The question “What am I lying to myself about?” has stayed with me since listening to a podcast hosted by Johnny Lawrence in conversation with Donna Lancaster – a conversation that stayed with me long after I’d finished listening. Johnny and I met through Donna’s Healing the Father Wound and Healing the Mother Wound workshops, spaces grounded in honesty, embodiment, and the courage to look beneath the stories we’ve learned to survive by.
One of the things that stood out for me was that, although the conversation wasn’t about motherhood, it spoke directly to patriarchy, which rarely announces itself as harm.
More often, it arrives disguised as certainty. It tells women:
- motherhood is destiny
- womanhood has a clear endpoint (to be a wife and mother)
- meaning waits at the finish line
And if you don’t arrive – if the path fractures, detours, or disappears altogether – the silence that follows is often interpreted as personal failure.
One of the lies I’ve carried is this:
- that if I didn’t become a mum, I didn’t have enough faith.
- That I didn’t want it enough.
- That I waited too long.
- That something about me must be inherently lacking.
- That my body must have failed some unspoken test.
- That my body, my choices, or my circumstances somehow disqualified me.
Patriarchy is clever like that.
It hands you a single map, then blames you when the terrain refuses to cooperate.
Another lie I’ve told myself is this:
- That I must resolve this story to be acceptable.
- That I should be over it by now, that grief has an expiry date.
- That I ought to feel grateful for what this life has given me.
- That I should arrive somewhere healed, empowered, and complete.
But some losses don’t resolve.
They don’t transform neatly.
They don’t ask to be redeemed.
They simply walk alongside us, asking for truth rather than optimism.
Patriarchy leaves little room for women who don’t become mothers – especially Black women – except as anomalies, footnotes, or women who are still “on the way” to something else.
We are often treated as unfinished.
But here is what I am no longer lying to myself about:
I did not fail to arrive.
I was never meant to arrive at a single destination.
The measure was never arrival.
When motherhood fell away, I didn’t become less of a woman.
I became a woman who had to author herself without a script.
That work – the grieving, the questioning, the unlearning – is not secondary.
It is central.
Life is not about arrival.
It is about what and who we lean on as we walk alongside it.
I have leaned on language when words failed me.
On writing when identity felt raw and vulnerable.
On other women who understood that grief doesn’t need fixing – only witnessing.
I have leaned on pauses.
On breath.
On the permission to stop pretending I was fine.
Meaning did not replace motherhood.
It emerged elsewhere – unevenly, quietly, without being named.
Listening to the podcast reminded me that “What am I lying to myself about?” is not a question meant to shame us.
It is an invitation.
To notice where patriarchy still speaks through our inner voice.
To start loosening the stories that no longer serve us.
To ask what might be possible if we told ourselves the truth.
If this question is echoing for you especially around motherhood, identity, or the life you thought you would have you don’t have to sit with it alone.
My Healing Hearts Circle and 1:1 work offer a quiet, compassionate space to explore questions like:
What am I still telling myself in order to cope?
Whose expectations am I carrying?
What truths am I ready to speak – even if they don’t lead to tidy endings?
This isn’t about fixing or reframing your life.
It’s about honesty, accompaniment, and finding what sustains you on the journey.
Because we were never meant to arrive perfectly.
We were meant to be supported as we walk.
- that if I didn’t become a mum, I didn’t have enough faith.
- That I didn’t want it enough.
- That I waited too long.
- That something about me must be inherently lacking.
- That my body must have failed some unspoken test.
- That my body, my choices, or my circumstances somehow disqualified me.
Patriarchy is clever like that.
It hands you a single map, then blames you when the terrain refuses to cooperate.
Another lie I’ve told myself is this:
- That I must resolve this story to be acceptable.
- That I should be over it by now, that grief has an expiry date.
- That I ought to feel grateful for what this life has given me.
- That I should arrive somewhere healed, empowered, and complete.
But some losses don’t resolve.
They don’t transform neatly.
They don’t ask to be redeemed.
They simply walk alongside us, asking for truth rather than optimism.
Patriarchy leaves little room for women who don’t become mothers – especially Black women – except as anomalies, footnotes, or women who are still “on the way” to something else.
We are often treated as unfinished.
But here is what I am no longer lying to myself about:
I did not fail to arrive.
I was never meant to arrive at a single destination.
The measure was never arrival.
When motherhood fell away, I didn’t become less of a woman.
I became a woman who had to author herself without a script.
That work – the grieving, the questioning, the unlearning – is not secondary.
It is central.
Life is not about arrival.
It is about what and who we lean on as we walk alongside it.
I have leaned on language when words failed me.
On writing when identity felt raw and vulnerable.
On other women who understood that grief doesn’t need fixing – only witnessing.
I have leaned on pauses.
On breath.
On the permission to stop pretending I was fine.
Meaning did not replace motherhood.
It emerged elsewhere – unevenly, quietly, without being named.
Listening to the podcast reminded me that “What am I lying to myself about?” is not a question meant to shame us.
It is an invitation.
To notice where patriarchy still speaks through our inner voice.
To start loosening the stories that no longer serve us.
To ask what might be possible if we told ourselves the truth.
If this question is echoing for you especially around motherhood, identity, or the life you thought you would have you don’t have to sit with it alone.
My Healing Hearts Circle and 1:1 work offer a quiet, compassionate space to explore questions like:
What am I still telling myself in order to cope?
Whose expectations am I carrying?
What truths am I ready to speak – even if they don’t lead to tidy endings?
This isn’t about fixing or reframing your life.
It’s about honesty, accompaniment, and finding what sustains you on the journey.
Because we were never meant to arrive perfectly.
We were meant to be supported as we walk.
you can catch The Johnny Lawrence podcast with Donna Lancaster on Spotify
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