By Ashley Butler 
This is something I don’t say out loud very often, mostly because it’s easy to misunderstand.
I love being a mother. I love my husband and my kids more than anything in the world. I am deeply grateful for this life, this family, this season I’m in.
And still, sometimes, I miss being taken care of.
Not in a resentful way.
Not in a wish-I-could-go-back way.
Not in a way that means I want anything different than what I have.
It’s quieter than that.
It shows up in small moments. When I’m tired but still need to think about what’s for dinner. When everyone is asking me questions at once and I realize no one is asking how I’m doing. When something breaks or needs planning or remembering and it naturally becomes mine to handle.
What I miss isn’t childhood itself. It’s what came with it.
Meals that just appeared.
Plans that were already made.
The comfort of knowing someone else was paying attention to the details.
The ability to be tired without the day unraveling because of it.
I didn’t realize how much of that I carried with me until it was gone.
Motherhood shifts something deep. You don’t just become responsible for people. You become the one who anticipates. The one who notices. The one who remembers which shoe, which snack, which form, which feeling might need tending to next.
You become the emotional and logistical center of the house.
And I love that role. Truly. There is nothing in the world that compares to being my kids’ mom. Nothing. I love watching them grow. I love being the one they come to. I love the life my husband and I have built together.
This isn’t a complaint about that love.
It’s an acknowledgment of the cost that comes with it.
There’s a strange guilt that creeps in when you admit you miss being taken care of. As if loving your family deeply should cancel out every other feeling. As if gratitude should erase exhaustion. As if saying “this is hard sometimes” means you’re failing to appreciate how good you have it.
But loving your life doesn’t make you immune to missing parts of who you used to be.
What I miss isn’t freedom or lack of responsibility. I don’t miss being untethered. I don’t miss not having purpose.
What I miss is mental rest.
I miss not having to be the one who holds everything in place. I miss being able to be tired without consequence. I miss knowing that if I forgot something, someone else would catch it. I miss being considered first sometimes, without having to ask.
That doesn’t mean I want out.
It just means I’m human.
There’s a quiet grief in becoming the strong one. The reliable one. The one everyone leans on. It doesn’t look like anger. It looks like standing in the kitchen at the end of the day, realizing you’ve been giving all day long and wondering where you fit into the equation.
And still, I wouldn’t trade this life.
Because now I see my kids living inside that same sense of being taken care of. I see it in the way they move through their days without worrying about what’s underneath them. In the way they assume things will work out. In the quiet confidence that someone is paying attention, that someone has it handled.
I recognize that feeling because I’ve lived it too.
And now, I’m the one creating it.
I don’t think missing being taken care of means you’re ungrateful. I think it means you’re fully here. Fully invested. Fully loving in a way that requires something of you every single day.
You can love your husband.
You can adore your kids.
You can be grateful for your life.
And still, sometimes, wish you could rest inside someone else’s care for a moment.
Both things can exist at the same time.
And admitting that doesn’t take away from the love you give.
It just makes room for the truth of who you are now.
by HVFH Contributor 
by Dani Sherman-Lazar 
