This questionnaire has been filled out with love and intention for Emily Race-Newmark.
You can connect with Emily on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/revillagingmama/
What is your postpartum story?
My healing journey didn’t truly begin until I became a mother.
The moment my first son was born, everything shifted. For the first time, I slowed down enough to truly listen—not just to the world, but to this tiny new being who had so much to teach me. I found myself attuned to his needs in a way I had never experienced before. And in parallel, I dove headfirst into books and teachings on child development and parenting, soaking up wisdom while immersed in the very real, raw, and tactile experience of the fourth trimester.
In those first three weeks postpartum, I fully surrendered. Skin-to-skin, co-sleeping, bathing together—I was all in. My partner took those three weeks off, managing everything around the house so I could be completely present. But the shift came when he went back to work.
I wasn’t quite ready.
I was still half in, half out of what I now call the matrix. A part of me wanted to get back to work as quickly as possible. I clung to the identity of the strong, independent woman who didn’t depend on anyone and certainly didn’t envision herself as a stay-at-home mom.
And yet—my body was telling me a different story. It wanted to rest. To be. To lie still and gaze into the soul of this new little human. But I had an agenda. And pressure. So at six months postpartum, I asked his dad to take him for one hour a day so I could return to the gym. By 12 months, I had already enrolled him in daycare, though my heart knew he wasn’t ready. I still paid the fees, month after month, until finally, at 16 months, I let him start… one hour at a time. Then two. Then three.
By the time he was almost two, he stayed long enough to nap there. But even then, I’d ask them not to wake him. I’d sit in my car outside, working, waiting for him to stir—so I could be the first face he saw when he opened his eyes.
The daycare itself was beautiful—private, bilingual, nurturing. The only thing it lacked was nature. So every day after pickup, we’d head to the woods. There was a path right by our home that led to a stream, and that’s where we’d go. We’d throw rocks. Watch the water. Be fully present.
I was there with him during those years, even while working full-time. And yet—I carried the crushing mental load of it all. The debt I had accumulated before giving birth. The pressure to perform. To earn the income I once did. Multi six-figures had become my norm, and so had the lifestyle that came with it.
But motherhood started to peel those layers away.
The deeper I let myself sink into motherhood, the less aligned I felt with the hustle culture. I no longer wanted to be separated from my child just to chase old definitions of success. I started choosing presence over productivity. Connection over performance. Love over legacy.
And slowly, everything began to unravel… in the most beautiful, soul-reclaiming way.
Tell me anything you wish to share about yourself – where you live, your age, your family shape, # of children, partner/no partner, etc.
I’m 32 years old and live in Lévis, Québec, in a peaceful neighborhood that borders the woods, the St-Lawrence River and all the kids’ activities (hockey, baseball, etc.). I share life with my partner, Alex, and we’re the parents of two luminous little beings—our six-year-old son and our two-year-old daughter.
Our family life doesn’t follow the usual path. We homeschool our eldest, and I’m currently home full-time with our youngest. It’s a rhythm built on presence, play, and deep connection—with nature, with each other, and with ourselves.
Before motherhood, I was a high-performing real estate agent, deeply immersed in the hustle. Since then, I’ve slowly dismantled that identity and rebuilt my life around what feels most true—conscious parenting, emotional sovereignty, slowness, and simplicity.
These days, I’m passionate about creating a life that honors both my children’s needs and my own—one choice at a time, one breath at a time.
How did you prepare for postpartum?
Honestly… I didn’t.
I read the books. I prepared for birth. I packed the hospital bag. I had the stroller and the tiny clothes folded neatly in drawers.
But postpartum? The emotional, physical, mental reality of it? I had no idea what was coming.
I didn’t understand how raw, exposed, and tender I would feel. I didn’t realize how much support I would need—daily, hourly—and how hard it would be to ask for it. I didn’t anticipate the identity loss, the emotional rollercoaster, the complete rewiring of who I thought I was.
I thought I’d “bounce back.”
Instead, I cracked open. Completely.
And through that unraveling, I found something so much deeper. A softness. A slowness. A fierce kind of love that reshaped me from the inside out.
