Making Time for Soul Care When Your Days are Full

Invisibility comes for us all.

I remember the first time I held my eldest child—how the whole world seemed to hush. I felt awe, shock, devotion, and a grief I couldn’t quite name. Suddenly, everything I’d ever known felt irrelevant or out of reach. In that moment, I understood that there would never again be a minute of my life when she wasn’t somewhere in my mind. The thought was as beautiful as it was terrifying.

I was standing at a threshold—captivated, undone, slipping out of my old life like a sweater I’d outgrown, but with nothing new yet to put on. Part of me was vanishing. My sense of self became slippery, dissolving into sleepless nights, half-remembered meals, friendships that felt strange, and a daily rhythm that no longer made sense.

The world started seeing me as “Mom.” Sometimes, that’s all I saw, too. But there was a paradox: the more I stepped into this role, the more invisible I felt—and yet, at the same time, I became visible in a new way. I found myself recognized by other women in parks and grocery store aisles—strangers-turned-sisters, all of us marked by exhaustion and awe, by a devotion we rarely put into words.

Slowly, a new identity started to take shape. I learned to read my child’s cues, to adapt, to survive, to love in ways I didn’t know I could. But sometimes, in the quiet between errands and obligations, I’d catch myself wondering: Where did the rest of me go? Who am I, now that I am being remade by love, by loss, by this relentless giving over of myself?

There’s a quote I carry with me— “I have learned to kiss the wave that dashes me upon the rock of Christ.”

For some, those words land just as they are: a reminder that even hardship can draw us toward something steady, something sacred.

For others, the “rock” might look different—a rock of growth, or transformation, or whatever it is that endures when everything else feels washed away.

Motherhood, with all its invisibility and ache, sometimes feels like one crashing wave after another. It’s easy to resent the tide, to fight the feeling of being lost at sea.

But what if we learned to “kiss the wave”?

What if, instead of scrambling to escape discomfort or numb the not-knowing, we leaned in?

What if invisibility was not just a loss, but a beginning?

When we sit with discomfort—when we let the unknown do its slow, difficult work—it carves out space within us. Sometimes it feels like a canyon: vast, lonely, impossible to cross. But with time, that canyon becomes a place of depth. We become women who are not just survivors, but guides.

Our uncertainty, once so sharp, softens into wisdom. Our ache turns into a kind of shelter, a harbor for others who are lost in the fog.

Soul care isn’t something you add to the calendar after the last load of laundry. It’s a way of honoring the dissolution—the aching, beautiful process of being taken apart and put back together in a new shape. Sometimes, soul care is letting yourself mourn the pieces that slipped away. Sometimes, it’s reaching for the parts that are just starting to emerge.

Soul care, when you’re a mom, often means making peace with the uncertainty— with not knowing who you are beyond this role, but trusting that you are still there, even if you can’t see all of yourself at once.

It’s a kind of faith: believing that what’s hidden isn’t lost, just waiting for the right moment to reappear.

Maybe you’re not sure what lights you up anymore. Maybe “hobbies” feel out of reach, or you can’t remember the last time you had an uninterrupted thought, let alone a day to yourself. That’s okay. Soul care isn’t about hustling for a new identity or force-feeding yourself self-improvement projects. Sometimes, it’s about sitting in the honest ache of not-knowing, and letting that be enough for now.

Soul care can look like:

• Giving yourself permission to not have an answer when someone asks, “What do you do for fun?” (Or to reply, “I have no idea! Any suggestions?!”

• Noticing moments when you feel even a tiny spark of curiosity, rest, or pleasure—and letting yourself follow it, even briefly.

• Letting yourself feel the ache of missing your old self, without rushing to fix it or push it away.

And sometimes, soul care is letting yourself be seen—by your kids, your partner, or yourself—as someone who’s more than the sum of her responsibilities.

It’s holding out hope for rediscovery, for the parts of you that went underground in the early years to resurface in their own good time.

To make peace with being “Mom” is not to surrender your whole self.

It’s to trust that the roles you fill are real, but they’re not the whole story.

It’s to live in the mystery—that who you are is always unfolding, always possible, and always worthy of your own care and attention.

You don’t have to have all the answers. You don’t have to hurry your own becoming.

Soul care is what happens in the pauses, in the questions, in the gentle promise that your self is still here—learning to be seen in new ways, even as you wait for the old ways to come back around.

If you find yourself longing to be seen in all your messy becoming, let soul care be your homecoming. Let it be the quiet defiance that says: I have not disappeared. I am being remade.

If you’d like company on the journey, I’m here—not to guide you back to who you were, but to witness and honor who you are becoming.