Motherhood Didn’t Make Me Lose Myself — It Revealed Who I Really Am {Part 7 of 8 Series: Eldest Daughter Turned Cycle Breaker} | Episode 33

Motherhood doesn’t erase women. It reveals them.

In this deeply raw and transformative episode of Wealth in Mothers, Ashley Crabb dismantles one of the most dangerous narratives women are handed: that becoming a mother means losing yourself.

Instead, Ashley shares how motherhood cracked her open — exposing every inherited survival pattern, every identity she performed, and every version of herself she was never meant to carry forever.

This is a conversation about breaking cycles, grieving old identities, rebuilding self-trust, and discovering that the “lost” woman so many mothers search for was never actually gone.

Ashley explores the emotional reality of motherhood, survival mode, eldest daughter conditioning, nervous system exhaustion, entrepreneurship, identity shifts, healing, self-awareness, boundaries, and what it truly means to rebuild your life from the inside out.

If you’ve ever felt like motherhood unraveled you… this episode will help you understand why that unraveling may actually be your becoming.

This is not about perfection.
 This is about reclamation.
 This is about wealth in mothers.

IN THIS EPISODE

•  Why motherhood doesn’t make women lose themselves 
•  The identity grief many mothers experience 
•  The difference between bending and breaking 
•  Survival mode, performance, and eldest daughter conditioning 
•  How motherhood forces self-confrontation 
•  Why healing requires letting old versions of yourself go 
•  The emotional reality of rebuilding after burnout 
•  Learning self-trust after years of self-abandonment 
•  ADHD diagnosis, therapy, shadow work, and nervous system healing 
•  The shift from surviving to fully living 
•  Reconnecting with the “feral little girl” within 
•  What true wealth in mothers actually means 

KEY QUOTES

“Motherhood didn’t make me lose myself. Motherhood brought my identity forward.”

“I wasn’t grieving the woman I lost. I was grieving the woman I needed to let go of.”“Breaking is one of the most beautiful things in this world.”

“I didn’t break to not get back up. I broke so I could rebuild.”

“I no longer have capacity to live in survival mode anymore.”

“The searching was never about finding more. It was about returning to the little girl I left behind.”

“Once a woman returns to that feral little girl… watch out world.”

If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mother who’s ready to stop surviving and start rebuilding.

Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode on social media so more mothers can reclaim their voice, identity, and wealth.

Join Ashley’s “Release and Rise” Full Moon Gathering

A sacred experience for mothers ready to reclaim their voice, power, and inner wealth.

