What helps me balance motherhood and my personal life is giving myself permission to be a whole person—not only a mom, and not only someone grieving.
After losing my mother five years ago, then experiencing a miscarriage in July at 37 years old while caring for my one-year-old, balance stopped meaning getting everything right. Grief has a way of showing up in layers. There are days I miss my mom most in the smallest moments: when my child does something new, when I want to ask her a question, or when I wish she could see me become a mother. Then there are days when the loss of a pregnancy feels impossibly heavy alongside the joy and constant needs of the child already in my arms.
I have learned that loving my one-year-old deeply does not erase the baby I lost. And grieving my mother does not make me less present or grateful as a parent. I can hold gratitude, exhaustion, joy, longing, and heartbreak all at once.
The support I wish more moms had is the kind that does not require us to explain, minimize, or “look on the bright side.” I wish every mother had people who could say: You can be thankful and devastated at the same time. You can need rest. You can need help. You can still be a good mother.
For me, support looks like someone dropping off dinner without expecting conversation, my husband taking over bedtime so I can take a walk alone, a friend remembering the date of the loss, and a community that understands miscarriage—and the loss of a parent—are not things you simply “move on” from. They are losses we learn to carry, often while still showing up for everyone else.
Balance is not a perfectly divided schedule. It is having enough compassion, practical help, and space to honor the mother I miss, the baby I lost, and the little one who reminds me every day that love can coexist with grief.
I love you, Mom and Baby. 
Mom, please take care of my baby until we meet again.
you are incredible
I have so many moments like this and sometimes it’s just it’s time to come out, there is no way to predict when it’s time to feel the emotions that have been waiting to come up they just decide to when they are ready! It’s a funny thing but super healthy nonetheless allowing yourself to release them! I always feel better after a cry or two to three hahaha we are human! you have been through so much and I know how much strength you have.