The Gathered Kind

They called it baby blues.
But I knew it was something heavier.

I remember sitting in that sterile doctor’s office, holding my newborn in one arm and my heart in the other. He told me I’d be fine. That I just needed rest. But how do you rest when your mind won’t stop racing and your soul feels like it’s coming undone?

I went through postpartum depression with three out of our five boys, but back then, no one called it that. They called it being emotional, hormonal, tired. They told me to be grateful, to soak in the baby smell, to enjoy every moment while I was barely surviving them.

By the time our fifth baby came, I had switched doctors hoping for something different. Instead, I had the most traumatic C-section experience of my life. 2019 broke me wide open. It was the year everything unraveled and the year I finally decided to go to therapy.

Then came 2020.
We lost my husband’s dad, and our youngest was only six months old. Thank God I was already in therapy because grief hit like a wave I wasn’t sure I could swim through.

Somewhere between those sleepless nights, I realized I couldn’t keep living in the same hurt cycle over and over again. I didn’t want to bleed on my kids. I wanted to heal for them so they could grow up knowing a whole version of their mom, not the pieces left behind by pain.

That was when the rebuilding began.

---

Motherhood has a way of swallowing your name if you’re not careful. You go from “Tamara” to “Mom,” and before you know it, every part of your identity is wrapped up in who you’re raising instead of who you’re becoming.

You pour and pour until you forget what it feels like to be full.
You give until you’re empty and somehow still expect yourself to serve.

I know what that kind of invisible feels like.
It’s the kind where everyone sees the laundry folded and the meals made, but no one sees the woman quietly wondering if she’s still in there somewhere.

But here’s what I learned: when you start to lose yourself in the giving, that’s not the end of your story. It’s the beginning of your awakening.

The Moment I Remembered Myself Again

It didn’t happen all at once. Healing never does.
It started as small, stubborn decisions that didn’t always make sense to anyone else.

Going to therapy.
Putting words to pain that I’d kept buried for years.
Letting myself cry without apologizing for it.

In 2021, I sat down and wrote my book I Am Enough. I poured my entire life onto those pages because I needed to make sense of the mess. Writing became my lifeline. Every sentence was a piece of myself finding its way back home.

For the first time, I started to see the pattern of pain I had been repeating. I realized how much of my story I had hidden under humor, busyness, and exhaustion. I thought I was protecting my kids from my brokenness, but I was really protecting myself from facing it.

Then one day I decided that enough was enough.
I didn’t want to live numb anymore.
I didn’t want to escape.
I wanted to be awake for my own life.

So I stopped drinking.
It has been four years now. Four years of choosing clarity over comfort. Four years of seeing myself through sober eyes.

I won’t pretend it was easy. There were nights I felt everything I had been running from. But every time I faced the pain, I also found a little more peace.

Slowly, the fog began to lift.
I started to laugh again.
I started to create again.
I started to believe that God wasn’t done writing my story.

That’s when I realized I didn’t want to just survive my motherhood. I wanted to build a legacy inside it. I wanted to use my story to spark something in someone else. Because if healing could happen for me, it could happen for anyone.

Reclaiming Purpose and Creativity

Once the healing began, I felt this pull inside me to create again.
For years, I had been consuming everything I could find to fix myself. Podcasts, books, sermons, workshops, anything that promised clarity or peace. But at some point, I realized I wasn’t created to only absorb wisdom. I was meant to give it away.

It was time to pour out what had been poured into me.

That’s when the shift happened.
I went from learning just to survive to creating as an act of service. I wanted to help in every area I could. I wanted to be the woman who sparked the fire in someone else. I wanted other moms to look at me and say, “Because of your story, I finally believed in mine.”

We are capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for.
We are creative by nature.
We are builders of homes, shapers of hearts, carriers of wisdom, and holders of stories that the world desperately needs to hear.

Somewhere along the way, society convinced moms that the moment we gave birth to our children, we gave up our dreams too. That is a lie. Motherhood does not cancel purpose. It multiplies it.

Every diaper changed, every late night, every whispered prayer is proof that we already know how to nurture something into life. So why not nurture the dreams God placed in our hearts too?

When you start creating again, whether it is writing, painting, baking, building a business, or sharing encouragement online, you are reclaiming a piece of yourself that the world told you to forget. You are showing your children what it looks like to keep growing even after life changes.

You are reminding yourself that you still matter.

The Power of Legacy

When I look back at everything I have walked through, I see more than pain. I see purpose. Every hard season taught me something I needed to know for where I am now. The healing, the writing, the rebuilding, all of it became the foundation of my legacy.

Legacy is not just about what we leave behind when we are gone. It is about what we are building right now, in the middle of the laundry piles and the grocery runs and the bedtime chaos. It is every prayer whispered over our kids, every kind word spoken when we are tired, every dream we refuse to let die.

That is what The Gathered Kind is built on.
It is a reminder that family, faith, and creativity can coexist. It is proof that the middle of motherhood can also be the beginning of something sacred.

We are not here just to keep our homes running. We are here to change what home means. To build places where love and purpose are woven together. To raise children who know what courage looks like because they saw it in their mother’s eyes.

When I wrote I Am Enough, it was my way of saying, “This is where the cycle ends.” The pain stops here. The doubt stops here. The hiding stops here. From now on, my story belongs to healing, hope, and impact.

And maybe that is what legacy really is.
It is choosing to live awake.
It is choosing to create meaning from the mess.
It is choosing to believe that who you are still matters, even while you are serving everyone else.

You are not just a mom.
You are a builder of legacies, a carrier of light, and a living reminder that God never wastes a single part of your story.

Revival and Reclamation

If no one has told you lately, you are doing a holy thing.
Raising souls. Healing wounds. Holding it all together when no one else sees the weight you carry.

But I want you to remember something.
You were not created only to survive your own story. You were created to live it fully.

You can be a mother and still chase your dreams.
You can be a wife and still have your own fire.
You can love your family deeply and still make room for what God placed inside of you.

There is no expiration date on your calling.
Motherhood did not erase your identity. It revealed it.

Somewhere inside you, that spark still lives. The one that knows you were made for more than just getting through the day. The one that still wants to build something beautiful from this life.

So take the next small step. Write the words. Paint the picture. Launch the idea. Share your story. You do not need a perfect plan. You just need the courage to begin.

And if you need a reminder that your story still matters, start with my book I Am Enough. It is my heart on paper. It is proof that healing is possible and that you can reclaim who you are even after life has knocked you down.

Because you are not just a mom.
You are the woman God chose to carry both life and legacy.

You are enough.
You always have been.
And the world is waiting for what only you can create.