God Doesn’t Desire Your Misery in Motherhood

THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN BY ANNE MARIE WILLIAMS, HOST OF THE GRIT.GROWTH.GRACE. PODCAST

Growing up as the 2nd oldest of 7, plus one miscarried sibling, I loved it each time a new baby came home from the hospital. I thought babies only came at night, because every time our parents would tuck us in and then we would wake up to a stranger making breakfast. That’s how we knew our sibling had arrived!

As I grew older, I learned more about my mother’s struggles with postpartum mood issues, along with those of our closest friends’ mom, who also had 8 kids.

Once I married and had a baby on the way the childhood excitement of newborns shifted to fearing what might befall me as a mother myself. Because I loved having so many siblings, I wanted a big family, and my husband agreed. But I assumed it was going to cost me my mental health, perhaps irreparably. I wasn’t alone in fearing this. In fact, 135,000+ people, presumably mostly women, Google ‘postpartum depression’ each month.

My first child surprised me, though. My postpartum went very smoothly and at 6 weeks I jumped right back into high-intensity workouts and my regularly scheduled activities and (over)commitments. At 12 weeks, I was back to working full-time on my feet as a dayshift nurse in an adult intensive care unit (ICU). Life was busy, bordering on frenetic, but I’d not yet been stretched past my capabilities and patterns of coping.

That changed with baby #2. Significant personal stressors during the pregnancy combined with fears of miscarriage and intolerance to progesterone in the first trimester prepped me for trouble, and then I was induced at 38 weeks so my daughter could go under general anesthesia for an urgent surgery when she was 2 days old.

At 6 weeks, I returned to work (part-time) and working out…and had my first panic attack in years. My old patterns of busy-ness and coping by controlling had been stretched to their breaking point, but I wasn’t ready to acknowledge this. I believed a hormonal imbalance was the culprit and I tried progesterone over and over and over again, but with no success.

At the same time, I sometimes wondered “is this just the way motherhood is? Am I supposed to just carry this suffering as my lot in life?”

Starkly, “is my misery God’s desire for me?”

Three really rough years followed before I hit rock-bottom and finally acknowledged that I needed help and that the things I’d tried weren’t working. I felt like such a failure to admit that I couldn’t fix myself and I was terrified that nothing could.

But God’s grace was present in my time of profound weakness and doubt.

Several months before, after testing my labs and finding that - with hCG injections timed to my cycle - all my hormones looked good, a nurse practitioner had recommended counseling. I’d rejected her suggestion because I’d never been through a major trauma. But after my come-to-Jesus experience, I started counseling after all. The therapist recommended a Catholic Mindfulness course in tandem with counseling, not as any type of spiritual practice but to calm the physical symptoms of panic that were baked into my everyday existence at that time. I found both together very helpful.

Over the following year, I saw where many of my patterns of coping and relating to others had come from, and learned healthier alternatives. I experienced a miscarriage during this time, but surprisingly experienced the aftermath as a time of profound healing through being cared for and held up by others.

I’d not yet taken responsibility for my own thoughts, though. That would come slowly, during my pregnancy and postpartum with my 4th (and 3rd living) child, as I wrestled with ongoing anxiety, including anxiety about counseling not being a cure-all!

Next up was an anxiety book recommended by the therapist, who I’d stayed in touch with, and then the full course taught by the book’s author. I learned the “anatomy” of a panic attack and of anxiety in general, and came to understand that I’d need to take responsibility for and let go of my own anxious thoughts. No matter what had happened in the past, the way I was still thinking was creating anxiety now. That realization was clarifying but difficult to accept, since it meant that this was also my problem and not simply something I could blame on someone else.

In God’s providence, I came into contact with the good folks at Metanoia Catholic that same year, and their emphasis on “taking every thought captive for Christ” couldn’t have come at a better time. Through their content and several 1:1 coaching calls, I started to put the tiniest bit of distance between myself and my thoughts, to see how - as I’d read but not internalized in the Catholic Mindfulness course and the anxiety course - I am not my thoughts (especially not the crazy ones!). My brain has thoughts the way my heart has beats. It’s up to me how I respond, what I choose to ruminate on, mull over, grasp hold of, make mean something about me.

During my 5th pregnancy (4th living), I began spiritual direction, which has built upon everything that’s come before it by helping me see that God’s voice and inspiration comes in peace, invitation, gentleness, rest. And throughout these last two pregnancies, my perspective on the postpartum time has shifted substantially as well. I’ve come to see it as a potentially transformative time, a time to show real grit, to grow my skillset and mindset (I love the idea that every child is a “promotion” for the mother, requiring continuous learning, expanding her mindset and acquiring new skills), and to rely unabashedly on God’s grace.

I no longer hustle back into hardcore workouts (or much of anything else!) in the first few months, instead approaching the fourth trimester as an invitation to slow down and purposefully turn my focus inside my family. I now approach postpartum on purpose, preparing a “postpartum plan” even more intentionally than my birth plan (after all, postpartum lasts much longer and includes care of my whole family!).

On retreat in spring of 2023, Mother Anne Marie of the Nashville Dominicans (yep, we have the same name!) told me “Your love is the light of your home.” I want every woman to have the help and support she needs to radiate Christ’s light to those He’s placed closest to her. I’ve come to believe we can love who we become during postpartum, and in May I started a podcast to share my hard-won experience with other moms. My oldest is now 8 and my youngest is 11 months. Hopefully in the next year, another Williams will be on the way. Of course, I continue to do postpartum and motherhood (and the rest of life!) imperfectly, but I look forward to the future with so much hope. I want other women to have that hope too.

About Anne Marie

Anne Marie Williams is a wife and mom of five living in small town Illinois. She homeschools her big kids and works part-time as Managing Editor at Natural Womanhood. She started a podcast to help other moms experience postpartum as a time of grit, growth, and grace. You can find her on Instagram @gritgrowthgrace and listen in here.