Before I became a mother, I knew exactly who I was.

I had a career I was proud of. Hobbies that were mine. A sense of self I'd spent decades building. I wasn't naive about how much a baby would change my life — I'd read the books, talked to the friends, prepared as much as anyone can.

What I wasn't prepared for was losing myself.

‍It happened quietly, beneath the surface, while I was doing everything right. To everyone around me, I was fine. More than fine. What was there to struggle with?

The woman I'd been before — the one with opinions and ambitions and a life that felt like hers — had gone somewhere I couldn't reach. And the most disorienting part wasn't the exhaustion, or the identity vertigo. It was the silence around it. Nobody talked about this.

I looked for help. What I found was a gap. General therapy existed, but not for this — the specific, ongoing experience of becoming a mother and trying to stay a person at the same time.

I came through the other side. But I carry it with me — the memory of what it felt like to need something that didn't exist. That's why I built Silta.