Dear Moms…I see You… didn’t lose myself all at once. It happened slowly. So slowly, actually, that I didn’t even realize it was happening. I became a mother three days after I turned 22. My daughter was everything to me. I devoted my life to her. My friendships started falling away because suddenly our lives, values and priorities felt so different. Then I moved an entire province away because I wanted to create a better life for us. And somewhere around there, I think I started disappearing. A year and a half later, I was pregnant with baby number two. I already struggled to relate to people my age, and motherhood seemed to widen that gap even more. So my world got a little smaller. Then baby number three came. And with my third came lung issues. Hospitals. Appointments. Worry. Trying to keep everything going while constantly wondering if your child is okay. We were trying to survive financially on one income. I didn’t really have friends anymore. I didn’t have hobbies. I didn’t know what I enjoyed. Honestly, I didn’t even know what to do with myself if nobody needed me. Then my own health started falling apart. Chronic health problems. Surgeries. Different medications. More appointments. More things to manage. More things to carry. And I carried them. Because that’s what moms do, right? We figure it out. We keep going. We make dinner when we’re exhausted. We comfort everyone else when we’re falling apart. We keep track of what everyone needs. We say, “I’m fine.” We tell ourselves other people have it harder. We promise ourselves we’ll take care of us when things settle down. And then things never really settle down. When my youngest was five, I remember thinking maybe this was finally going to be my time. Maybe I could figure out who I was again. And then I found out I was pregnant with baby number four. I had nothing left. I loved my children fiercely. But I was exhausted in a way sleep couldn’t fix. I started snapping over things that didn’t deserve the size of my reaction.