Episode 202 | The Grief Series
Nobody tells you that you can want something with everything you have, fight hard to get it, finally hold it in your arms, && then sit at your desk a few months later absolutely crying your eyes out because you have no idea who you are anymore.
That’s not failure. That’s motherhood. && we don’t talk about it enough.
She Built Something She Loved. Then She Came Back to It && Felt Nothing.
My guest, Sophia Rose, is a marketing coach && strategist based in London. She had an IVF baby after being told her husband might be going sterile. Grayson was a miracle. He was everything they’d fought for. && then she came back to work.
She sat down at her to-do list on the day she was supposed to return, looked at everything on it, && felt like she was wearing a shirt that didn’t fit. A shirt she used to love. A shirt she would have described as hers. And now she just… hated the shirt.
She cried multiple times a day. She crossed things off her to-do list not because they were done but because she couldn’t bring herself to do them. Including the things that made her money. She told me: I was so screwed. I had no idea what I was going to do.
Here’s what I want you to hear about that: a friend had warned her. Months before she gave birth, Meg Yelaney sent her a text that said something like, “I just want to tell you this because I wish someone had told me. When you have a baby, you might go through an identity crisis. You might not know who you are or whether you’re cut out for this business thing anymore. I went from loving my business the day before I gave birth to hating it the day after.”
Sophia’s response? That’s so not going to happen to me.
It happened to her.
The Fog That Doesn’t Follow the Stages
Sophia told me something in this conversation that I think is one of the most honest things anyone has said in this entire series.
She’s been through grief before. Her dad died of cancer && she moved in to take care of him. Her husband had a stroke && became someone she barely recognized for a full year. She knows what grief feels like. She knows the stages, or at least she’s familiar enough with them to recognize when she’s moving through them.
This one felt like none of that. It felt like pure fog.
No stages. No milestones. No checkboxes to mark as she moved forward. Every day she thought she’d found some clarity, made a decision, found her footing. The next day she hated the decision. She’d take a step forward && take two back. She described it as barely making it through, even a full year out.
And she named something I think is at the root of why postpartum identity grief is so particular: she was navigating what she needed && what her son needed at the same time. Before, grief had just been about her. What she needed, what she was processing, what pace she was moving at. This time, those two things kept contradicting each other. && she always, always put his needs first.
Which is exactly what a good mom does. && also makes the grief almost impossible to process cleanly.
The Last Time You Didn’t Know Was the Last Time
There’s a moment in this conversation that I haven’t stopped thinking about since we recorded it.
Sophia talked about breastfeeding. How hard it was at the beginning, how long it took Grayson to latch, how much she loved it once he did. She called it like nothing else in the world. And then one day she woke up with half her supply gone. She hadn’t realized that when you’re supplementing with formula && not pumping consistently, your supply drops. Nobody told her. She was a first-time mom doing her best.
It kept dropping. && then it was gone.
And she never got to say goodbye.
She doesn’t know which feeding was the last one. She doesn’t know if she was checking her email or distracted or just going through the routine of it. She will never know. && that not-knowing, that absence of a goodbye, is its own particular grief.
She said every three months, sometimes every month, there was something else Grayson stopped doing. A little newborn habit, a six-month thing, a sound he made, a way he looked at her. && every single time, she didn’t know it was the last time until it was already gone.
I’ve been a mom for 12 years. I’m telling you: that doesn’t stop. You don’t get a warning. You don’t get to prepare. You just notice the absence of the thing && feel it after the fact. That’s motherhood. It is constant loss && constant becoming at the exact same time.
The Duality Nobody Prepares You For
We think we understand duality before we have kids. We think we know what it means to hold two things at once. We don’t. Not really. Not until there’s a baby.
Sophia described it exactly right: the most joy she’d ever experienced, happening simultaneously with the most disorientation she’d ever felt. Crying multiple times a day. Feeling guilty for not working. Feeling guilty for wanting to work. Paying a nanny to take care of her son while she sat at her desk unable to do the thing the nanny was paid so she could do.
That’s not a productivity problem. That’s identity grief. && it doesn’t have a clean resolution.
What I told Sophia, && what I believe with everything in me, is that what she was experiencing was a rebirth. Not a breakdown, a rebirth. The version of her that existed before Grayson had to die. Not forever, not completely, but enough to make room for who she was becoming. && the grief of that is real && valid && deserving of the same space as any other loss.
The mistake most women make is trying to get back to who they were. Trying to squeeze back into the old version instead of formally saying goodbye to it && figuring out what comes next. You can’t get back there. && honestly, you wouldn’t want to if you could.
What Fell Away && What Got Stronger
A year out, Sophia said something that landed hard. She told me she’s always been a notorious people-pleaser. Chronically over-responsible. The kind of person who would spend an entire week spiraling over a client not responding to her texts, convinced something was wrong, convinced it was about her.
She’s not that person anymore. Not completely.
Going through one of the hardest things she’s ever navigated, she came out the other side with a new relationship to what actually matters. She can look at the things she used to obsess over && genuinely not give them the same amount of real estate. Not because she forced herself to change, but because going through the fog && coming out the other side gave her perspective that nothing else could.
She called them superpowers. I think that’s exactly right.
Because here’s the truth: the things that feel like they’re breaking you in a season of identity grief are also the things that are building something in you that wasn’t there before. A tolerance for uncertainty. A clarity about what you’re actually available for. A bone-deep knowing of what matters that you can’t manufacture, you can only earn.
What She Wants You to Know
I asked Sophia what she’d say to a woman who’s considering motherhood, just starting her journey, or somewhere in the middle of it. And she said: whatever happens to you is normal.
She didn’t pop out Grayson && have the magical rush of love she’d been told to expect. She was exhausted. She asked someone to take him off her chest within two seconds. She fell asleep. && she woke up an hour later convinced she’d ruined everything.
She hadn’t. That happens all the time. Nobody talks about it.
Whatever your version of this is, somebody else has had it. And the moment Sophia started talking openly about her experience on her podcast with her husband, the messages that flooded in were all some version of: I thought it was just me. I had no idea that was normal.
It is normal. You are not alone in it. && you don’t have to have it figured out to be doing it right.
“You don’t graduate from the grief of motherhood. You just get better at walking through the doors it keeps opening.”
Find Sophia on her podcast Marketing Unfiltered if you’re a business owner who wants to talk strategy, && on Relatable with the Roses with her husband Bradley for the real, unhinged version of their life. Both are worth your time.
This is The Grief Series. Listen now!
xx, Ash 🖤
The weekly emails that tell you what your business coach won’t && your therapist can’t. Part therapy, part voice note, part “holy shit, I needed that.” Honest stories about burnout, ambition, motherhood, && building a life you actually want to be living — showing up in your inbox every week.
The audio-only program that helps you burnout-proof your life && business — without slowing down or doing less. Eight tapes of deeply therapeutic, shit-talking coaching you can put in your ears on your own time && own terms.
