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My husband is a biologist who studies resilience in ecosystems. Throughout my first pregnancy, he talked incessantly about the topic. He talked, on end, about invasive species, fires, drought, and man-made destruction, and marveled at how, despite the odds, these environments can recover. After my son was born, the concepts of ecological resilience spoke to me in a very different way than I could have imagined. After experiencing cholestasis in pregnancy, a failed induction, three days of labor, and an emergency C-section, I looked over my broken body and was not sure how I would ever recover. I was too broken open, too tired, and too raw.

Yet, little by little, I found my way out of the black hole of those early days of motherhood. My muscles stitched back together, and my body became my own again. My view of myself, however, was fundamentally changed. What I did not know was how much we, as birthing people, are our own ecosystems. The most important lessons I have learned have been from the first mother, Mother Nature, and from what we know about how we, like nature, are made to overcome.

Lesson One: Let It Burn

For years, we thought that if we stopped forests from burning, we could protect our homes and protect ourselves. What happened instead is that, through fire suppression, we created forests that were explosively flammable because we did not allow seasonal fires to clear out the understory plants that supercharge wildfires. Out West is where this suppression was most common, and now we see the results.

Entering motherhood is one giant, semi-controlled burn. I say semi-controlled because we have very little control over the direction it goes and what it consumes. What we come to realize is that everything that burns has to be burned away for this new phase of life to grow. As we stand around the scorched earth that is our lives, our bodies, and our marriages, we don’t see much hope until we notice the first green shoots coming up from the blackened ground. Sometimes, we have to wait a while to see them. Our selfishness burns, our sense of self-importance burns, and all that used to matter so much burns away. What is left is something brimming with new life and possibility.

Lesson Two: Don't Be an Island

Island ecosystems are often the least resilient. The nature of an island is that it has to be essentially self-sustaining, and there is no easy way off (Fernández-Palacios et al., 2021). As moms, we create our own islands. We may go to a mom group once per week. We may call people when our children are napping. But how often do we really allow people into our lives? Many of the women I work with in my practice are self-proclaimed perfectionists. They have almost always “got this” until, one day, they simply don’t. Their resources run thin. They are exhausted. They have made themselves such an island that they use up all their resources and often see no way out. Having a resilient maternal ecosystem requires the exchange of support, fears, hopes, and heartbreak. It means having a strong network that you can rely on, even if it can’t be your family. Don’t let the Instagram Ballerina Farm brand of motherhood fool you: This is not always pretty, it is hard, and you should not have to do it alone.

Lesson Three: Embrace Change

One of the most important lessons in the natural world is also one of the most important lessons in motherhood: Change is the only constant. Resilience does not always mean that the ecosystem is going to “bounce back” to what it was before. An oak forest, after a fire, will likely no longer be an oak forest.

But as we well know, things change. The mistake we can make, both in conservation and in motherhood, is holding too closely to the idea that what is should always remain that way. Parents don’t want their children’s friendships to change, but they do. Parents don’t want their marriages to change, but they do. Birthing parents don’t want their bodies to change, but they do. We are not made to just “bounce back” as if this transformative process did not fundamentally change us. It did.

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When I work with birthing people during their pregnancies, there is such a dramatic shift from their last session before birth to when they walk back through the door postpartum. Right before delivery, there is an almost feral need for sameness. We need to feel like we have control. We need to feel like this is predictable. We walk in with our birth plans and essential oils and comfy robes, only to be split open and reborn as entirely new people alongside our children. We return with a wildness in us, like something has broken open—because it has. The best thing we can do is embrace that change.

So, What Is a Resilient Motherhood?

Motherhood can easily become a homogeneous, out-of-balance, and overgrown ecosystem. Birthing people who had lives and identities outside of motherhood can completely lose their footing as the guilt of being a “present parent” creeps in. We are told that if we enroll our children in daycare, they will think we died. Our music turns into an unending loop of Baby Shark. “Mama” culture has become an invasive species, creating unrealistic standards and pressuring moms to “slow down and enjoy this time with our kids,” when many of us feel that all we do is spend time with our kids.

A resilient motherhood is not a perfect motherhood. If you need inspiration, look to nature. Look at the seasons and how the world changes, breaks, and rebuilds. Birthing people are often lost in a sea of expectations, guilt, and shame. Resilience requires us to throw all of that to the wind and start over again, as many times as we need to.

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (2023). Screening and diagnosis of mental health conditions during pregnancy and postpartum (Clinical Practice Guideline No. 4).

Yim, I. S., Tanner Stapleton, L. R., Guardino, C. M., Hahn-Holbrook, J., & Dunkel Schetter, C. (2015). Biological and psychosocial predictors of postpartum depression: Systematic review and call for integration. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 11, 99–137. doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-101414-020426

Fernández-Palacios, J. M., Kreft, H., Irl, S. D. H., Norder, S., Ah-Peng, C., Borges, P. A. V., … Drake, D. R. (2021). Scientists’ warning—The outstanding biodiversity of islands is in peril. Global Ecology and Conservation, 31, e01847.

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