Motherhood Is the Biggest Initiation

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and it had me reflecting deeply on motherhood, identity, healing, modern life, and what it actually means to become a mother.

In this episode of Outside the Script, I explore how motherhood became one of the biggest awakenings of my life — questioning systems, redefining success, navigating burnout, healing generational patterns, and learning how to reconnect with myself in a world that constantly pulls women away from presence.

We talk about:

• motherhood as initiation
• identity shifts & ego death
• modern motherhood & invisible labor
• nervous system overwhelm
• the mold experience & rebuilding life
• community, connection & sacred support
• questioning the default path
• motherhood as a portal into healing

This episode is less about having answers and more about processing the becoming in real time.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, disconnected, deeply transformed by motherhood, or like you’re trying to create a different way of living for your family… this conversation is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, welcome back to Outside the Script. I'm your host, Amanda Kuku, and this is a podcast about freedom, family, healing, questioning the default path, consciously creating a life that feels really good. And so happy belated Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. I hope that you felt so seen and loved and appreciated yesterday. Um, I did have to work yesterday, but in the morning, my girls gifted me with all their beautiful gifts that they made. Um, the prior day, my husband made me a beautiful breakfast, and I felt seen and loved in a numerous, in numerous small ways. And for me, it's just always the simple things in life that just really make my world go around. And so with Mother's Day yesterday, I'm just kind of reflecting now on motherhood and how deeply motherhood changes us as women, not just externally, internally, emotionally, spiritually. And I think that becoming a mother is one of the biggest initiations that we will ever walk through. It's the hugest rite of passage from maiden to mother. And I think for a lot of us, motherhood kind of blindsides us in a lot of ways because it's a death of our old identity. It's a death of your ego in so many ways, and just stepping into a completely different version of yourself. And I think a lot of women feel like they lose themselves inside of motherhood because no one really prepares them for the depth of that transformation. And I think motherhood taught me a lot of things about myself in so many different ways. And, you know, it's taught me like just how much strength I possess. And motherhood has also made me question a lot of things, especially systems, the medical system, the school system, and the way modern life is structured. Because when I became a mother, I stopped flying things so blindly. Of course, it has completely evolved over the last 22 years of motherhood, but it was, you know, a starting point for me when I became a young mom at 19. And I always knew that I wanted the best for my children, and that's what made me start looking beyond what I was told and beyond what society said is normal and be on the default way of doing things. And also when I decided to, you know, bring more children earth side, that's when I started exploring even birth and postpartum and started getting heavily involved in that work and looking at even through a different lens. So that's why I studied our our Vedic postpartum and started looking at traditions around the world and how they care for women and their postpartum time because it's wildly different, wildly different from the way we do things here in the US. And so I think that the awaken is what eventually led me and just like this motherhood journey as a whole has like deepened my journey of questioning life itself and questioning how we live and question the burnout culture and the hustle and the grind and question why everyone feels so disconnected and overwhelmed all the time. And I think motherhood, you know, when I became a stay-at-home mother for five years with my two youngest children, that was hard for me, like, you know, because I like wanted to be doing so many different things with my own life, but also like I was just that's where I was for those five years. And for those five years, I was completely dedicated to my four walls, and like that was it. I mean, 24-7 with my family, doing everything for my family, and so those moments felt like I wasn't achieving enough or doing enough because I wasn't building some massive career or accomplishing all these external things. But looking back now, it is the highest form of success. I was raising my children, I was holding a home, I was homeschooling my children, I was holding a container, I was holding a family, and it almost felt like ministry in a lot of ways. Um, so yeah, it just it's so interesting, right? All these different layers. And one of the hardest parts I feel like of modern motherhood right now is that woman just carries so much. And like that's why for me, I couldn't do it. You know, I couldn't continue to do what I was doing, you know, doing the homeschool and the cooking, the work, and everything in between because as women, we just hold so much. We're mothers, we're partners, we're workers, we're breadwinners, we're caretakers. We do all the invisible work, we're emotional regulators for the entire household. And I think of a lot, I think a lot of women are overwhelmed and overstimulated and disconnected from their self and carrying this invisible emotional weight that nobody can fully see every single day. And I think the modern life almost trains us out of presence. And that's something that I'm like really um trying to cultivate more in my life and silence and yeah, and just trying to, you know, just cultivate that. And I think of in a lot of ways, my nervous system by default for years has like been constantly buzzing around, constantly doing, constantly moving, constantly thinking, constantly just I just like stimulation, even like when I'm relaxed and like I like to have a podcast on or need to be reading. And I think if I can even just be still and just like not do anything, just lay even for like 20 minutes and just be in silence, is for me, that's like a huge win. And I think for a lot of us, it's a huge win, and some of for some of us, it's just so much harder. And even like technically Rust and like, yeah, like I still like needed, I