When Depression Doesn’t Take a Summer Vacation
Motherhood, depression, and the weight of summer expectations by Autumn Colon Summer arrives carrying so much expectation. We imagine slower mornings, sticky popsicle fingers, neighborhood pool days, family vacations, and long evenings that stretch just a little longer than the rest of the year. It’s the season we’re told to soak up because it goes by so fast. We make bucket lists. We book camps. We scroll through vacation photos and save ideas for “the perfect summer.” Somewhere along the way, summer became another measure of whether we’re doing motherhood well. But what happens when everyone is talking about making memories, and you’re simply trying to make it through the day? Depression doesn’t take a summer vacation. Summer Isn’t a Break for Every Mother For many mothers, the warmest season of the year can become one of the heaviest. Not because they don’t love their children or appreciate the season they’re in, but because they’re carrying something invisible while trying to create joy for everyone else. As a therapist, I’ve learned that one of the hardest parts of depression isn’t always sadness. Sometimes it’s the pressure to convince the world you’re okay while quietly wondering why the sunshine isn’t reaching you the way it seems to reach everyone else. The structure that once helped the days move forward has disappeared. School is out. Childcare changes. Routines become less predictable. Meals multiply. Camps need to be researched and paid for. Vacations require planning, budgeting, packing, and emotional labor that often goes unseen. Then there is the invisible work. It’s the mental checklist that’s always running in the background. Who needs new sandals? Has everyone signed up for camp? Do we have enough groceries? Should we plan something fun this weekend? Is everyone making memories they’ll actually remember? Keeping everyone entertained, remembering the sunscreen. Does the list ever end? I’ve sat with mothers who tell me they feel guilty because they’re counting down the days until school starts while everyone else seems to be celebrating summer. Others tell me they feel like they’re failing because they don’t have the energy to plan elaborate adventures or create the kinds of childhood memories they imagined for their families. The truth is that depression has a way of making even ordinary tasks feel heavy. And summer tends to add more to an already full plate. When Joy Feels Just Out of Reach One of the greatest misconceptions about depression is that it always looks like sadness. Sometimes it looks like emotional numbness. You could be watching your children laugh while wishing you could access that same feeling inside yourself. It looks like knowing this should be a beautiful moment, yet you wonder why you feel disconnected from it. Many of my clients describe depression as feeling like they’re living behind a sheet of glass or in a bubble they haven’t been able to break free from. They’re present. They’re participating. They’re taking pictures, making snacks, driving to the beach, and cheering from the sidelines. But internally, everything feels muted, as though you’re watching your own life from a distance instead of fully living it. Clinicians call this anhedonia – a reduced ability to experience pleasure – and it’s one of the hallmark symptoms of depression. That disconnect often creates another layer of suffering because depression begins whispering stories that simply aren’t true. “Maybe I’m not a good mom.” “I should be happier.” “Everyone else seems to enjoy this more than I do.” Depression has a way of turning emotional pain into self-criticism. But struggling to feel joy is not the same thing as struggling to love your children. Those are two very different experiences. The Comparison Trap of Summer But comparison doesn’t just make us question what we’re doing. It makes us question who we are. Am I giving my children enough? Am I creating the childhood they’ll remember? Why does everyone else seem to be enjoying this more than I am? What we rarely see are the moments in between. The overstimulation. The financial stress of camps, childcare, and travel. The arguments in the car. The mother who cried in the bathroom before leaving for the zoo. The family vacation that didn’t feel restful for the person who planned every detail of it. Comparison quietly shifts our attention away from the family in front of us and toward an impossible standard we’ll never actually meet. When you’re already living with depression, it can reinforce the belief that everyone else is doing motherhood better, feeling happier, or creating a summer you’re somehow missing. The truth is, you’re comparing your everyday reality to someone else’s carefully curated moments. Comparison is the thief of joy, and rarely, if ever, does it tell the whole story. High-Functioning Depression Is Still Depression One of the reasons depression is so easy to miss in mothers is because motherhood doesn’t stop when you’re struggling. Your children still need breakfast. The camp forms still have to be signed. The laundry still gets washed. The vacation still gets planned. So, you keep moving often because you don’t feel like you have another choice. Many