Both, Not Half: Why Women Must Never Be Forced to Choose Between Motherhood and Creative Life
Why I Wrote This:
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how often women are forced into impossible choices. Not because they lack the ability to hold both motherhood and their creative life—but because the world tells them they can’t. I wrote this piece as a refusal to choose. As a reminder that we were never meant to.
This piece explores the predator in our psyche—the force that convinces a woman she must choose between her creative life and her motherhood.
While "he" is used in the storytelling, the predator is not about gender. It can be a person, a system, a belief, or an ideology.
It exists wherever power is used to contain a woman—where she is taught to doubt herself instead of trust what she feels, where she learns to dismiss her own instincts in order to be accepted, to survive, or to belong.
But this isn’t just personal—it’s a pattern. A cycle woven through generations.
A psychological force that Carl Jung explored in the shadow self and that Clarissa Pinkola Estés illuminated in Women Who Run with the Wolves. The part of the psyche that preys on a woman’s untamed nature, convincing her that in order to belong, she must sacrifice some essential part of herself.
And—just as cycles can be repeated—new ones can be created.
The moment a woman remembers who she is, the moment she refuses to play by the rules meant to keep her contained, the untangling begins—the unraveling of who she thought she needed to be, making space for who she was always meant to become.
Yet, before she can be fully free, she must face what was built on broken instincts.
She must take radical responsibility for the ways she has internalized this lie—the ways she, too, has learned to shrink—to sever—to survive by splitting herself in two.
Not in shame. Not in self-blame.
But in deep recognition of the truth—a woman was never meant to choose.
She was never meant to break herself in half—
to live in paralysis, believing she must sacrifice one part of herself for the other.
She was always meant to hold both.
Her love and her work.
Her motherhood and her creativity.
Her depth and her lightness.
Her devotion and her expansion.
And when she holds both,
She does not disappear.
She expands.
She takes up space.
She reclaims her instincts.
She demands a world that never asks a woman to sever herself again.
Because her wholeness is not a privilege.
It is her birthright.
And, she must take back her rightful rage.
Her right to be angry.
Her right to not be gaslit.
Her right to take up space.
Her right to say no.
Her right to remember who she is—and the courage to live it.
Here I Am. No More Hiding.
One of the scariest things to do is show up in the public eye after a season of sorrow.
After what feels like humiliation.
Not only did I lose my husband to suicide—I lost connection with myself.
I gave my power away to everyone but me.
To the spiritual world at large.
To the belief that surrender meant silence.
To the idea that devotion meant disappearance.
And then—I combusted.
I shattered.
I exploded.
Rage. Upon rage. Upon rage.
Self-betrayal.
Self-harm.
Until one day—I walked away.
Abruptly quitting the job that gave my kids and me financial stability.
Because I had to go home.
Not to a physical place—to my soul home.
I had to figure out how to be human again.
I had to understand what was happening to me.
About the reflective piece below: There is a moment when a woman sees it. Not just intellectually, but in her bones. The predator, the pattern, the ways she has turned against herself. Her journey of self-reclamation—no longer looking outward, but returning home to herself.
The Predator in Our Psyche—And the Woman Who Remembers
We meet people along our path who awaken the predator in our psyche.
A version of us we don’t recognize.
A version of us that has us begging on our knees—for mercy—for help—for survival.
A version of us that only exists once we’re too far in, trapped in a room, with the key in the hands of those who do not want us to come out.
His promised liberation was her naïve captivation—her soul’s rupture.
Her wild—captured.
Her free-flowing, beautiful ballerina dance of hope and rooted trust in Mother Earth—slowed to a halt.
Her hope faded.
Her light faded.
Now—she wore a soulless gaze.
Blank eyes.
Death.
Death, not as an end, but as the passage into the life-death-life cycle—the quiet undoing before her regeneration—her becoming.
The Predator That Moves In—Do You Think Anyone Can Tell She Gave Her Power Away?
At first, he arrived outside of her.
What a powerful role he had.
What wonderful and alluring things he promised.
The irony, he wasn’t in it just to hunt her, he was teaching her to hunt herself.
Because when a woman has been captured—gaslit—forced to ignore her instincts for too long—she no longer needs an external source to keep her in place.