still need that mental movement. But yeah, I'm learning, you know. And motherhood is and especially going through, I think this whole mold experience and what our family just went through really like forced me to confront a lot of that. And because of the situation like that, it makes you realize how quickly like your foundation can crumble in a lot of ways. Like, if you think life is stable, you think everything's secure, and then suddenly you realize like how fragile life can actually fail and change in uh a split second. And experiences like that definitely change you, and it changed the way that it can change the way for me and for other people, the way that we look at our health, the way that we look at our home, the way we look at our nervous system, our priorities, our relationships, like everything. You just name it, everything. And I think also motherhood has made me realize how deeply women are craving connection right now, like real connection. And that has been a part of my healing as well, is trying to cultivate more connection in my life and open up. I'm not, I'm very, it's really interesting. Like I'm very open, and if you know me, like I'm very outgoing and forthright and all that, but I'm like wily introverted as well. So it's it's just like this interesting. I'm just very, yeah, introverted, but like I'm very outgoing and spoken. But I also like carry a lot by myself, and I don't like I'm not a person who will ever go overwhelm anyone with like my problems. I'll carry it myself and I'll figure it out myself. And yeah, that's another thing that I'm working through. I don't think it's the healthiest, um, it's the health healthiest thing, but you know, it's just that's the way I've done it all my life. So I have to kind of undo that. And I think as women, like we are creating more connection and more community and togetherness and support and just like sacred space where you can actually exhale and be held. And I think women need spaces where they can pause long enough to even start remembering themselves again. And honestly, like I said, I'm still unpacking all this and even what it means to me and what it looks like, and doing it. But I think remembering, you know, yourself is almost like coming back to your body, your intuition, your truth. What is your truth? Not everyone else's truth, what is your truth? What feels true for you, and back to your presence. And that for me is a work in progress. And because I think some women are so disconnected from themselves right now, like they're just we're just so disconnected from our bodies, slowness, nature, community. And I think that disconnection does start like incredibly early, and like let's even spin this into like motherhood. I feel like even from the moment a baby is born, like it's almost like a mother and baby is bred for disconnection because there's so much separation and disconnection built into the system from the first breath a baby takes. And I think so many mothers and navigating motherhood inside a system that often moves them further away from their instance instead of deepening them. And that's why I keep coming back to this idea that there has to be another way in like so many aspects of our life, and not necessarily like perfection or not necessarily abandoning society or running into the woods, but like there's a more conscious way, a more connected way, a slower way, an intentional way that like we can all do this, you know. And I think a huge part of healing, like even just healing, so then we can start healing generational wounds, and healing those wounds is simply being willing to, I think, question things and question how we're raised, question what's normalized, question what we carry forward and verse what we need in like versus what we need to heal. And you know, and I and for me, like, you know, what I've learned is like not just being too heady with these things, but like asking these things and just kind of meeting them with more curiosity of like, you know, and just following those intuitive threads or whatever it may be for you. So, and I don't think that I do think that motherhood can be a portal into healing instead of sacrifice in survival. I mean, any way you slice it, becoming a mother is a form of healing, right? But women do need so much more support, they need community, and they need to be equipped with the right tools and the right resources, and they need spaces to land and to feel safe enough and to just really like soften. And I think surrounding yourself with women who truly support you and align with your values um does matter deeply in a lot of ways. Um yeah, and so regardless of what motherhood look looks like, I do believe entering motherhood becomes a portal of healing in some way, shape, or form. Um, if you're ready for it or not. And I think that, yeah, just kind of sitting with that this Mother's Day and motherhood isn't just raising children, it's raising your yourself in a lot of ways into the next like version of who you're becoming as well. So yeah, what is the what is the version of you that is becoming and that you want to become? And yeah, maybe that's something you can ponder. I don't know. So yeah, just those are the things that I'm pondering and just kind of reflecting on, you know, motherhood and just mothers and reflecting even just like on all the trainings that I took, all the unique pregnancy trainings and unique postpartum trainings, and you know, a reason. I guess I guess I'm circling back to the my why of why I did that is because I wanted to bring that medicine forward so we could help start, you know, changing, you know, the way society in the in the systems are doing things because I don't think that they are the best way. Not necessarily saying they're wrong, but I think there are better ways and we can cultivate um different ways of doing things. So yeah, I think I'm just gonna leave it for here. I don't want to keep rambling. I do like to keep these a little bit more shorter and sweet and just kind of share what's kind of what what's running through my head, you know, today and all that. So I hope all of you who are mothers, I hope that you had a beautiful Mother's Day and all the moms out there who are moms in different ways and unique ways because I think that we are all mothers in some way, shape, or form. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you. I love you. And if this episode resonates, I would love for you just to, you know, follow along. And I'll talk to you in the next episode. Have a beautiful day. Bye for now.