Only 13 spots available: https://www.instagram.com/p/DYNUtHmEZRF/

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think one of the biggest lies women are handed is that once we become mothers, we lose ourselves. Like somehow along the way of growing an entire human being inside of us, or two in my case, when that baby or babies come earth-side, our identity just disappears. And for me, motherhood did the exact opposite. Motherhood cracked me open. Motherhood shone a light on every single part of myself that I didn't fully know yet. Motherhood brought my identity forward. Welcome to Wealth in Mothers, the show where we rewrite the rules of success. For women who are building businesses, creating wealth, and raising families all at the same damn time. I'm Ashley Crabbe, and this isn't a show about balance, productivity, or doing more. This is a space for mothers who know they're caring more than anyone acknowledges and who are ready to turn that into power, leadership, and wealth. Here we talk about what it actually looks like to create a movement inside the reality of motherhood. The invisible labor, the identity shifts, the ambition, the pressure, and the truth that none of it disqualifies you from wealth. It qualifies you for it. Because mothers don't need to shrink to succeed, they need to be seen. Let's get into today's episode. After the boys were born, I did what I think a lot of mothers do. I spent so much time thinking that part of me was missing. I spent so much time being sad and grieving this part of me that somehow went away. And when I look back on that, was that grief real? Was that sadness real? Yes, but I was grieving the wrong woman. I was focusing on the wrong emotion. Because what I understand now, what I didn't fully understand then, was that I was just meeting every part of me for the first time. I was meeting all of the parts of me that were waiting to emerge once I became a mother. I didn't have to grieve the parts of me that went away, the parts of me that I was missing. I had to say goodbye to them. And because I held on to them for so long, because I held on to that chaotic feeling for so long, it felt like grief. It felt like a breakup. I knew the woman who lived in survival mode. I knew the woman who could perform. I knew this woman who was reckless and kept trying to go faster and faster and faster. The martyr and the victim, the eldest daughter. But I didn't, I didn't really know me. I didn't know all of the best parts of me. And motherhood has a really interesting way of forcing us to decide, of making us confront ourselves. And the idea of that we're grieving or that we're missing a part of us or that we're broken, it's just the narrative trying to keep us in that place of constant confrontation, of constant anger and resentment and fear of ourselves. Because once that noise starts to slow down, once you, once I started to slow down, and I started staring directly back at myself, I don't think I was prepared for that. I don't, I don't think any of us are ever truly prepared for that. I thought motherhood was instantly going to feel like an arriving. Like I had finally come to the point where I was always meant to be. And in some ways, it really did feel like an arriving, growing two humans, two beautiful, healthy boys inside of me and bringing them into the world, co-creating with God, being a co-creator with the universe. I mean, the goosebumps and vibrations I am having right now, that that is, I'll never feel something like that again. Maybe. I shouldn't say never, but I don't think I will ever feel that type of that feeling ever again. But in so many other ways, it felt like an unraveling. It felt like a breaking. And yes, it was because I was responsible for these two tiny human beings while simultaneously trying to figure out what the hell motherhood even was while trying to figure out how to continue to be a good wife to my husband while trying to figure out how to be a woman in society. You see, I wasn't trying to find myself. I wasn't trying to find me because she was never lost. I was trying to find where the fuck I fit in the narrative now. Where did I fit in the narrative now after playing every single role I had performed my whole life? This was my debut. And it wasn't that I felt lost. It was that I spent my whole life trying to be the woman who could bend enough for everybody without breaking. And what I have come to realize is that breaking is one of the most beautiful things in this world. Like the way that like our bodies break open, whether you have a vaginal birth or a C-section, the way our bodies break open and bring life into this world, like I have so many goosebumps right now. Um that that is the breaking. That is the broken that I have been preparing myself for for my entire life. Because the reason why so many of us, the reason why I walked around saying I'm not broken is because I didn't know how to break myself. I didn't know how to break the cycle. And every time I got close enough to do it, I got too scared to break because I knew how fucking painful it would be. But what I didn't know was how beautiful the wreckage was. I didn't know how beautiful that break would be. And if I would have known for 33 years that the pain I was afraid to feel was actually just the pain of letting go of everything I carried for so long. I was too afraid of the pain that would come from having to do something new, from having to do something maybe a little uncomfortable, for having to do something that I didn't have all the answers for. I was so afraid to break because I was so afraid to grow. Growing, growing with my boys is the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. And if I wouldn't have come to this point of being willing to finally break, I would have continued to just bend. And like you all know how I love analogies. And if if you bend a piece of copper, if you bend a piece of metal, steel, you know, I'm just don't just put it back into place, right? But if you snap that fucker in half, if you make that clean fucking break, guess what you can do? You can weld it, you can weld it to a new piece because you're sure shit not gonna weld it back to the old piece. You can weld it to a new pace. You can start to mend the foundation, you can start to fill the cracks in the foundation. So, yes, in a lot of ways, it it felt like an unraveling because I wasn't just responsible for me anymore. I was responsible for two tiny humans. And I was finding how I continued to fit in the narrative, not just as me, but as the woman, I knew I was meant to become the wife, the mother, the entrepreneur, the cycle breaker, the eldest daughter, no more, the leader that I was always meant to be. In all of that, that is when I started to realize that adapting, adapting is really just bending. It's bending so we don't break. Bending to our environments, bending to expectations, bending to what people need from me. And I never stopped long enough to ask myself, what the fuck do you want, Ashley? What do you want in this life? What do you want to do with your voice and your mission and your purpose? Not what do I need to do to survive, not what do I need to do to make everyone else comfortable, not what I need to do to keep the