Between the First Breath and Final Goodbye

There are two thresholds we rarely walk with ease: The one that marks life’s beginning, and the one that marks its end.

Motherhood and grief.

We name them opposites—One brings a baby into your arms, The other takes someone from them.

One floods your body with oxytocin, The other with tears.

But oh, how they echo each other.

Both are thresholds that split you in two.

In motherhood, you are reborn. Your name shifts—Mama, Mummy, Mother. And so does your sense of self. The you that came before slowly fades, beneath nappies, sleepless nights, and the weight of loving someone so entirely it aches.

In grief, you are also undone. Your name might stay the same, but your bones carry a new ache. You forget where you put your keys, because your brain is too busy remembering the sound of their voice, the scent of their skin, the feel of what is no longer here.

Both fracture time. There is the you-before, and the you-after. Both come with hormones that hijack the brain, fog your thoughts, and steal your sleep. Both leave you weeping in the dark—sometimes for joy, sometimes from pain, often without knowing which is which.

Motherhood teaches you to hold on, even when you feel like breaking.

Grief teaches you to let go, even when every cell in you wants to cling.

But both invite you to soften. To slow. To sit inside the raw truth of what it means to be human: To love. To lose. To begin again.

They demand community—though the world often tells you to do it alone. They reshape your identity in quiet, unspoken ways. They ask you to surrender control. To reach for rituals. To create meaning from the mess.

And if you’re lucky—in the stillness between lullabies and laments—you see it:

Grief and motherhood are not opposites. They are companions on the path of love.

One opens your heart. The other shows you how deep it goes.