If I could go back, I wouldn’t prepare with more stuff. I’d prepare with more support. More softness. More truth.
And maybe just a reminder that this sacred messiness isn’t something to fix—just something to feel.
What was your postpartum experience like? How were you supported? Who cared for you?
When our first son was born, I wasn’t supported—at least not in the way I truly needed to be.
My partner, Alex, was the only one holding me up. And while I give him credit—he is one strong table leg—I’ve since come to realize that expecting one person to carry the weight of an entire transformation is too much for anyone. I’ve learned to see support like a table: if it only has one leg, it becomes wobbly, unstable. At that time, our table was shaking.
I was still carrying the identity of the strong, independent woman—the one who doesn’t need anyone, who’s got everything figured out, who doesn’t trust easily. At the same time, I was stepping into a deep healing journey that called for boundaries… but instead of healthy ones, I built walls.
I fiercely protected my bubble.
Because the world I came from—the family, the work environment, the noise—was going in a completely different direction than the one I was beginning to choose. So I cut almost everyone out. Even our parents. I kept only Alex inside that fragile little sanctuary.
He supported many aspects of motherhood—natural birth, co-sleeping, breastfeeding—but the tension started when he realized my changes weren’t temporary. In his mind, this was a season. A few months, maybe. But what I was experiencing was a rebirth. A permanent shift. The woman he married—a top-performing real estate agent earning multiple six figures—was dissolving in front of his eyes.
And he felt abandoned.
Betrayed.
Because everything he had planned for—our lifestyle, our partnership, our shared ambitions—was unraveling. And I wasn’t coming back. Not anytime soon.
When I later made the decision to homeschool, it was like a second rupture. In his mind, there was always going to be an endpoint: first postpartum, then school. But when I chose homeschooling, it was as if the road ahead stretched out endlessly—and he couldn’t see the finish line.
That created immense financial pressure on him, and I made a mistake: I underestimated what that pressure would do to him. When people feel their needs are under threat, we often attack the needs of the other. It’s primal. So he attacked my vision. And because I felt attacked, I defended it even harder. And slowly, painfully, I moved him outside the bubble.
I knew what I wanted. I was clear. I was attuned to my children, to the life I wanted to create. But each time I shared that vision, and he pushed back—not out of malice, but from fear and pressure—I had to protect it from him, too.
That created more distance.
Less support.
More isolation.
And the worst part was the in-between. The space between the life I had and the life I was trying to build. The longing for something different. The absence of what I deeply desired.
That’s where I was. That’s what happened..
Where were there gaps in your care (if anywhere?) What support do you wish you had?
Between my first and second child, something changed.
I began to understand that the gaps in my postpartum experience weren’t within me—they were around me. The cracks weren’t a lack of strength or capability. They were a lack of support.
With my firstborn, I wasn’t supported by anyone outside of my partner. And while Alex showed up as best as he could, he was just one leg holding up the entire table of my life. That’s not sustainable—not for a partnership, and not for a new mother navigating the seismic shift of birth and identity.
So I made a choice.
I let the house go. I allowed the chaos to exist. For six months, I didn’t care about the mess, the dishes, the laundry. Because I had something infinitely more precious in my hands: this baby. Skin-to-skin, breastfeeding, bathing together, long eye-gazing moments. That was my fourth trimester. My version of heaven. And looking back, even if I had to do it all over again without support, I’d still make the same choice.
But now, I also understand how much our environment affects our nervous system—especially the female brain. A crooked pillow or a cluttered counter sends a primal signal to our cavewoman: the nest isn’t safe. And when the nest doesn’t feel safe, it hijacks our mental bandwidth. That’s why, if I could change one thing, it would be to ask for more help—not with the baby, but with everything else. So I could stay in that dreamy, oxytocin-rich bubble without the weight of the world creeping in through a dirty floor.
Another piece I’ve come to understand is the hormonal side of postpartum bonding. Oxytocin—the love hormone—doesn’t just help with birth and breastfeeding. It rewires our bonds. It overwrites previous attachments. And that’s exactly what happened. After birth, my babies became my world. The rest—my parents, my friends, even my husband—faded into the background.
