A new BrownStyle Magazine column by Victoria Mendoza highlighting her experience becoming a new mother, healing childhood wounds to avoid repeating trauma, and the role spirituality plays in guiding how she mothers her daughter and shows up as a (future) wife.
For as long as I can remember, becoming a mother was something I looked forward to.
I remember a conversation with an old friend a few years ago, one of those long, deep talks about life and purpose. We asked the question people in their twenties inevitably ask: Why am I here?
That question led us to think about just how much had to align for any of us to be here at all. Generations of choices. Acts of pure resilience. Love stories that almost didn’t happen.
In my case, I love to think about how my father won a rare “lottery” visa to the U.S. from his small village in Honduras. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity fell in his lap at 19 and changed his life forever. It wasn’t long before he found a job in Atlantic City bussing tables at a popular restaurant and quickly fell for the beautiful cashier. Those big brown eyes and long curly hair that mesmerized him at first sight was my mother in the 90’s. And then came me.
The Miracle Of Life & Creativity
I like to think about all the things that had to go right for me to be here typing up this story. It all just feels too miraculous for me, you, all of us, to be here for no reason…
I considered all the aspirational answers to my existence, the impact I wanted to make, the people I hoped to serve, and the places I dreamed of going. Eventually, the answer rose to the surface. One that felt less impressive, but more true.
I realized that one of my purposes, one of the clearest, was to be a mother.
This deeply resonated immediately. It named so much of what already gave me life. Before ever birthing my daughter, I realized I had already been mothering in so many other ways. I’ve birthed ideas, visions, and art that felt half me, half Creator.
I’ve surprised myself with strength and intuition I didn’t know I carried. I’ve learned how to protect what I love when things become uncertain or hard. I’ve nourished my community with love and kindness, avoiding, as best as I can, letting my own trauma spill onto bystanders.
Becoming A Mother To A Baby Girl
Now I’m 29-years-old, and I have a one-year-old daughter. And she is the most perfect thing I have ever known. The puzzle piece that made me see clearly what God had been preparing me for.
She has stretched me beyond the edges of who I thought I was. She has mirrored back parts of myself I assumed I had already healed. She has made me look at my own mother, not with judgment or resentment, but with a new, tender empathy I didn’t have access to before.
And she has humbled me. Deeply. Repeatedly. Without apology.
It is safe to say, this side of motherhood looks nothing like what I imagined. It is messier. More exhausting. More revealing. The confidence I thought I’d built up in preparation for this moment is constantly challenged by self-doubt. “Am I doing this motherhood thing right?” The patience I believed I possessed is tested daily. The lack of sleep definitely doesn’t help either. And the versions of myself I assumed were neatly resolved keep knocking, asking to be seen again.
And still, I love it.
I love the rawness of it. The unfiltered honesty between my fiancé and me while we figure this out together. The way motherhood has depleted me of the energy to perform. I love how miraculous and unexpected it is, how it rearranges my priorities without asking permission. I love how it teaches through lived experience rather than theory. There is no manual, so I have no choice but to do the work to learn her through presence alone.
Growth In Motherhood
If there’s one thing last year made clear, it’s that there is no single “right” way to do this. No universal blueprint for motherhood, healing, or becoming. We as women are intuitive, yes, but many of us have to re-learn how to listen and trust that inner guiding voice.
What I’m learning is that motherhood is not about mastery. It’s about nourishing a relationship: With your child. With your own inner child. With the women who came before you. With God, or intuition, or whatever wisdom you trust to guide you when you don’t know what comes next.
I used to think purpose would feel like arrival. Like certainty. Like finally knowing what I was doing.
Instead, it feels like humility. Like listening. Like being changed daily by love that asks everything of you and gives you more than you knew to ask for.
I’m allowing this journey to teach me as I go, having grace for the stumbles and deep gratitude for being on “purpose.”
And for now, that feels like more than enough.
