By Camilla van Rosendal
Some mornings pass without ceremony. Shoes are pulled on, and lunch boxes filled. One of my children calls my name from another room, not urgently, just to be sure I am still here. Later, I will realise there was nothing remarkable about the day at all. And yet, I will also know: this was one of the days that would leave me.
Parenthood sharpens your awareness of time in unexpected ways. Not all at once, and not always in the moments we are told to cherish. It arrives sideways through repetition, through habit, through the small exchanges that make up a day. Loving a child means living inside this tension: knowing that what fills your hours now will one day loosen its hold, even as it feels endless in the moment.
There is a particular ache that comes with this knowing. Not grief, exactly, more a quiet tenderness. To love something while understanding it is temporary asks a lot of us. It asks us to stay open without clinging, to show up without trying to preserve what cannot be held. Motherhood, I am learning, is not about keeping moments intact, but about letting them move through us.
Most days, I am not especially present. I am thinking about what needs to be done next, or replaying something that already happened. A question is asked again, then again. A voice calls from the other end of the house. I rush. I sigh. And still, somehow, the days accumulate. The ordinary stacks itself gently in the background: shoes by the door, a half-finished cup of tea gone cold, the same book chosen each night before bed.
It is tempting to believe that memory is something we actively create, that if we just paid more attention, slowed ourselves down enough, we might keep it all. But memory does not work that way. It gathers quietly, without permission. It forms from what we live inside most often, not from what we try hardest to notice.
Later, years from now, it will not be the big days I reach for first. It will be the weight of a small body leaning into mine without thinking. The way my child pauses mid-sentence to check I am listening. The sound of feet padding down the hallway in the early morning, certain of where they are going. These details will return to me unannounced, softened by time, carrying more weight than they ever did in the moment.
There is a subtle pressure woven through modern motherhood, the idea that we must be awake to every moment, that we should savour each stage before it slips away. That presence is something we either succeed at or fail. But this kind of constant attentiveness is not only unrealistic; it misunderstands how love actually works.
These reflections sit at the heart of the work I explore through the Peaceful Mama Project, a place shaped by intuitive mothering, presence and the inner seasons of motherhood.
We do not live our lives fully aware of their significance as they unfold. We live them tired, distracted, halfway between tasks. And still, meaning takes root. Still, love settles into the cracks. Presence does not require mastery. It appears in brief flashes: a glance held a second longer, a breath taken before responding, or a moment recognised only after it has passed.
Some of the most important noticing happens later. It arrives when the house is quiet, or when something familiar is suddenly absent. We look back and understand that what felt repetitive was, in fact, foundational. That what we moved through without ceremony was shaping us all along.
I am trying to make peace with this now, not by holding on tighter, but by trusting that enough is already being held for me. That even on the days I rush or forget or long for a little space, love is still doing its quiet work. That the days will leave, yes, but they will not leave empty-handed.
They will take with them the shape of who we were to one another. And in time, they will return as memory, unannounced, tender and whole.
These themes are explored more fully in my book Scatter to Bloom: Conversations with My Intuition, a reflective work on motherhood, time and identity.
Camilla van Rosendal is a writer and mother based on the Sunshine Coast, and the author of Scatter to Bloom: Conversations with My Intuition. Her work explores motherhood, identity, time, and the inner shifts women experience across different seasons of life.