Alex was slowly pushed out of the bubble.
Not intentionally. But because of how our bonding systems work. And the thing is, if a couple’s intimacy is based on all-or-nothing sexual interaction—rather than a spectrum of closeness, cuddles, naked resting, touch—then the partner can quickly become “other.” Outside. Separate. And that’s what happened to us.
If I could offer one piece of wisdom to a new mom, it would be this: invite your partner into the bubble. Not just as a helper or provider, but as someone to share skin-to-skin with—not just the baby, but you too. Cuddle. Bathe together. Rest naked under the covers. Create that oxytocin bridge with them, too. So they don’t get left behind.
Because you can rebuild it, yes. You can bio-hack your way back to connection. But when you’re in the thick of it and you don’t even understand why you feel so distant, so protective, so fused with your baby and disconnected from your partner—it’s easy to feel like something’s wrong.
But nothing is wrong.
This is biology.
This is love.
This is the invisible architecture of the postpartum world no one teaches us to navigate.
How would you describe the postpartum experience?
Postpartum is a portal.
It’s the unraveling and the becoming, all at once.
It’s like falling into the deepest part of yourself, stripped bare of everything you thought you were, while holding the most sacred, raw, and beautiful piece of life in your arms.
It’s hormonal chaos, identity rebirth, aching bones, leaking breasts, full hearts, and empty energy reserves.
It’s both the most natural thing in the world—and the most shocking.
It’s waking up in the middle of the night not knowing if it’s day or night or if you’ve slept at all. It’s crying for no reason. Crying for every reason. Feeling touched-out, loved-up, fiercely protective, and totally alone—all in the same breath.
It’s navigating the wild edge between love and depletion.
It’s a time that asks for everything and gives back in the softest, most soul-expanding ways… if you’re supported.
Without support, postpartum can feel like drowning in invisible waters while everyone around you asks if you’re okay.
With support, it becomes something else entirely: a sacred cocoon. A space where you don’t have to be anything but present. Where you can fall apart and be held. Where you can disappear into your baby—and find yourself all over again.
Postpartum isn’t something to “get through.”
It’s something to be honored. Held. Witnessed.
Because it’s not just the birth of a baby—it’s the rebirth of you.
What about your postpartum experience was unexpected or caught you by surprise (if anything)?
Honestly, the whole postpartum experience caught me completely off guard.
I remember having conversations with my mom while I was still pregnant, and at one point, she gently said, “I really recommend you take at least six months off. These moments won’t ever come back.”
And I shrugged.
I really didn’t know if I even wanted to stop working. I had every intention of continuing as usual. I truly believed, “It’s just a baby. Life goes on. I’ll adjust.”
I had no idea.
No one could have prepared me for the way motherhood would break me open and rearrange everything I thought I knew about myself, my values, and my pace.
Nothing stayed the same.
Not my body. Not my relationship. Not my ambitions. Not my energy. Not my heart.
I thought I was just adding a baby to the life I already had.
But instead, I entered a whole new world.
Honestly, the whole thing caught me by surprise because I remember having conversation conversations with my mom Wear. I didn’t even know if I wanted a
What were some of your favorite parts of the postpartum experience (if any)?
My favorite part of postpartum wasn’t something anyone warned me about or even talked about.
It was the remembering.
The way my body—this body I had lived so disconnected from—suddenly became my compass, my guide, my sanctuary. For most of my life, I was pretty numb. Detached from emotions, sensations, instincts. I lived in my head, managed life from the neck up.
And then, motherhood.
Suddenly, I was in my body in a way I had never experienced before.
I felt everything.
My sense of smell sharpened. My hearing became bionic. I would flutter awake the moment my baby’s breathing shifted—then fall instantly back asleep in micro-moments of rest. It was primal, mammalian, miraculous.
The design of it all left me in awe—how finely tuned we are, how perfectly wired for connection and survival.
Even physically, I changed. I had been stiff for years—couldn’t even touch my toes. But with prenatal movement, yoga, and the softening hormones of pregnancy and postpartum, my body stretched in ways it never had. It was like my body finally invited me in.
