Written by Falepaini
Content Note: This piece reflects on depression, burnout, and emotional survival, including gentle but honest references to suicidal ideation during times when hope felt far away. Please read with care and pause if you need to. If you or someone you know is struggling, support is available in Australia through Lifeline (13 11 14) or Beyond Blue (1300 22 4636).
I remember watching a video about mother flamingos and crying almost instantly.
Honestly, it caught me off guard. I never expected to see myself in a bird.
The mother stood there, noticeably paler than her chicks. They were bright, vibrant, almost glowing. The narrator explained that a flamingo’s vibrant pink is a sign of inner nourishment, a living receipt of care, abundance, and vitality. It is what it looks like when a body is allowed to be full.
But when a flamingo becomes a mother, something shifts.
She produces a milk-like secretion to feed her babies, and with it, she passes on the very pigments that once made her bright. As her chicks grow stronger and pinker, she fades. Slowly. Gradually. Her body gives its colour away, so theirs can deepen.
I sat there staring at the screen, thinking, of course she does.
Of course, motherhood would look like this.
Not one dramatic sacrifice. Not one loud, heroic moment. But a steady transfer. Life moving from her body into theirs in small, almost invisible offerings. What once made her radiant becomes what allows them to survive. She gives from within, dissolving into them slowly, her body becoming the bridge between her life and theirs.
And I felt seen in a way I did not expect to.
It happens when your own nourishment is redirected, drip by drip. A piece of yourself given so that your loved ones may be painted into the world with vibrancy. A transfer of life where a mother fades so her children do not have to.
Before I became a mother, I had a clear picture of what a real mother looked like. She was endlessly giving, soft, patient, always present. She made fun meals, created Christmas magic, and built memories that would be retold to her grandchildren one day. Above all, she held everything together. I tried to be her. I wanted to be the mother I always needed growing up. Warm, nurturing, full of colour and love.
But there is one thing mothers are rarely allowed to be. Empty.
You cannot say you are drowning—even from love. You cannot admit exhaustion or losing yourself in motherhood.
Why?
Because someone out there wishes they could have children, and somewhere someone wishes they were exhausted from cleaning up after theirs.
Somewhere along the way, we are told that love should be enough. That motherhood should complete you, not consume you. That belief is what quietly destroys many women.
This is especially true when you are the one who has always been strong. When you are that woman, people stop checking in on you. Not because they do not care, but because they trust your strength more than they notice your exhaustion. You hear the same sentence you have heard your whole life.
You will figure it out.
It is said with confidence, even affection, but it carries an expectation. That you always will.
And you do. You always have. So you carry more. You ask for less. You learn to suffer in silence because that is what strength has always looked like.
Slowly and invisibly, your colour disappears.
There came a point where I realised I had lost mine. The pixels in my image had burnt out. Proof that I was not as superhuman as I had made myself believe. I was loving. I was trying. I was showing up in the ways I could. But I was not living.
I had nothing left to give without breaking myself open. Not because I did not love my children, but because I had already given everything away. Like a flamingo who had poured all her pink into her babies.
Over time, the emotions I had suppressed and swept under the rug became a weight my body could no longer carry alone. They surfaced quietly at first. In cold sweats that soaked my sheets. In anxiety that arrived without invitation or explanation.
In my hairline thinning and the strands I kept noticing in the shower drain. In irregular menstrual cycles that made my own body feel unfamiliar. In the late night eating that felt like relief in the moment. In the weight that gathered as my body tried to store what my heart could not release.
In the fatigue no amount of sleep could repair. Rest stopped restoring me. It became a place I went to disappear.
What I did not have words for then, but do now, was depression. Not the kind that collapses you instantly, but the kind that lets you function while slowly emptying you from the inside.
On the outside, everything still looked intact. Inside, something essential had gone silent.
For a long time, I stayed in denial. I kept telling myself I could push through it, pretend it was just a phase, mask it the way I always had. I had built a life on being strong. On coping. On figuring it out.
Strength was not just something I did. It was what I was known for being. It was my identity. But this time, pretending was no longer working.
