Oh My God. I'm Becoming My Mother.
Not in the good ways.
Oh My God. I’m Becoming My Mother.
It came out of my mouth before I could stop it.
I caught myself doing something — I won’t tell you what yet — and heard my own voice say out loud:
Oh my God. I’m becoming my mother.
Let me tell you about Rosalie.
My mother was a master gardener. The woman who kept things alive by sheer force of attention and stubbornness. The woman who could look at a struggling plant and know exactly what it needed before anyone else had noticed something was wrong.
And then somewhere in her sixties she decided she was geriatric.
Not because her body required it. Because she believed it.
If the phone rang she would sigh — deeply, elaborately — as if the effort of standing up was being asked of someone who had already given quite enough. If something needed doing there was this quiet resignation that settled over her like a weather pattern. Life had narrowed, her posture said, and she was simply going along with it.
I called her on it once.
“Mom. What are you doing?”
She said — with complete sincerity: “I’m just being reasonable.”
And I said: “No. You’re diminishing yourself.”
She didn’t see it that way. She thought she was behaving appropriately for her age. The way her mother had behaved. The way that generation had behaved.
But here’s what I didn’t say then and have been thinking about ever since:
Those generations were different. They were farmers. They were physically exhausted in ways we are not. They didn’t have the information, the access, the longevity we have. They weren’t making conscious choices about how to age.
They were just tired.
So back to what came out of my mouth.
I was sitting at my desk and I noticed my shoulders had folded forward. My spine had gone soft. I had — without any intention or drama — begun to collapse slowly into myself like a building that’s given up.
And I heard my mother’s sigh in my own body.
Oh my God. I’m becoming my mother.
Not in the good ways — not her laugh, not her hands in the dirt, not her fierce and particular opinions about roses.
The other way.
Here’s what I did.
I imagined a string attached to the top of my head pulling me gently toward the ceiling. Sounds ridiculous. Works immediately. My spine lengthened. My shoulders dropped back where they belong. My chest opened up like a window someone finally remembered to unlatch.
Then I stretched my calves. Right there at the desk, because I knew I’d be sitting for another hour and my legs had opinions about that.
These are not grand gestures.
They are not a brand new life or a dramatic reinvention or a morning routine that requires a spreadsheet.
They are small interruptions.
Of old patterns. Old postures. Old inherited beliefs about what people our age do and don’t do and can and cannot be.
This is what rewiring actually looks like.
Not the declaration. Not the overnight transformation.
Just the moment you catch the sigh before it happens.
The moment you notice the collapse and choose the string instead.
The moment you hear the voice that says this is what people our age do — and say back to it, quietly, without drama:
Not today.
My mother was reasonable.
I’m choosing something else.
If something in this story stayed with you — if you felt the recognition before you felt the words for it — I want you to know there’s a place for that.
I’ve been quietly building something called the Monirose Soul Circle. It’s a small group of women who are done waiting for their life to feel like theirs again. Not a support group. Not a place to process pain, though we understand it. A place to think out loud with women who have lived enough to know what they’re talking about — and who want peers, not cheerleaders.
We share what’s true. We ask the real questions. We hold each other to the version of ourselves we’re trying to grow into, not the version we’ve been performing.
If you’re just beginning to understand that you’re allowed to want what you want — that’s exactly the right moment to come in.
You don’t need to have it figured out. You just need to be done pretending you don’t care.
Come see if it feels like home.
And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.