The Mother I Never Expected to Become: How Parenthood Led Me to a Whole New Life

Modern Parenthood Journal | Contributing Writer
By Amber Holloway | Reviewed by Modern Parenthood Journal Editorial Team

Before I became a mother, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what raising children would look like.

My husband came from a large family. We had nieces, nephews and cousins all around us, and I had been babysitting since I was ten years old. Children weren’t unfamiliar territory. So when we settled into a small mountain town in Massachusetts and started building our family, we felt ready.

How hard could this parenting thing really be?

Parents everywhere can laugh with me now.

Because raising your own children has a way of dismantling nearly every assumption you made before they arrived. Parenthood is beautiful and exhausting, joyful and chaotic, and perhaps most unexpectedly, it asks you to look closely at yourself.

What do I value? What kind of home do I want to create? What do I want my children to remember about growing up? Which parts of the way things have always been done actually work for our family, and which ones don’t?

I didn’t know it then, but becoming a mother would lead me to reconsider much more than how I wanted to raise my children. It would change the way I thought about our home, our health, education, community and eventually the work I wanted to put into the world.

When Motherhood Changes the Way You See Everything

That shift began during my first pregnancy.

Suddenly, the ordinary choices I had made without much thought felt different. I became more interested in what we brought into our home, what we ate, the products we used and the environment we were creating for this little person we hadn’t even met yet.

Like many new mothers armed with an internet connection and a million questions, I started researching. A lot.

I found online communities, read blogs and discovered what was affectionately called the “crunchy mom” world. I went all in.

I started changing products around our house, experimenting with simpler alternatives and cleaning practically everything with vinegar and water. Our house may have smelled like a salad some days, but I was learning. And the more I learned, the more I wanted to understand.

That curiosity eventually led me to aromatherapy.

What started as something I was exploring for my own family became an area I wanted to understand at a much deeper level. I read everything I could find. I experimented with essential oils, studied their properties and began building a real working knowledge of how plants interact with the body and mind. Eventually I began sharing what I was learning with friends and family, which led to teaching local aromatherapy classes and later becoming a Certified Aromatherapist.

That credential opened a door I had not expected.

Once I understood the science and the art behind aromatherapy, I wanted more context for the plants themselves. That led me into herbalism, learning how traditional plant medicine worked, how our ancestors used what grew around them and how that knowledge could still be relevant and practical for a modern family. From there, my interests expanded into Reiki, energy work and other holistic practices that looked at health and wellbeing as something interconnected rather than compartmentalized.

Nature had always mattered to me. But motherhood gave me a reason to understand it in an entirely new way.

I thought that was the big shift motherhood had in store for me.

I was wrong.

The Woman Who Said She Would Never Homeschool

There are certain things you say before becoming a parent that life eventually makes you reconsider.

For me, one of those things was: “I will never homeschool.”

In fact, one of the reasons my husband and I loved the town we chose was its little public school. Around 60 students, involved families and the kind of close-knit community feeling we wanted for our children. I remember thinking, I never want to homeschool, but this school is the next best thing.

I meant it.

Then 2020 happened.

Our oldest was school-aged, we had a toddler at home, and suddenly school looked nothing like it had before. When online learning became part of our family’s reality, I quickly realized it wasn’t working for us. The structure didn’t fit how my children learned. The energy in our home shifted in ways that didn’t feel right. Something had to change.

So I did what motherhood had already taught me to do. I started asking questions. And then I started researching.

If my first pregnancy sent me down the natural-living rabbit hole, 2020 sent me straight down the homeschooling one. And what I discovered there would completely change the rhythm of our family.

From “Never” to a New Way of Learning

Homeschooling wasn’t something I had planned. It wasn’t part of the picture I had once imagined for our family.

But once we began, I discovered possibilities I hadn’t known existed. Learning didn’t have to happen in only one place or in only one way. Education could happen around the kitchen table, outside in nature, through books and conversations, during field trips and alongside other families.

What surprised me most was how much my children thrived when they had more ownership over their days. When learning happened in the context of real life rather than being separated from it. When we could follow a question down a rabbit hole for an entire afternoon simply because we were curious and had the space to be.

Eventually, I went from someone who emphatically said she would never homeschool to someone who became deeply involved in alternative education and helped build a homeschool co-op in our community.

Building that co-op was its own education. It meant connecting with other families who were also stepping outside the traditional system, not because they were against something but because they were building toward something else. Together we created shared learning experiences, pooled our different areas of knowledge and built a community of children and parents who were figuring this out alongside each other.

Those relationships became our village. And that village became one of the things I valued most about the whole journey.

There is probably a lesson in there about saying “never.”

But the bigger lesson for me was about being willing to change my mind.

Sometimes we make parenting decisions based on what we thought our family would need before we actually know the family we’re raising. Then our children grow. Circumstances change. We learn something new. Changing direction doesn’t mean the original choice was wrong. Sometimes it simply means we’re paying attention.

Building a Life That Looked More Like Us

Looking back, I can see that the different pieces of my life weren’t as disconnected as they once seemed.

My interest in nature. My curiosity about holistic living. Teaching aromatherapy classes. Homeschooling. Building community. Sharing what I was learning with other mothers. They were all pointing toward the same thing.

I cared deeply about helping people feel more confident making thoughtful choices for their own lives and families.

By late 2020, I knew I wanted a place where those interests could come together. After many conversations with a trusted friend and business coach, Wild Willow Holistics was born in 2021.

Through Wild Willow, I teach classes, share resources and support families who are exploring natural living, holistic wellness and intentional education. It is a space for people who are asking the same kinds of questions I started asking during my first pregnancy, and who want practical, grounded guidance rather than overwhelm. Whether someone is just beginning to explore natural alternatives or looking to deepen a practice they have already started, that is the community I wanted to create.

But the business isn’t really where this story began.

My children are.

And I think that’s why the name I eventually chose still feels so connected to the life my husband and I are building.

Wild represents the reality of raising a young family. Life is busy, unpredictable and occasionally chaotic. Willow represents something different: strength without rigidity. A willow is rooted, but it bends. It adapts.

That image has come to mean much more to me than I expected. Because parenting has required both. Roots and flexibility. Knowing what matters to us while remaining willing to change when our family needs something different.

The Freedom to Change Your Mind

If you had shown the younger version of me what my life looks like today, I’m not sure she would have believed you.

Homeschooling my children? Building a homeschool community? Teaching about plants, nature and holistic living? Starting a business around things I hadn’t even discovered yet?

Absolutely not.

And yet, here I am.

Motherhood didn’t turn me into the person I thought I would become. In many ways, it introduced me to someone entirely different.

I’ve learned that we don’t have to know exactly what kind of parents we’re going to be from the beginning. We don’t have to keep doing something simply because it’s what we once planned. And we certainly don’t have to build our families according to someone else’s definition of what family life should look like.

We can learn. We can question. We can change our minds. We can find our people.

And sometimes, the road we were certain we would never take becomes the one that leads us home.

Parenting is still a wild ride. I don’t think that part ever changes.

But maybe we’re not supposed to have all the answers before we begin. Maybe part of raising our children is allowing the experience to raise us, too.

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