Postpartum became a portal. A reawakening.
A gateway to deeper being.
It taught me that when we fully surrender to the experience—when we stop fighting the mess and lean into the mystery—there’s a kind of magic that reveals itself. The kind that reshapes you not just as a mother, but as a human.
That deep, primal remembering… that was my favorite part.
If you were sitting down for tea with a new mother or mama-to-be, what would be your words of wisdom you would share with her?
If I could share one thing with a mama-to-be, it would be this:
Let yourself go fully into the experience.
Trust your instincts. Trust your body. Trust your baby—more than anyone else’s voice, no matter how well-intentioned. The cultural narrative around postpartum is so disconnected, so disembodied, so wrong for what new mothers and babies truly need. So instead of looking outward, turn inward. Your body already knows.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was: Sleep when the baby sleeps.
It sounds simple. Obvious, even. But most of us don’t do it. We try to tidy up, do the dishes, cook, answer emails, get back to work. But if there’s one thing to prioritize above all else in the early postpartum days, it’s sleep. Sleep fuels everything else—healing, milk production, mental clarity, emotional regulation. If your baby isn’t sleeping through the night, then neither are you—and every opportunity for rest is sacred.
And please, skip the coffee.
Don’t override your tiredness. Don’t push past what your body is asking for. Follow your baby’s rhythm: feed often, snack often, drink water, rest, bathe. Let your baby teach you how to care for yourself. Let your days be about being, not doing.
If you want to give from a place of overflow—not survival—you need help. Lots of it.
More than you think. More than the world says is “reasonable.” Because raising a human from scratch is not a small thing. It’s a full-time, full-body, full-soul job—and yet we’ve been conditioned to think we should be able to do it alone. That asking for help is weakness. That we shouldn’t need that much.
But I say: ask for more than enough.
Ask your friends. Ask your family. Hire someone. Get creative. Move in with someone. Let someone move in with you. Find your village—or build it.
Because the truth is, the invisible labor of holding a newborn, a home, a partnership, and yourself is massive. And when we try to carry it all alone, we break.
And here’s the part no one says out loud:
You don’t need to produce anything to justify that support.
You don’t need to write a book, launch a business, or change the world while your baby naps. You are allowed to paint just for you. Write just for you. Dance just for you. Cook beautiful food just because it nourishes your soul.
Motherhood is enough.
And if your soul feels called to create, build, expand—then yes, absolutely follow that spark. But not from pressure. Not from productivity addiction. From overflow. From fullness. From joy.
You are allowed to be in the cave.
For a month. For a year. For two. And you are allowed to be fully supported while you’re there. That’s not too much to ask. That’s what it takes to mother from a place of deep love and self-connection.
So rest.
Ask for help.
Let it be sacred.
Let it be slow.
Let yourself be held, so you can hold the world in return.
Are you partnered? If so, how did your partner experience and navigate the fourth trimester? How was this experience different from yours?
My partner and I have been together for eight years, and married for two. We got married after both of our children had already arrived—after we’d already weathered the storm of two fourth trimesters, two births, and the seismic shifts that come with them.
And while he experienced those early postpartum phases with grace and presence, the harder part came later.
Not with the babies—but with me.
You see, he fell in love with a version of me I had carefully constructed: a confident, top-producing real estate agent with six-figure drive, ambition, polish, and independence. That version of me looked good on paper. And I was good at being her.
But once motherhood cracked me open… I couldn’t hold up that image anymore.
I didn’t want to.
Something deep inside me—soul-level deep—wanted to tear the whole thing down. And so I did. Joyfully. Messily. Completely.
But to him? It was terrifying.
He wasn’t tearing it down. He was standing on the sidelines, watching the woman he knew disappear into something new and unknown. And it shook him.
I get it now.
I get how scary that must have felt. How destabilizing. Like loving someone who set fire to your shared home and then smiled while it burned—because for me, it felt like freedom.
For him? It felt like loss.
That shift created clashes—when he returned to work, when I returned to work (especially since we work together), and when I started speaking a new language he didn’t understand yet. A language of softness. Of embodiment. Of slowness. Of being, not doing.
