The Part of Motherhood No One Talks About

This week, I watched a segment on Sunrise where the hosts interviewed their mums.

The usual questions came up.

What was I like as a child?
What made you proud?
Who was the favourite?

And while the stories were funny and familiar, something else kept coming up too.

How hard motherhood can feel once your children grow up and leave home.

And honestly?

Nobody really talks about that part.

Not because people stop asking about your children.

They still do.

“What are they up to now?”
“What are they studying again?”
“Will they be home for…?”

The interest is still there.

But the part nobody really prepares you for is the feeling you carry once the everyday moments quietly disappear.

You don’t realise how much your children fill your life until things start changing.

The noise.
The routines.
The chaos.
The teenage angst.

The arguments with mini versions of yourself.

The constant hoping they learn from your mistakes while still somehow becoming fully themselves.

And then one day you realise… you miss the ordinary things most of all.

Hearing about their day.
Seeing their face every morning.
Watching them slowly become adults right in front of you.

That’s the part nobody talks about.

And maybe because I’m an accountant, my brain naturally breaks things down into numbers.

But when you do… the numbers don’t lie.

18 birthdays.
18 Christmas mornings.
13 years of school.
6? footy or cricket grand finals.
13 ballet concerts.

When you really look at it like that, the active years of motherhood are surprisingly short.

And somehow, while you’re in the middle of lunchboxes, school runs, permission slips, after school activities, and trying to survive the teenage years… you just don’t realise how quickly it’s moving.

We spend so much time before motherhood imagining what our children will become.

And then once they’re here, we spend years hoping we’re giving them the best start we can.

Hoping they feel loved.
Hoping they feel safe.
Hoping they chase their dreams.
Hoping they avoid some of our mistakes while still making enough of their own to grow into who they’re meant to be.

These days, motherhood looks different in our house.

One at uni.
One at school, growing up fast - like really tall.
Schedules don’t line up the way they used to.

And while I’m incredibly proud watching them become independent…

there are moments where I quietly miss who we all were before life started stretching us in different directions.

Not because I want them small again.

But because I didn’t realise at the time how special the ordinary moments really were.

Motherhood doesn’t stop when they grow up.

It just changes shape.

And maybe the reason nobody talks about this stage very much is because from the outside, it looks like the hard part is over.

But the truth is, you never really stop carrying them.

Even when they’re carrying themselves.