With Every Baby, a Mother Is Born with Sarah Cassidy

“Nobody told me my life would come back to me.” So many of us—if we’re being honest—moved through those early months of new motherhood wondering if who we used to be was just… gone. Buried under the feeding schedules and the sleep deprivation and the particular kind of loneliness that shows up even in a room full of people who love you.Sarah Cassidy is the author of Swaddled: Sage Stories to Wrap Mothers in Love, a book that collects the true stories of 12 women navigating the profound, and profoundly under-supported, transition into motherhood. When I met her, I felt instant connection and recognition—and at ease. Because she was actually telling the truth about what it means to become a mother…and she had the courage to write it down.What I love most about Sarah is that she’s a type-A, prepare-for-everything kind of woman who was still completely blindsided by new motherhood. She read the books. She organized everything. And then her son arrived and she felt like she’d disappeared. And no one warned her that it was going to happen!So she decided to be the voice who names that sacred, brutal and beautiful in-between space of unbecoming of who you were before motherhood, and becoming all that you are.This conversation is for every mother who has ever whispered, or screamed into a pillow, “I don’t feel like myself,” and every woman who is about to.In this episode we explore:* Why “with every baby, a new mother is born,” and why we prepare for everything except that* The liminal space between unbecoming and becoming, and why that disorientation is not a sign that something is wrong* How a single honest exchange from another mother can land differently than all the advice in the world* What Sarah actually experienced in those early feeding hours, and the formula bottle she hid in the wastebasket* The three core messages woven through Swaddled: you are not alone, you are already the perfect mother for your baby, and your life will come back to you* Why telling the truth about motherhood—the hard, raw, messy truth—is the very thing that rebuilds the village* How the commercialization of motherhood has hijacked the real initiation, and what it would look like to dismantle itThere’s something in this conversation that I think will crack something open for you, whether you’re in the thick of new motherhood right now, decades past it, or somewhere in between. Your body remembers, your wisdom counts, and when you speak the truth of your experience, you might just become someone else’s lifeline.Connect with Sarah Cassidy:* Sarah’s Book: Swaddled* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swaddled.by.sarah/* Website: https://www.swaddledbysarah.com/* Join the Swaddled Community: https://www.swaddledbysarah.com/communityConnect with me, Ashley Logan:* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashleydlogan* Website: https://ashleydlogan.com* Substack: https://substack.com/@ashleydlogan Get full access to Ashes to Ashley at ashleydlogan.substack.com/subscribe