ISSUE 04

Motherhood is not just a role. It is a reckoning.

It is the quiet, radical transformation of a woman: body, mind, heart and soul. A crossing over. A becoming. One that no book or conversation can truly prepare you for, because the truth of it lives deep beneath the surface. In places only another mother can recognise.

This issue was never going to be light. It couldn’t be. Because there is nothing light about the weight we carry; not just in our arms, but in our bones, our choices, our silences.

To become a mother is to be split open, not just in birth, but again and again in the living. In the letting go. In the holding on. In the never-ending stretch between who you were and who you are now.

And yet, somehow, you are still standing. Still giving. Still loving.

That is not ordinary. That is not expected. That is sacred.

This issue is a tribute to that sacredness. A space for the stories that don’t always get told. The parts that are too complex, too raw, too beautiful or too brutal for neat little captions.

Because mothers are not the supporting cast; we are the axis. The gravitational pull. The quiet force spinning the whole damn world.

We are done being underestimated.

So if you are in the thick of it, in the fog, the fire, the fierce tenderness of it all, this is your place. You don’t need to have the answers here. You only need to feel seen.

This one is for you. All of you.