peace. What do I actually want? Motherhood was the era that I started searching. Not searching from a place of desperation, searching from a place of desire, not because I was reckless, not because I was ready, but because I knew, I knew that the break had to happen in order for the repair to begin. And so I did what every mother, what every woman is afraid to do. I asked for help. I hired coaches, I hired mentors, VAs, podcast editors. I went to therapy. I got diagnosed with ADHD. I dove into shadow work. I started learning about my human design, astrology. I started learning how the map of me worked. Instead of constantly punishing myself for not following the damn path the right way this whole time. And for the first time in my life, I stopped trying to force. I stopped trying to force myself into methods and systems, routines, and expectation that was never built for me in the first place. That changed everything. Because my whole life, I had been trying to live up to the standard of the eldest daughter role. And every time I failed, every time that I was shown that I wasn't enough or worthy of love, I pushed harder, I tried harder, I overloaded myself harder. And motherhood made that absolutely impossible. Because I can't be a present mother, a quote unquote good mother. I can't create and build and lead and love and heal while abandoning myself. Eventually, my body said no. Eventually, my nervous system said no. Eventually, my soul said no. And I can sit here today and tell you that the breaking is worth it. I didn't break to not get back up. I broke so I could rebuild. And rebuilding, repairing that foundation feels so different than getting that close to that point of breaking for destruction. This type of breaking is quieter. And it's a hell of a lot more painful. It's way more uncomfortable because no one claps for you when you break to rebuild. No one sees the invisible shifts. Everybody hates the boundaries. Everybody hates the conversations. Everybody hates the way that you respect yourself and set standards. Everyone hates the moment you stop betraying yourself. But those are the moments that you have to stick through. Those are the moments where the breaking feels like it is going to hurt so much that you would rather implode. But those moments matter. Those moments are building the foundation of becoming. And I had started building that foundation the moment I brought those boys into the world. But it has taken me almost four years up until this point of recording this series to truly understand that I was still living in a state of self-awareness, that I was still able to explain my patterns, my trauma, my chaos, my behavior. But those final actions were still just being observed by me. And I am so done, so done observing of being someone in the audience of my own life. Lest I have been changing things since the boys were born. Not perfectly, not linearly, sometimes with intention, sometimes with not, but the more and more I changed, the closer I got to this point. Now I truly understand. I have no capacity to live in any sort of survival mode anymore. The breakage has finally occurred and the mending can begin. I no longer think that in order to be joyful, to have a successful life, to cling all of the abundance that I know is mine, that is already mine. I know that I don't have to just survive anymore. I am ready to let myself out of the cage of freaking survival. I am ready to see so far beyond it. Not as a perfect woman, not as a woman who is fully healed, but as a woman who says, I am real, I am grounded, I am bold, I am audacious. I am going to be feral and lit fun and lit free. I am a woman who understands my body, my mind, my desires, my voice. All of it, my power is mine. And I no longer have to search with a bright ass light to try to figure out what I was made for or where I fit into the narrative. I write the damn chapters myself. The version of me that I am meant to be. She didn't emerge all at once. She's still emerging, but I'm done apologizing for showing up as the woman that I've always been. I'm done apologizing for doing exactly what society said that I should do and found myself. Then I went back and I found that fair own little freaky girl who was ready to make a freaking movement. I am done trying to be someone else. I'm done trying to fit the narrative for anybody else. This life is for me. This life is for my family. This life is to make an impact on every other mother who's ready to do the same. What I didn't realize was that wealth in mothers, wealth in me has always existed. And that didn't happen in one breakthrough moment, but it happened after I decided I was finally ready to break. It happened after I decided I was ready to rebuild and repair the relationship with myself, learning myself, trusting myself, listening to myself, and finally understanding that the the searching. It was never about looking for more. It was about returning to the little girl who I left behind. It was about returning to the parts of me that were always there. That was there before the world taught me to disconnect from them. And honestly, I think that's what so many mothers are actually searching for. Not something that we masked in motherhood, ourselves, the little girl we left behind. And once a woman returns to that feral little girl, watch out, world. Everything's changing. Release and rise, a full moon gathering for mothers to reclaim their wealth. You have been silently carrying more than you were ever created to carry alone. You have been told by the world, by the noise, by the narrative handed to you before you even had words for your own. That your wealth is measured by what you produce, what you provide, what you create. But wealth lives in you. It always has. On May 31st, we're gathering together on the second full moon of the month. 13 mothers, one sacred space, our own tree. You are not here to earn your voice. You are here to claim it as your wealth lever. Through recognition of where you are now, through responsibility of where you are going, through celebration of the woman you've always been. This is not a workshop, this is not a networking event. This is a full moon experience designed to make you feel fully, unapologetically, and completely alive. Come ready to release, come ready to rise. If something in you just moved, that is your answer. I would love to have you in the room with us. There are only 13 tickets available, and you can find all of the information in the show notes below. I'll see you under the blue moon. If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mother who is on a mission, who is building something real. This is how we change the conversation by making sure women like us are seen, heard, and paid. And if you're ready to step into your next level of visibility, leadership, and wealth, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming next. You can also connect with me on Instagram, TikTok, my newsletter, where I share daily thoughts and conversations around motherhood, identity, and wealth. I'll leave you with this. You are not behind, you are not too much, and you do not need to choose between your family and your success. You are the woman who gets to have it both. I'll see you in the next episode.