When the Postpartum Fog Lifts and You Feel More Lost, Not Less

Kenneth Morrison
Apr 19
5 min read

Nobody warns you about what happens when the postpartum fog finally lifts. I get it. It’s terrifying and lonely. You might be thinking, “My whole life feels like it’s the same, but different. Like I'm not really sure who I am or where I fit into this new reality I’ve been sleeping walking my way through these past several years”.

You hit 6 weeks out from having your baby, go to your check-up and get the all clear from your doctor, and then that’s it. The postpartum phase is done. Wrong. That common misconception is what makes women feel even worse when they haven’t “bounced back” in less than 2 months. Women are told to bounce back like they're a rubber band, not a human who just grew a person. The postpartum period can last for years. Not weeks, years. It takes a couple of years for your hormones to regulate after pregnancy, for your body to not feel so foreign, and for that postpartum haze to lift. The haze you didn’t even realize you were still living in until it’s gone.

When the haze starts to slowly dissipate, life can feel chaotic. For me, I realized I woke up one day and started looking around at my life and wondering how did I get here? It’s like I knew what was happening every day, but I was unable to see just how much of my life I had been moving through on autopilot until that fog disappeared. For me it was like okay I know I’m a mom, a therapist, a wife, but who am I really? What do I like to do? What do I want out of my day each day? Maybe you’re just starting to find those answers too and trying to navigate this new reality you’ve been living in. You don’t have to have all the answers. Sometimes the answers start small and quiet as you realize you’ve given up on the small things you used to love doing. Or that you are slowly able to find joy in new things you haven’t done before. It could be as simple as revisiting or finding a new hobby such as reading, drawing, or painting. Or maybe you find time to focus more on yourself by working out a few days a week or simply getting outside to enjoy the fresh air now that it’s finally starting to warm up.

Motherhood looks different for everyone. Some are able to find support within their families, while others are doing it alone or just with their partner. Some are able to lean on their friends, especially their other mom friends who really understand what they’re going through. And then there are some who have no friends or slowly lost those friendships over time when they were giving everything they had to their new baby and had nothing left to offer anyone else. There are the moms who work while the kids are at daycare or school and the moms who stay at home all day. Even the moms who stay home with the kids while their partner works, just to swap places as soon as their partner gets home. There is no right or wrong way for motherhood to present itself, but that doesn’t mean it makes it any easier to navigate.

One thing that a lot of moms can relate to is this overwhelming sense of loneliness. This feeling of everything falling on our shoulders: the housework, the work commitments, the doctors appointments, the kids' needs, the partner’s needs, the friendship and family obligations. It’s all there all the time sitting in the backs of our brains running on a constant cycle trying to make sure everything gets done. But something can happen during this time. We forget about ourselves. We forget to take note of what we need and we want because there are so many other things and other people who are asking something from us. Losing ourselves while simultaneously giving everything we have can lead to the thing that can be one of the hardest to admit; we can’t do it all. It feels as if the weight of the world is bearing down on our shoulders at all times and we never want to let anyone down because of our failures, so we just keep going. We just keep pretending we haven’t reached our breaking point, that there is always still more to give. Even when there’s nothing left.

It may be easy or it may feel impossible to name what that feeling is. What I see it as is shame. Shame around feeling like we need to do all of these things while running on empty. Shame that we feel like we are constantly failing everyone around us, that we’re never doing enough. Shame that we cannot give more to friends and family like we know we need to, or even that our marriage/partnership is breaking down in front of our eyes and we just can’t seem to stop it. All of these things add up and it can start feeling like we’ll never be able to dig ourselves out of this pit that can sometimes feel like it's of our own making. The shame tells you this is your fault. It’s not. It’s what happens when everyone else’s needs come before your own for too long.

As a therapist, I can tell you that even we struggle to ask for help. Even if you feel like you’re doing your best to manage it all, it’s okay for that to not be enough. It’s okay if you need more. Sometimes just having someone to listen while you vent about the things that are making you want to scream out loud can be more beneficial than we give them credit for. Your life doesn’t have to be falling apart to need support, whether that support is your friends or family, a local mom support group, or a therapist. Life is already hard enough. Don’t make it harder on yourself by letting the shame continue its control over you.

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