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As a mom, therapist, and doula who writes about motherhood, attachment, and postpartum healing on Instagram and Substack, I receive hundreds of messages and comments a day from moms reporting disappointing and traumatizing experiences in the sacred postpartum window. These feelings often center around how their families, communities, and village treat them at a time when they should be focused on recovery and bonding with their baby.

As a trauma therapist, I understand how trauma manifests through not only the acute nature of the traumatizing event, but in what happens after. Trauma isn’t just what happened, it’s the absence of support after. This is the psychological space I see so many postpartum women navigating: after the radical, transformative experience of childbirth, whether it was traumatizing or empowering, they find themselves in the vulnerable experience of postpartum, where they have a real need for holding, attunement, and support of their village. When this support isn’t offered, or worse, in its place are expectations, demands, and pressure, vulnerabilty is met with violation. This creates stress and trauma at a time when the brain and body needs a caring space to land.

Early postpartum is a time of recalibration, recovery, and self-discovery. Psychologically, moms are expanding their identity to encompass the role of mother. A sense of grief may permeate the postpartum period as it comes with the loss of who we were before. Our brains and hormones are changing to fuel bonding, caretaking, and protecting behaviors with our baby. Our bodies are healing, our uteruses are contracting back to normal size, and if we had a C-section or a tear, we are recovering from major abdominal surgery or trauma to our pelvic floors.

All of these factors demonstrate the weight of a postpartum mother’s recovery needs after giving birth. In an ideal world, postpartum mothers would have the full support of their village in attending to this vulnerable transition. Parents and in-laws would help cook meals, watch older children, and keep the household running. Partners, friends, and extended family would offer encouragement, gentle touch, and deep listening. Medical providers and helping professionals would provide trauma-informed care that respects the complexity of the shifting maternal brain and hormonal system.

And while the world is rarely ideal, I can’t help but think about multicultural traditions of supporting postpartum mothers. From La Cuarentena in Mexico to Zuo Yuezi in China where mothers are encouraged to rest for 40 days and eat nourishing food prepared by family, it seems that postpartum holding has been a staple throughout the world over the course of millennia when you examine the anthropological literature. It makes sense from a practical standpoint: an under-nourished mother is less likely to care for her baby well and have subsequent babies. Deeply nourishing the mother has always been the backbone of a thriving society because mothers drive the survival and future of the community.

So, where did we go wrong in a society where a postpartum mother feeling fully nourished and supported by her village is a rarity?

For starters, in American culture, we tend to celebrate the arrival of the baby rather than honor the transition of the woman into the role of mother. Baby showers are more popular than mother blessings and it’s not uncommon for postpartum visitors to bring the baby a gift and expect to hold the baby. Many moms report feeling invisible after delivery for this reason.

People ask about how the baby is sleeping, but ignore her sleep.

People ask about the baby's medical information but never ask her about her birth.

People ask about baby’s development but fail to ask her what she is learning as a mother.

It seems motherhood is an extension of another cultural phenomenon, which is that we expect women to engage in emotional labor without respecting how this labor impacts them. We expect mothers to not have their own experiences, needs, and feelings on their motherhood journey, and to focus on mothering in a way that is convenient and acceptable to us.

Feeling invisible as a mother is not only challenging psychologically for mothers, it also disregards what is happening for that mother physiologically. Many researchers and experts in attachment, the maternal brain, and infant development refer to the mother and baby as “the mother-baby dyad.” Their hormones function together in a feedback loop and their proximity to each other regulates each other’s nervous systems.

Moms are highly attuned to their babies’ needs and sensitive to their distress, a phenomenon known as maternal vigilance. The brain rapidly and profoundly changes in those first few months postpartum to support the mother in investing in and bonding with her baby. There is no one more neurologically situated to caring for a newborn than that newborn’s mother, no one more responsive, relationally aware, and connected to a baby’s needs than that baby’s mother.

Yet for a lot of moms, postpartum feels like a gaslighting of our intuition and instincts when we're starting to come into our confidence and strength

We’re met with pressure, guilt trips, and expectations instead of support, encouragement, and understanding.

We’re met with unsolicited advice, criticism, and side comments instead of trust, respect, and humility.

We’re met with invasive, evaluative questions instead of open, curious questions.

And not only that, but we’re gaslit into thinking that what we’re met with is support.

Moms need freedom to find their rhythm with their babies, trust their instincts, and develop their parenting approach free from a microscope. We need support when we’re healing that actually feels like support. Dropping by uninvited when we’re cluster feeding in a diaper isn’t support, and neither is giving us advice on a parenting approach we’re not utilizing. Support shows care for our recovery needs and respect for our role as parent.

No mother should ever feel invisible postpartum. The sign that so many mothers resonate with this theme shows that our society has some work to do. When we fail to celebrate, cherish, and honor the women who nourish life, we fall out of relationship to life itself. We remain disconnected and broken from this essential relationship.

Founder of Family Constellations Therapy Bert Hellinger describes the sacrifice women make in childbirth as “soul weight”. When we give birth, we enter a threshold experience where we touch life and death at once. We exist in a liminal world where our primal brain turns on and our thinking brain turns off. We access and channel a life force in that experience that allows us to birth our babies.

When we exit childbirth, enriched with soul weight, blessed with our baby, and transformed as mothers, we deserve to be met with acknowledgement and respect for this initiation. We’re more open, grounded, and connected for it. Our babies are touched by it and our communities are benefitted by it, even when they meet us without the support we’re needing.

If you’re feeling alone or invisible in postpartum, I encourage you to find a community that can meet and see you where you are. Have the courage to connect with and express your experiences. Your experience in motherhood is central to your child's experience in childhood. Your nervous system is a jewel in the work of nurture, a treasure that becomes your baby’s treasure. Your soul weight deserves witnessing and an attentive landing space.

Here to center the mother, and remind you of your treasure,

p.s. I want to hear from you! Leave me a comment and tell me if this resonated.

The Burden of Invisibility In Postpartum

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