He had fallen in love with a tower.
And I tore it down.
But here’s the part I hold close: I believe our souls already knew. On a deeper level, beyond the ego’s shock, his soul chose mine—not for who I was pretending to be, but for who I was always becoming.
Still, on the human level, that didn’t make it easy.
When one person initiates the transformation, the other can feel like life is happening to them instead of through them. And when you’re in survival mode, feeling threatened, the instinct is to fight. To resist. To protect.
So for a while, we became adversaries.
And yet—here we are.
Seven years postpartum from our first, nearly three years from our second… and something is shifting again. But this time, it feels like we’re shifting together. There’s new love here. New respect. New soil. A sense that maybe, just maybe, the dust has finally settled—and what we’re building now is real.
The tower’s gone.
But the roots are deeper than ever.
Is there anything specific about your healing from birth that you’d like to mention (i.e. C-Section, tearing, PPH, PPD, etc.)
Physically, my body healed from birth quite well. I had almost no tearing. No major complications. On the surface, I recovered beautifully.
But inside? Everything changed.
I had been a high-level athlete most of my life. Strong. Fast. Grounded in my body in a very specific way—one built on power, performance, and self-protection. I moved through the world with a quiet sense of invincibility. I could outrun a man. I could hold my own. I felt tall, capable, secure.
And then I gave birth.
And suddenly, my pelvic floor was soft. Weak. My body felt hurt—not broken, exactly, but like an injury I never saw coming. One I had no tools to measure or train through.
I hadn’t expected this. Not from birth. Not from my body.
There was a deep sadness in that. A quiet grief for the woman who could sprint and lift and win. Who felt safe in her own skin because of what she could do with it. That woman felt like she had vanished.
I didn’t fully heal my pelvic floor before my second pregnancy. It took until after my second birth to really restore it. But even before the healing, something else began to shift—my whole relationship with my body.
Movement stopped being about speed and performance. It became about presence. About pleasure. About healing. I traded workouts for barefoot walks. Training for dancing. Yoga. Breathing. Softness. Slowness.
At first, it felt like loss. But over time, I realized: it was also a return.
I had been hard on my body for years—pushing, performing, proving. And now, my body was asking me to listen. To trust her. To feel. And in doing so, I started to rewire how I understood strength.
Because yes, I no longer had that masculine edge. That fierce, independent, untouchable vibe I used to wear like armor. I felt exposed. Vulnerable. Not just because of the softness in my body, but because of this tiny new life I suddenly needed to protect with everything I had.
And I knew I couldn’t do it alone.
That was the turning point—the moment I had to let go of being my own protector. To open up to receiving protection. Masculine strength. Support. Something I had never allowed before.
So while my body healed well, the transformation ran much deeper than muscle or scar tissue.
It was a shedding.
A softening.
A sacred surrender into a strength I never knew I had.
How long did you rest for? What did rest look like?
After the birth of my second child, I did something radical.
I rested.
Truly rested. Not just physically—but emotionally, spiritually, energetically. I slowed everything down with deep intention. I didn’t leave the house for weeks. Our baby was born in November, and for all of December, I didn’t even go to my family’s Christmas. It was winter in Québec. Cold, still, quiet. And I chose to stay in that stillness.
For three weeks, it was just me and the baby, curled up in bed, moving between sleep, breastfeeding, and skin-to-skin contact. The fourth trimester, as it should be: sacred, slow, uninterrupted. I stayed close to home for six months. That’s what my body asked of me. That’s what I said yes to.
And this time, I wasn’t alone.
With my first baby, I had no support. I poured from an empty cup, living in chaos, choosing presence with my child over everything else, even if it meant a messy home and mental overload. But with my second, I did it differently. I allowed help. I received help. Enough support so that I didn’t have to do anything except be.
Be with my children. Be with myself. Be in the now.
I wasn’t producing. I wasn’t creating. I wasn’t accomplishing. I was just living—and for the first time, that felt not only enough, but sacred.
That kind of rest changes you.
