The Stories After

The woman who emerges after motherhood is not the one who went in. This is a collective archive of those journeys—the quiet, intimate truths about identity, purpose, and the complex process of stepping into your own ‘after.’ All stories shared here maintain the strict anonymity requested by our contributors.

Her After: The Journey Back to Me

This is my story of failing before I even began. It charts the fall of a relationship right before the unexpected discovery of pregnancy, moving through the trenches of motherhood where survival was the only goal. This series follows the active, painful fight to rebuild my life, detailing the necessary second fall to rock bottom, and finally, the arduous, beautiful work of reaching a rhythm that was truly feasible and manageable—a life I built from within myself.

Click here
A woman outdoors in nature glancing at the sun glare. She is standing in the field of green grass with lots of tall trees nearby and wearing a white dress
A black and white image of a woman's eye. A sad eye seeing her partner kiss someone else in the act of betrayal in front of her eyes. Her pupil clearly shows the image of a man with another woman

Her After: The Betrayal

Five years after rebuilding my life, I thought I was ready for love. My first real relationship as a single mother was meant to be the reward for all that self-work. Instead, it became a brutal mirror. Over years, the emotional starvation, silent treatments, and eventual cheating exposed the hidden boundaries I’d never set. This is the raw story of how easily I lost myself again, and the painful truth about the repressed blame and emotional abandonment that were still running the show

Click here