About Mothers After Mothering
The children grew up. Motherhood changed. And a new conversation began.
For so many years, motherhood is active. We raise. We help. We protect. We provide. We worry. We encourage. We fix. And sometimes, without even realizing it, we carry. Then our children become adults, and motherhood begins to look different.
Mothers After Mothering was created as a space for honest conversations about that change.
It's for mothers learning how to love their adult children without always stepping in, figuring out when helping becomes carrying, adjusting to relationships that may look different than they once did, and rediscovering themselves after years of putting motherhood at the center of so much of their lives. There are no perfect mothers here. There are no perfect adult children either. Just real women, real relationships, real experiences, and conversations that remind us we are not navigating this season alone.
How the Conversation Started
Long before there was Mothers After Mothering, there was a phrase my mother would say to me: “You did too much.” She would say it when she thought I was doing things for my children that they were old enough to handle themselves. Sometimes it annoyed me. From my perspective, I wasn't doing too much. I was loving my children. I was helping them. I was being their mother, the same way my mother had loved and helped me.
Then one day, something happened that made me look at those words differently. I had to acknowledge: “YES! I did too much.” That realization became my first book, YES! We Did Too Much. But writing that book also made me realize there was another side of the conversation. As mothers, we have our experiences, but our adult children have theirs too.
Understanding them doesn't mean agreeing with everything they do. Sometimes it means making room to see what they may be carrying, experiencing, or trying to figure out for themselves. That conversation became my second book, YES! We See You. And somewhere between letting go and understanding, something bigger emerged: Mothers After Mothering.
Meet Robin Barnes
Author & Creator of Mothers After Mothering
I'm Robin Barnes, a mother, author, and woman navigating this season right along with other mothers. I didn't create Mothers After Mothering because I have motherhood all figured out. I created it because I know what it feels like not to.
I've experienced the questions that come when our children are grown and our role begins to change. I've had to think about where helping ends and carrying begins, learn that letting go doesn't mean loving any less, and recognize that while our adult children are growing into their own lives, we are still growing too.
My books gave me a way to put those thoughts into words. Mothers After Mothering gives us a place to talk about them together. Through books, conversations, community gatherings, and shared experiences, my hope is to create spaces where mothers can talk openly, laugh, reflect, learn from one another, and feel understood. Because motherhood may change when our children grow up, but the conversation doesn't have to end.