mothers don’t recognize what they’re experiencing because they’re still functioning. They’re getting the kids to camp, answering emails, packing lunches, remembering sunscreen, and showing up for everyone around them. From the outside, everything looks fine. But looking fine isn’t the same as feeling well. While high-functioning depression isn’t an official mental health diagnosis, many clinicians use the term to describe people who continue meeting the demands of daily life while quietly living with depressive symptoms. Depression doesn’t always look like staying in bed all day. Sometimes it looks like doing everything you’ve always done while feeling emotionally exhausted, disconnected, or like you’re simply going through the motions. It can look like smiling for the family photo, planning the vacation, or cheering from the sidelines while quietly wondering why everything feels so much harder than it seems for everyone else. If you’ve been carrying this silently, know this: just because you’re functioning doesn’t mean you aren’t struggling. How I Support Mothers Through Seasons Like This When mothers come into therapy during the summer, we rarely start by talking about vacations or calendars. We start by making space for what’s true. Sometimes that’s “I’m exhausted.” Sometimes it’s, “I don’t recognize myself.” And sometimes it’s simply, “I thought I’d be happier than this.” From there, we begin to untangle the expectations they’re carrying, and the stories they’ve started believing about themselves. Together, we work to separate depression from identity, because feeling depressed doesn’t mean you’re failing as a mother. Every mother’s story is different, so therapy isn’t about following a formula. It’s about understanding what this season is asking of you and finding ways to move through it with more support and less shame. Some of the work we might do together includes: Depression can make you believe you have to carry everything alone. One of the most powerful shifts I witness in therapy is when mothers realize they don’t have to earn rest, prove they’re struggling enough, or
Mother’s Day Pressure: Why This Holiday Hits So Hard
by Autumn Colon Mother wounds, grief, and the emotional weight many women carry into Mother’s Day Mother’s Day has a way of finding tender places. Even before the actual day arrives, something begins to shift. The advertisements start. The flower promotions. The matching pajama photos. The captions about unconditional love and gratitude. And quietly, for many women, something tightens in the chest. Because Mother’s Day doesn’t just ask us to celebrate motherhood. It asks us to confront our relationship with it. The ways we’ve experienced it, longed for it, struggled within it, grieved through it, or tried desperately to survive it. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that holidays often act as emotional mirrors. They reflect the things we haven’t fully made sense of yet. And Mother’s Day tends to hold many layers at once: love, grief, resentment, longing, guilt, tenderness, pressure. Sometimes all in the same breath. And while Mother’s Day is often marketed as a celebration, for many women it can feel more like a mirror, reflecting back relationships, losses, expectations, and identities that feel far more complicated than a greeting card can hold. Because this holiday doesn’t just touch mothers. It touches daughters. Women grieving mothers. Women grieving children. Women longing to become mothers. Women questioning whether they want motherhood at all. Women carrying the quiet pressure of a world that still often treats motherhood as the defining measure of womanhood. And that emotional weight can surface in deeply personal ways. I’ve sat with mothers who spent the day surrounded by family yet felt deeply alone. Women grieving mothers who are still alive, but emotionally unreachable. Daughters trying to force closeness where there has only ever been distance. Mothers quietly overstimulated and emotionally exhausted while still trying to make the day beautiful for everyone else. Grief, gratitude, belonging, longing; the holiday has a way of bubbling it all to the surface. The Quiet Performance of Motherhood One of the hardest things about Mother’s Day is the expectation attached to it. There’s an unspoken script many women feel pressured to follow. Be grateful. Be fulfilled. Be present. Enjoy every moment. Don’t make it complicated. But motherhood is complicated (trust me; I’m in the trenches with you). You can love your children with your whole heart and still feel overwhelmed by the constant emotional labor of caring for everyone else. You can feel grateful and exhausted. Needed and invisible. Deeply connected and completely disconnected from yourself at the same time. That contradiction doesn’t make you ungrateful. It makes you human. I think many mothers quietly spend Mother’s Day trying to convince themselves they should feel differently than they actually do. And that emotional performance can be exhausting. When the Mother Wound Shows Up For some women, Mother’s Day doesn’t just bring up motherhood. It brings up the ache of being mothered. The relationship with your mother may have been loving, inconsistent, critical, emotionally