Nope.
She gladly signs up to do that shit herself.
She will doubt her own instincts before a single soul has the chance.
She will explain away her own discomfort before it's even questioned.
She will shrink herself down before the silence asks her to.
Hell—she will even tell you how to break her.
She will hand over her secrets.
Her primal and wild wisdom.
She will say “I’m fine” while she’s disappearing.
At first, it was done to her.
But now?
Now, she’ll save you the chore and do it for you—with a pretty please, a thank you, and a “here, I already fixed it.”
Because she has been taught that this is what a good woman does.
That this is emotional maturity.
That this is wisdom.
And this?
This is how the predator moves through generations.
It is not wisdom to accept a life that refuses to let you root.
It is not enlightenment to train yourself to be okay with something that is starving your soul.
Once a woman learns to betray herself before anyone else does—
The system doesn’t have to control her.
She will contort herself to fit in the cage just right.
And she will call it growth.
Even though the door is open, she will call it conscious staying.
Until one day—
She remembers.
She sees it for what it is.
And she stops playing the game.
That is when everything changes.
Like an electric shock, she stomps down, roots her heels deep into Mama Earth—
as if she is awakening every ancestor, every wild thing, every buried voice,
connecting and commanding her primal power.
Weaving the broken web of her back together.
She takes back her “too much.”
It’s hers.
"Grief is a rhythm—a quiet companion that will wait, patiently and lovingly, for you to sit with it. You might as well invite it to the table, let your tears fall, and bring your glass of tea to stay awhile. It does not come to take from you. It comes to honor you. To see you."
-Bailee Buckendorf
Pick a Side: Motherhood or Your Creative Life? After She Remembers—What Comes Next?
At some point along our journey, we are called to unearth ourselves—
to loosen the grip of a season that no longer holds us,
to untangle from a place where something severed our soul connection.
A space where the ecstasy of new and the promise of “having arrived”
had her walking blindly into naivety—again.
A space where the naïve initiation had its last first rodeo—
where being good no longer meant belonging,
where softening and dimming our magnetic essence
in the name of “selfless” devotion
was no longer the act of love.
In my case, the severance of my creative life and motherhood paralyzed me into a collapse—
well beyond a choice.
A folding in on myself.
Backed into a corner that demanded I split in two—
where the quirky, space-holding, conscious mother
and the nerd-loving, artist-creative woman
collapsed under the weight of an impossible choice.
As if I could split my spirit
without a painful, life-altering rupture.
There was no release valve.
Breathless.
The space where I lived in joy and safety.
The space where I nurtured and
where I moved instinctually.
"Keep letting go," they said.
"Let go."
Where the fuck am I supposed to let go?!
I cannot and will not let go of my sacred motherhood.
I cannot and will not let go of my creative life.
There is nowhere to go.
The Collapse Into Silence
But when there is nowhere to go—
when the world tells you to let go
of what you cannot release—
where does the pain go?
For me, it turned inward.
The rage became sadness.
The sadness became silence.
The silence became my disappearance.
Isolation.
Hiding.
The rage was never really rage—
it was deep trauma grief and sadness without a proper expression—no exit.
A heart shattered.
And so, a season of self-harm began.
Maybe if I let my body speak in ways my voice could not—
the pressure and pain would go away.
But no matter how I tried to move through it,
no matter how I tried to exist inside it—
they kept insisting it was fear.
They kept saying I was clinging.
They kept pointing out everything I was doing wrong.
Inviting me into the deepest sacred healing circles—
asking me to see something I already see.
They want me to see through their lens.
To become it.
But I’ve surpassed it.
So I sit in silence,
because I know that they will arrive when they’re ready.
Those with trauma grief—
we already live with our hearts broken open.
We are not the ones who fear the unraveling.
But still, they misread us—
They call it stuckness when we stay close to what shaped us.
They call it fear when we are in deep listening.
They call it clinging when we choose to honor and integrate what was lost—on a non-linear timeline.
They don’t see it—
That honoring is not the same as holding on.
That deep listening is not hesitation—it is wisdom.
Shocked at their reaction.
Infinitely confused.
She digs in deeper—
grasping at the never-ending attempt
to unearth this thing they keep calling fear.