The thoughts did not arrive dramatically. They crept in at the edges. I did not want to die, but I was tired of existing like that. The ideation was quiet. Subtle. More about escape than death.
I felt caught between wanting to be better and not wanting to be here anymore. Between longing for relief and not wanting to be the one who caused pain. Sometimes I wished something outside of me would decide for me, so I would not have to carry the burden of the choice.
Have you ever stood in that space? Between wanting healing and wanting everything to stop. Between loving deeply and feeling too depleted to continue.
I was too afraid to act on those thoughts, but I struggled to find reasons to keep choosing life. Each morning felt heavier than the last. Waking up meant returning to the same exhaustion, the same quiet ache. I did not want to die. I just did not know how to keep living like that.
My children were the clearest thread tethering me to this world. Loving them was never the question. Finding the strength to stay whole for them was.
And then I understood something that felt almost forbidden to admit.
Staying while empty is not brave. It is dangerous.
I began to see that disappearing in the name of love was not noble. It was harmful.
A mother who is slowly vanishing cannot teach her children how to stay whole.
Some would say they would die for their children. And many mean it. But I began to ask myself a harder question. How many of us are willing to do what it takes to live for them?
To seek help. To admit we are not okay. To choose healing over image. To rebuild ourselves even when it costs comfort, reputation, or approval.
Dying for your children sounds noble. Living for them means refusing to disappear, so they do not inherit your silence.
Around that time, I came across a quote that put language to the hardest truth I had been circling: ‘an absent parent is a gift when the demons they carry cause more pain than their absence.’
In its simplest form, it explained the most difficult decision I made in 2022 to leave my husband and kids.
Sometimes protection does not look like holding tighter. Sometimes it looks like letting go and trusting that God can hold what you no longer can.
In 2022, I stopped pretending.
The decision did not arrive all at once. It was not impulsive. It was not careless.
It was built over time, in the quiet recognition that I was bleeding internally and no one could see it. Not because they did not care, but because I had always been strong enough to hide it.
I knew that if I stayed as I was, my children would not just inherit my love. They would inherit my depletion. My unspoken belief that motherhood requires disappearance. That devotion must cost you your life force. And eventually, my unhealed wounds would begin to bleed onto them.
Some acts of love look like sacrifice.
Others look like survival.
And sometimes, the bravest devotion is choosing to stop fading. It is choosing to tend to your wounds before they become someone else’s inheritance.
If there was ever a moment that required faith, this was it. Faith in God. Faith in the process. Faith that choosing life, even when it looked like loss from the outside, was still an act of love. I knew I would be misunderstood. I knew I would be judged. But I also knew that staying empty would cost far more than leaving ever could.
So this is my offering, and my warning, to other mothers. Do not wait until your colour is gone to notice it fading. Devotion does not require erasure. Love should not cost you your life.
You are allowed to stay whole. You are allowed to keep your colour.
What I did not know then was that colour can return. But only if you stop pretending you are not fading.
Leaving saved my life.
But leaving did not save me from shame.
There is a particular kind of silence that haunts a mother who walks away.
A silence heavy with judgment, with questions, with stories told about her.
But there is an even quieter miracle. The kind that only reveals itself when she dares to come home different from the way she left.
That is a story for another day.
One I will continue in The Prodigal Mother (Part II).
xx
**This was the map my life traced under the weight of my mental health, my circumstances, a lack of support, and years of carrying more than I could hold alone. It is not a prescription. It is not advice. It is simply my testimony. And I share it in the hope that no one waits until they are fully depleted before reaching for support.**
Support Services in Australia
If this part of my story resonates in a way that feels immediate or overwhelming, please reach out for support. You do not have to carry this alone.
Lifeline – 13 11 14
24/7 crisis support and suicide prevention.
Beyond Blue – 1300 22 4636
Mental health support and resources for anxiety, depression, and more.
1800RESPECT – 1800 737 732
Support for people impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence.
Kids Helpline – 1800 55 1800
24/7 counselling for young people aged 5–25.
Suicide Call Back Service – 1300 659 467
Free counselling for people affected by suicide.
If you are in immediate danger, please call 000.
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