfect version of you. It's a job for the real one.

Let's not rely on the systems that have conditioned us to perform "motherhood." Leadership isn't a three piece suit. It's building real community support, real community care, real community joy.

Let's do this together.

Let's go find the beach with no map.

Here's what nobody tells you about motherhood.

Here's the part most people don't know

Let me tell you about the day I got it back

What I actually believe

Ready to stop performing and start changemaking?

Schedule your call.