The Expectant Moment: Reclaiming Soul Sovereignty In Motherhood

It’s 3:00 a.m., and I’m wide awake. Again.

Not groggy, not foggy—just alert. My mind kicks in like clockwork, offering up lists, reminders, and the relentless pull of everything I still haven’t done. A familiar urgency stirs: If you’re going to be awake, don’t waste the moment. Get up. Do something.

Then I catch myself. I glance at the clock. I take a breath and remind myself.

The house is quiet. The world is still. This hour is sacred.

No one is calling my name.

No one needs anything from me.

And in that hush, this in-between space—before the next thought arrives, before I talk myself into action or sleep—something else rises. A deeper presence. A whisper beneath the noise.

This is the space I’ve come to know. The space where I can finally hear my soul again. It’s here, in this in-between, expectant moment, that I can come home to myself.

The Fragmenting of a Woman

Motherhood is often romanticized as part of a woman’s journey, but we rarely talk about the fragmentation it can bring. The moment we become mothers—biologically, energetically, spiritually—we are cracked open. Sometimes, that crack becomes a chasm.

Motherhood was never just a role for me—it was an initiation. A full-body surrender, redirecting all my energy and reshaping everything I thought I knew about love, strength, and sacrifice. 

For years, I carried an invisible load:

I smiled to cover my own sadness.

Fixed problems that were never mine to resolve.

Solutions, meals, love, and labor were offered without pause, boundary, or breath, even when my own well began to run dry.

I gave.

And gave.

And gave.

Until I couldn’t tell the difference between love and exhaustion. My sense of self began to dissolve into other people’s needs.

No one told me that devotion could distort into depletion.

No one warned me that in trying to be everything for everyone, I could forget how to be anything for myself.

A quiet part of me whispered: This isn’t sustainable.

But I didn’t know how to stop.

I only knew how to disappear a little more gracefully.

The Expectant Moment

There’s a space that exists between everything.

Between breath in and breath out.

Between thought and action. It’s the place where only consciousness exists, before thought becomes form.

It’s not silence. It’s aliveness. Presence without pressure—awareness without identity.

I call it the expectant moment.

It doesn’t ask anything of you. It doesn’t require you to be useful, clear, or strong.

It just invites you to be.

It’s where intentions are born—not from striving, but from stillness. We can feel the truth begin to hum beneath the noise.

The expectant moment doesn’t scream for your attention. But when you pause long enough, it speaks—softly, insistently. It’s the sacred moment before we enter the unknown—the threshold where transformation awaits.

Motherhood offers us this threshold, too. But we rarely recognize it—because we’re too busy rushing past it. For me, the 3:00 a.m. stillness became that sacred pause.

Not because I planned it. But because I was finally quiet enough to hear what my soul had been whispering for years:

Come back.

You are not here to be accessible. You are here to become aligned.

The Turning Point: Mothering Myself

I used to think I had to earn rest.

I had to prove my value before I could receive softness.

But eventually, I broke. Quietly. Not in a big, dramatic collapse—just a slow crumbling. And something in that unraveling gave way to grace. I started to mother myself. Not perfectly, not all at once. But gently.

I became the one who noticed when I was tired.

The one who said, “You don’t have to carry that.”

The one who offered softness without condition.

I stopped expecting the world to recognize my exhaustion.

I stopped waiting for someone else to give me permission to rest.

I started offering that permission to myself.

I paid attention to the ache behind my eyes.

I gave myself permission not to hold it all together. It wasn’t an awakening as much as a remembering that I’m not just here to nurture others.

I’m here to be held by the deeper part of me that never left.

The part that watches. That waits. That only speaks in stillness. It is not an act of selfishness. It’s a sacred restoration.

The soul is the original mother—wise, steady, patient. She waits in stillness. She speaks from intuition. She waits for you to listen.

The Power of the Threshold

Motherhood has been the most profound and beautiful gift of my life.

My daughters have stretched me in every direction. They’ve shown me how fierce and tender I can be all at once. They’ve taught me how to break open and keep loving anyway. They’ve brought richness, wonder, and laughter into my life.

But even love this expansive needs boundaries.

I’ve come to understand that boundaries aren’t barriers—they’re thresholds. Quiet thresholds that say: This is where I meet myself again.

Creating that space doesn’t mean I love them less. It means I’m loving them from a place that’s real, not depleted. When I protect my energy, I’m not closing off—I’m rooting in. Rooting into the part of me that remembers what’s mine to carry.

And what isn’t.

The Expectant Moment is Always Here

Even now, when the day begins and demands rush in, I return to that early morning silence. It’s not always 3 a.m. anymore.

Sometimes, it’s a breath in the car.

A moment of stillness before a text is answered.

A pause before I say yes, when I really mean no.

Literally pausing and taking a breath has given me the space to respond instead of react. Regular use of a simple breathing practice like this one from HeartMath® has worked wonders. 

In moments between moments—

between inhale and exhale, between choice and reaction,

between what the world asks of me and what my soul knows to be true.

That’s the expectant moment, too.

It’s where your soul lives just beneath the surface. Where you meet yourself without explanation. Where you stop being useful long enough to be true.

It’s where the next version of you waits—not in noise or urgency, but in presence. And in that pause—your next becoming begins.

A Blessing for the Weary Mother

You don’t have to hold it all.

You don’t have to explain why you’re tired.

You don’t have to smile gracefully when you’re unraveling inside.

You don’t have to be everything.

You only have to be you.

So here’s my soul-offering to you:

Serve what’s real.

Guard what’s holy.

Be the gatekeeper of your own becoming.

You are not the overflow.

You are the source.

And the threshold where you stand?

It’s sacred.

Perhaps that is the quiet truth we’ve been circling all along:

The expectant moment—the space between the noise—isn’t just rest. It’s a portal to consciousness, your true self, a sacred place where clarity returns and your soul becomes audible again.

Remember that boundaries aren’t rejection—they’re reverence. The wisdom you’re searching for is whispering inside you— and she speaks in stillness.

You don’t have to be everything to everyone. You only have to be you.

And that is more than enough.

If this piece stirred something in you…

TAKE ACTION: The Expectant Moment: A Journaling Companion is a lovingly designed set of guided reflections, journal prompts, and affirmations to help you honor your energy, reclaim your stillness, and remember who you are. To support your journey inward, Sonia offers the e-book at a special rate for a limited time. Use code AWAKENED at checkout to receive 50% off your copy.

You are also invited to join Sonia at The Soul Awakener, a free publication where she shares reflections, soulful tools, and quiet courage for the journey home to self.