distant, or difficult in ways that are hard to explain to people who only see the surface. This is often where the mother wound quietly rises to the surface. Not always dramatically. Sometimes it shows up subtly. A heavy feeling while scrolling social media. Irritability you can’t place. The dread of making a phone call you don’t emotionally have the capacity for. Buying a card that doesn’t fully reflect the relationship you actually have. The grief of realizing you’re still longing for something you may never fully receive. I’ve worked with women who feel guilty for needing distance from their mothers while simultaneously grieving the closeness they wish existed. Women who became caretakers emotionally long before they were ever cared for themselves. Mother’s Day can intensify those contradictions. Because this holiday often centers on the idea that mother-daughter relationships are naturally soft, nurturing, and uncomplicated. And for many women, that simply hasn’t been their reality. The Women Mother’s Day Leaves Out One of the hardest things about Mother’s Day is how narrowly womanhood is often framed within it. The holiday tends to center one version of femininity: nurturing, fulfilled, maternal, and celebrated. And for women whose experiences fall outside of that narrative, the day can feel quietly alienating. I think about the women who wanted children and could not have them. Women grieving miscarriages no one fully acknowledged. Women navigating infertility while surrounded by celebration. Mothers grieving children they’ve lost. Women estranged from their children. Women who chose not to become mothers and still feel the weight of society asking them to explain why. And I think about how many women spend this holiday questioning themselves in silence. Because beneath Mother’s Day is often a deeper cultural message: that motherhood is what completes a woman. That nurturing should come naturally. That fulfillment should live here. But womanhood has always been more expansive than one role, one path, or one story. As a therapist, I’ve seen how much shame women carry when their experiences don’t align with the version of motherhood the world celebrates most comfortably. And I think many women need permission to understand that grief, relief, ambivalence, longing, peace, sadness, or uncertainty can all coexist here too. No one should have to perform belonging on a day that already feels emotionally loaded. You Don’t Have to Perform This Holiday This Mother’s Day, I encourage women to pay attention to what they need emotionally instead of focusing only on what’s expected of them. For some women, that means creating space for celebration and connection. For others, it means allowing the day to be quieter, slower, or more protected. When I sit with women around Mother’s Day, I encourage them to make meaning of their own personal connection with womanhood, motherhood, mothering, and identity. Sometimes we talk about boundaries. Sometimes we talk about grief. Sometimes we talk about disappointment, guilt, resentment, or exhaustion that has gone unnamed for too long. And sometimes, the work is simply giving yourself permission to stop pretending the day feels easier than it does. I think many women carry an invisible pressure to make everyone else comfortable with their emotional experience. To soften it. To explain it away. To minimize what hurts. But you do not have to abandon yourself to make a holiday feel more palatable for other people. Sit with this…you are allowed to move through Mother’s Day honestly (period). That honesty may look like stepping away from certain conversations. It may look like grieving. It may look like letting yourself enjoy parts of the day without forcing joy into all of it. It may look
Moms, You Don’t Need a Reinvention — You Need Rest
by Autumn Colón, Associate Therapist Somewhere along the way, motherhood got paired with the idea that we’re always supposed to be becoming something new. A new version of ourselves. A better version. A calmer, more patient, more fulfilled, more put-together version. And when we feel exhausted, disconnected, or burnt out, the message we often receive is the same: reinvent yourself. We see it all over our feeds at the beginning of the year. New year. New me. New routines. New habits. New goals. New identity. But what I see, over and over again in my work with mothers, is this truth: Most moms don’t need a reinvention. They need rest. When Burnout Gets Mistaken for a Personal Problem Burnout builds slowly, often so quietly that many mothers don’t recognize it as burnout at all. It shows up in small ways. It could look like feeling tired even after a full night’s sleep. Becoming more irritable over things that never used to bother you. Losing patience with yourself. Feeling emotionally flat, disconnected, or constantly on edge. Your burnout might not look like Angela Bassett’s crash out in “Waiting to Exhale” but more like functioning day to day on autopilot. You’re getting things done, showing up, caring for everyone else, but internally you feel depleted, foggy, or numb. The days blur together. Joy feels harder to access. Rest never feels like enough. Many moms who come sit with me are worried that something is wrong