The Unlearning of Likeability

Lately, I’ve been second-guessing my own sentences.
Not because I’ve changed my mind, but because I’ve started living in rooms where every word seems to echo back through my child. It’s a strange, new awareness — that being myself no longer feels private. That my ease, my tone, my honesty might ripple into her world in ways I can’t control.

I tend to speak freely. Say too much. Swear too easily. I thought candour was a form of integrity — and maybe it still is — but motherhood has made me careful in ways that don’t always feel like me. Somewhere between wanting to belong and wanting to protect her, I’ve started editing myself. And I’m not sure who that serves.

There’s a quiet grief in learning restraint.
In realising that the version of me who spoke freely — the one who led with honesty and instinct — can’t always come with me now. She was the one who built bridges, who met people halfway without armour, who found love by saying the thing most would swallow. I miss her.

But I’ve also learned that not everyone deserves that version of me.
That openness is not the same as safety. That access is something people earn, not something I owe.

Maybe that’s the lesson this season is trying to teach me — that sincerity and boundaries can coexist. That kindness doesn’t need to mean exposure. That I can be warm without being wide open.

Motherhood didn’t just make me softer — it made me visible in a new, uncomfortable way.
There’s a scrutiny that arrives the moment your child starts school — not always cruel, sometimes just casual — but enough to make you hyper-aware of how you move through the world. How you speak. What you disclose. What you look like. Suddenly, the smallest details feel like a reflection not only of who you are, but of what kind of mother you are.

And so I monitor myself.
Not out of shame, but out of vigilance. Out of the quiet, persistent fear that being too much — too opinionated, too blunt, too free — might ripple into her world and cost her something she hasn’t even chosen yet.

I know this isn’t the woman I once was.
I used to enter rooms unfiltered, led by curiosity and conviction. Now, I am learning to enter measured — kind, composed, agreeable to an extent — praying that my politeness doesn’t feel like self-betrayal.

I most definitely have not mastered any of this yet.
If anything, it still feels awkward — like wearing someone else’s shoes. I keep reminding myself that I’m not here to audition for friendship. That this season isn’t about belonging in every room; it’s about showing up as my daughter’s mother, with grace, consistency, and a filter that keeps her world safe.

Maybe that’s the quiet art of this chapter — learning to be kind without collapsing into people-pleasing, to be myself without offering full access, to be approachable without being available to everyone.

And if, in that process, I meet a handful of people who see me as more than “her mum” — who notice the woman beneath, with whom I feel safe enough not to shrink to fit — then maybe we can explore that.

But for now, it’s simpler than that.
I just want to be known as her mother — kind, grounded, friendly. Not perfect. Not performative. Just steady enough that she never pays the price for my edges.

And maybe one day, when she’s older, she’ll see that I was learning too.
That being yourself doesn’t always mean being loud about it.
That authenticity can live in quiet forms — in restraint, in discernment, in the pause before you speak.
That protecting your peace can be an act of love, not fear.

Because maybe that’s what I’m really unlearning —
that likeability was never the goal.