But where the hell does one find this fear
she’s supposed to move away from?
Does it come with a label?
Do they tell her when she’s released it?
Or is she simply being asked to sever something sacred—
to call grief unnatural,
to call mourning a weakness,
to call staying in the ache too long a failure?
To call being broken the most unnatural thing of all.
As if pain is a glitch.
As if suffering is failure.
As if her humanness itself
is something to be transcended, silenced, scrubbed clean.
As if grief itself is the thing to fear.
They run from it like it’s contagious,
like if they sit too close,
it might swallow them too.
Like sorrow is a sickness,
instead of the most ancient language we know.
But who decided grief was exile?
Who decided that the ones who feel it deepest
are the ones who must carry it alone?
Who decided that sadness must be hidden,
that longing must be silenced,
that the ones who touch loss must be the ones to disappear?
As if to be whole,
she must first cease to be human.
The Unfamiliar Life
In this season of voiceless grief,
no one forced me to give my life force away.
No one physically restrained me.
No one held me captive.
And yet—I stayed.
I gave away my time.
I gave away my autonomy.
I gave away my creative fire.
Because my instincts were injured.
I spent years in devoted therapy
just to give my buried sadness a voice—
to even let out a single peep.
Most of the time, it just went black.
I couldn’t see anything.
I couldn’t reach for anything.
No one prepares you
for what the recovery journey
after a death by suicide will be.
Add in three young kids.
It’s blurry.
It’s foggy.
It’s painful.
It’s messy.
And yet—somehow, the world still expected me to move on.
To function. To show up.
To choose between being a good mother and being a whole working woman.
But here’s what I know now:
We must never, ever force a woman to decide
between her motherhood and her creative life.
Because they were never meant to be separate.
They do not exist in opposition.
They do not threaten each other.
They are woven from the same source.
To ask a woman to choose between them
is to force her into an impossible fracture—
a severing that should have never been demanded of her.
This is how the predator in our psyche keeps its grip.
This is how the cycle repeats.
By convincing women that to be whole in one place,
they must starve themselves in another.
And this is where we must create a new way forward—
one that never forces this choice again.
Because when a woman is given space
to be both mother and artist,
both nurturer and creator,
both giver and receiver,
both presence and fire—
She does not disappear.
She expands.
She becomes more of herself.
And when she rises in this fullness—
she does not just hold more; she creates more.
More love.
More depth.
More life.
Not just for herself—but for everyone she touches.
Because a woman in her wholeness
is not just a force—she is a revolution.
"Grace is not about erasing what was—it’s about meeting it with fresh eyes, holding space for repair, and allowing something new to emerge in its place."
-Bailee Buckendorf
What We Must Do When the Predator Arrives
When the predator arrives—
as a voice, as a system, as a belief—
whispering that you must choose between your creation and your belonging,
between your love and your expansion,
between your instinct and your survival—
do not let it in.
Do not shrink yourself down to fit the cage.
Do not call starvation growth.
Do not accept a life that asks you to be half of yourself.
The predator only wins
if you forget you were born to hold both.
To all the women at this threshold—
The ones being told they must choose.
The ones being asked to sever themselves.
The ones standing in the ache of the “not enough” space.
I see you.
And I am telling you—
You do not have to break yourself to be worthy of the life you desire.
Take up your space.
Command your wholeness.
Let no one—not a person, not a system, not a lie—
force you to decide between two things that were always meant to belong to you.
And when you hear the whisper—
when you feel the slow tightening around your instincts—
turn toward yourself.
Not away.
Never away.
Because this is not about fighting.
This is not about proving.
This is about creating something new.
A world where a woman does not have to fracture herself to belong.
A world where she doesn’t get backed into a corner.
It starts here.
It starts now.
It starts with you.
And This Is Why I Wrote Sunia.
Not as a space to declare all the things that are wrong—
but to teach what was never meant to be lost.
To guide women back to the instincts that they were never meant to forget or disconnect from.
To create a new way forward—one where a woman’s creative life
is honored in all its transitions, in all its forms.
If you want to deepen your connection to self,
if you are ready to return to the instincts you were never meant to forget—
Sunia is for you.