It fills places that were never given time to heal. It shows you how little you’ve been mothered. It rewrites your relationship with time, productivity, and worth.
And what I’ve realized is: not enough people go all the way there.
Most women stop short, because they feel guilty. Or restless. Or pressured. We are conditioned to swing the pendulum toward overwork, self-sacrifice, and endless doing. But I swung it in the opposite direction. Fully. Without guilt. And in doing so, I discovered something powerful:
When your cup is truly full—overflowing—you don’t need to force anything. Creation becomes effortless. Desire returns. Vision awakens.
Now, I feel the itch. The spark. The more.
But it’s not coming from depletion—it’s rising from deep, cellular enoughness. I want it all. The juicy marriage. The epic homeschooling life. The barefoot-in-the-mud days. The sacred business that moves hearts and generates massive, meaningful wealth. I want to live lit up, not drained.
And I know now: that kind of ambition—the kind rooted in truth, softness, wholeness—can only rise after rest.
So my invitation to every mama is this:
Don’t rush your return. Don’t question the time it takes to simply be. Let yourself receive help. Let yourself heal. Let yourself go all the way into rest without apology.
Because when you do?
Something extraordinary is waiting on the other side.
If you have multiple children, how did each of your postpartum experiences differ? What did you learn, integrate, and adapt from one child to the next? What were some of the unique challenges from one postpartum experience to the next? What made it easier?
One of the most unexpected challenges when my second child was born was grieving the kind of presence I had been able to give my firstborn.
I had to let go of the ideal: the one-on-one, slow-paced, deeply connected moments—like reading together on the couch, fully present—without a baby rolling across us, chewing on the book, and tearing out pages. That was hard.
But eventually, I realized: this version—chaotic, imperfect, beautifully messy—is enough too. It’s different, yes. But it’s not less. It’s just life with two.
The truly hardest moments were rare, but real—those times when both kids needed something at the same time, and I had to triage emotions, hunger, and chaos with only two hands and an exhausted brain. In those moments, I felt powerless. Defeated. Human.
But the age gap helped. With four years between them, my eldest had enough emotional range and language to understand. To be reasoned with. Not perfectly, but enough to soften the edge.
Still, if I could do it all over again only for myself—to protect the quality of care for each child, and to ensure my first had what he needed without compromise—I might wait seven or eight years between children. That “age of reason,” where the older sibling can grasp, deeply, that a baby’s needs being urgent doesn’t mean theirs are unimportant. But even then, I know it’s not just about the age—it’s about the ecosystem.
And that’s the biggest lesson between baby one and baby two: I needed help. But more than that, I needed to stop controlling what “help” looked like.
With my first, I expected my partner to be everything. When he couldn’t be, resentment followed. But now I understand—he can be an amazing father and husband, and still not be the one to meet every postpartum need. That’s okay.
So I stopped expecting support to come from one place.
I opened the doors.
Now, I have a full system of support—layers of people who help in different ways. One person lives in our home and offers 20–25 hours of help weekly. My aunt comes once a week. My mom takes the kids for sleepovers. A babysitter comes a few times a week. My partner has one intentional block of time alone with the kids weekly. I even have backup babysitters for emergencies.
The magic of this? Redundancy.
If one person is sick, traveling, or unavailable, I still have options. I no longer collapse if Plan A falls through—because there’s a Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D.
I also learned to split the help. I don’t expect one person to do it all. One person might help with the house. Another just plays with the kids. And because their time is short and focused—two hours here, three hours there—they can give their full attention, which is so much more nourishing than exhausted multitasking.
That kind of help doesn’t just serve me—it serves my children. They get to be with people who are present, energized, and emotionally available. And that matters.
And yes, I’ve learned that sometimes the best care comes from people with no kids. Other times, like when my kids need long stretches of care or overnight stays, I know my mom can handle it—because she’s calm, capable, and gives them a sense of deep safety.
So here’s what I now believe:
Postpartum is not a solo act.
Mothering is not meant to be done in isolation.
And help—abundant, layered, and unapologetically received—isn’t just a luxury. It’s a strategy. It’s a lifeline. It’s a love language.