with them. They’ll say things like, “I don’t feel like myself anymore,” or “I think I need to figure out who I am again.” They begin to associate burnout with a lack of identity. I’ll hold your hand when I say this: burnout doesn’t mean you need to become someone new. It means your system is tired. In my work with mothers, this is often where we begin. I’m trained to help women slow the moment down enough to separate exhaustion from identity, and burnout from self-worth. Together, we look at what your nervous system has been holding, how long you’ve been running on empty, and what kind of support would actually help right now. My approach isn’t about pushing change or prescribing a new version of you; it’s about creating space for rest, clarity, and reconnection to emerge naturally, without pressure. The Identity Shift No One Prepares You For Motherhood does change you. That part is real. Matrescence: The transition into motherhood that reshapes your body, brain, identity, and relationships. Your time, your body, your priorities, your relationships, your sense of responsibility, all of it shifts. And yet, we’re rarely given space to grieve what has changed or to name how disorienting that can feel. Society tells mothers to be grateful, to push through, to not dwell, all while quietly carrying an overwhelming amount. You love your child and motherhood deeply. Also . . . . You miss yourself profoundly. Both truths can exist at the same time. This is one of the quiet paradoxes of motherhood. When I sit with moms in therapy, we often spend time in this in-between space: the version of you before motherhood, the version you are now, and the version that hasn’t had room to emerge yet. If you recognize yourself here, I want you to know this space isn’t something to solve or rush through. This is where rest is needed the most. I often invite mothers to notice how the story of burnout has started speaking for them, telling them they’re lost, failing, or behind. Together, we practice loosening that story’s grip, not by arguing with it, but by gently separating it from who you actually are. Burnout is something you’re experiencing, not the sum of your identity. At the same time, we make room for what’s here (the grief, the fatigue, the longing) without treating those feelings as problems that need to disappear before life can move forward. From that place, I encourage moms to reconnect with what matters to them now. Not who they were before, and not who they think they should become, but what feels meaningful in this season. This isn’t about forcing clarity or reinventing yourself. It’s about creating enough safety, compassion, and space for your identity to unfold in its own time, guided by what you value, rather than what burnout has convinced you is wrong. Why Rest Is So Hard for Mothers Rest sounds simple. In practice, it’s one of the hardest things for moms to actually allow themselves. Not because you don’t want rest, but because rest is rarely neutral. It comes loaded: With guilt about not doing enough, with anxiety about leaving your child with someone else, with the fear of letting people down or dropping the ball, with deeply ingrained beliefs about productivity, worth, and what a “good” mother is supposed to look like. There’s also the invisible mental load most moms are carrying, the constant tracking, anticipating, remembering, and managing. Even when your body stops, your mind often doesn’t. So, when I talk about rest, many moms hear, “Do less,” in a world that already makes them feel like they’re falling short. That’s why rest has to be reframed. Rest isn’t quitting. Rest isn’t giving up. Rest isn’t avoidance. Rest is regulation. Rest is protection. And for mothers, rest is both a right and a quiet revolution. What Realistic Self-Care Actually Looks Like Self-care has been sold to mothers as something extra, something indulgent, something you squeeze in if you’re lucky. In reality, realistic self-care is often unglamorous, deeply practical, and about doing what actually supports you, not what looks good online. It can look like: Yes, self-care can be nail appointments, spa days, or solo trips if those are accessible to you and genuinely restorative. But it can also live in those much smaller moments. Realistic self-care isn’t about doing more or becoming better at taking care of yourself. It’s about giving yourself permission to need less from yourself, especially in seasons that already ask so much. How I Support Moms When Burnout Sets In When moms come to me feeling burnt out, disconnected, or unsure of themselves, we don’t start by asking them to reinvent their lives. We start by slowing things down. We look at what’s actually happening day to day. Where energy is leaking. What feels heavy but rarely gets named. How much is being carried quietly, without help or acknowledgment. Often, the work begins with noticing just how much you’ve been holding together on your own. There’s usually a lot of self-blame when moms arrive, a sense that they should be handling things better or feeling differently by now. My role is often to help shift that lens, away from “What’s wrong with me?” and toward “Of course this feels hard, given everything I’m carrying.” I don’t believe you need to
