For years, I thought I had done the work.
I thought I had reached a place where food was simply food. Nourishment. Fuel. Pleasure. Connection. Something that no longer carried the emotional weight it once had. The younger version of me spent far too much energy thinking about food. Thinking about eating. Thinking about not eating. Thinking about how much I had exercised, what I deserved, what I needed to compensate for, and whether I was being “good” enough.
Like so many women, especially highly sensitive women, my relationship with food was never really about food. It was about control. It was about anxiety. It was about trying to create certainty in a world that often felt overwhelming.
Over the years, I slowly untangled those threads. I learned to trust my body. I stopped categorising foods into moral boxes. I discovered movement that felt joyful rather than punishing. I found freedom in listening instead of controlling. And eventually, food stopped occupying so much space in my mind. Or at least, I thought it had. Then I got pregnant.
Pregnancy has a remarkable way of humbling you. It takes all the carefully crafted stories you tell yourself about who you are and gently places them under a microscope. Things you believed were long resolved suddenly resurface. Patterns you thought you had outgrown reappear in unfamiliar forms. And for me, food became emotional again. Not because I wanted it to. Not because I was restricting or obsessing. But because pregnancy changed everything.
The foods and drinks I usually loved like sushi and wine became things I should avoid. Foods I rarely thought about like cake and chocolate became appealing again. Some days I was ravenous. Some days nothing sounded remotely edible. As someone who had spent years building trust with my body, I found it surprisingly difficult. I wanted to eat the way I normally did. I wanted to feel in control. I wanted my usual routines. Instead, my body had its own plans. And beneath the surface, I realised something uncomfortable. I was grieving the loss of certainty.
Because food had become emotional again - not in the same way it once was, but emotional nonetheless. Every meal felt loaded with responsibility.
Was I eating enough?
Too much?
Enough nutrients for the baby?
Even when I knew logically that my body was doing exactly what it needed to do, there was still a quiet emotional undercurrent running through it all. The truth is that pregnancy asks us to surrender. And surrender is not always easy for highly sensitive women. Many of us have spent years managing, planning, preparing, anticipating and controlling.
Pregnancy asks us to trust. And trust can feel incredibly vulnerable. As I write this, there is another layer to all of this. Because this week, my daughter Ella arrives. Even seeing those words written down feels surreal. For months she has existed as kicks, scans, hiccups and anticipation. Now she is about to become a real little person in our home. A tiny human who will change everything. And if I’m honest, that transition brings its own emotional complexity.
Because while I am so ready to meet her, I am also aware that I am standing at the edge of an ending.
The end of this chapter.
The end of carrying her.
The end of this version of life.
There is excitement, joy and gratitude. A quiet awareness that life is about to shift in ways I cannot yet fully understand. And perhaps nowhere do I feel that more than when I look at Amber. My constant companion. My shadow. The one who has walked beside me through every season. Through fertility treatment. Through uncertainty. Through pregnancy. Through the countless walks where I processed fears, hopes and dreams. Amber has been there for all of it.
Dogs have a way of weaving themselves into the fabric of our lives so completely that it’s difficult to remember what life looked like before them. For four years, it has been the two of us. Our routines. Our walks. Our quiet evenings. Our predictable rhythms. And now a third member is joining the family. I find myself watching Amber and wondering what she understands. Whether she senses the change coming. Whether she knows that life is about to look different for us. Of course she won’t stop being loved. Of course she won’t stop being important. But things will change. The walks may become slower. The routines may become less predictable. My attention will be pulled in new directions. And as excited as I am for Ella’s arrival, there is a small ache that comes with acknowledging those changes too.
I think motherhood is full of these seemingly contradictory emotions.
Joy and grief.
Excitement and fear.
Expansion and loss.
Love and longing.
They exist together.
Not because something is wrong, but because something meaningful is happening. The older I get, the more I realise that emotional maturity isn’t about eliminating difficult feelings. It’s about making space for them. It’s about allowing multiple truths to coexist. I can be deeply grateful for this pregnancy and still find parts of it hard. I can be excited to meet Ella and still feel emotional about the chapter that’s ending. I can trust my body and still find myself challenged by the way pregnancy changes my relationship with food. None of these experiences cancel each other out. They simply make the experience human.
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Perhaps that’s one of the biggest lessons pregnancy has given me. Not perfection. Not certainty. Not complete emotional resolution. But softness. The willingness to meet myself with compassion when old patterns reappear. The willingness to trust that growth isn’t linear. The willingness to understand that healing doesn’t mean never being challenged again. It means responding differently when you are.
As I prepare to meet Ella this week, I find myself returning to that lesson again and again. Food became emotional during pregnancy. And for a while, I thought that meant I had somehow gone backwards. Now I see it differently. It wasn’t a step backwards at all. It was simply another invitation to trust. To listen. To surrender. And to remember that every new chapter asks something different of us. This one is asking me to become a mother. And perhaps that starts with accepting that I don’t need to have everything figured out. I just need to keep showing up.
One meal.
One walk.
One breath.
One beautiful, life-changing day at a time.
