The Small, Painfully Slow Wins That Make Change Last
Welcome to Mamahood After Trauma, a space created to support mothers as they heal from trauma, break generational cycles, and discover healthier ways of showing up for themselves and their families. Here, you’ll find honest conversations, practical tools, and encouragement to remind you that healing is possible, one step at a time.
Intro
What happens when perfectionism doesn't look like perfection anymore?
For Monica, perfectionism once looked like straight-A grades, extracurriculars, and a life that seemed expertly managed from the outside. But underneath it all, she was struggling with multiple eating disorders, depression, panic, and, at her lowest, suicidal thoughts.
Years later, motherhood and severe depression would force Monica to confront another side of perfectionism: what happens when the fear of failing becomes so strong that you stop trying altogether?
In this post, we explore Monica's story and what she learned about perfectionism, identity, habits, and the courage it takes to begin again.
Table of Contents
The Overachiever Who No Longer Recognized Herself
The "Water" No One Notices They’re Swimming In
"You Are Likely Going to Struggle With This the Rest of Your Life"
Progress Doesn't Have to Be Perfect
The Overachiever Who No Longer Recognized Herself
At 20, Monica was the student other people admired: straight-A grades, extracurriculars, and a life that looked expertly managed. Inside, she was living with multiple eating disorders, depression, panic, and, at her lowest, suicidal thoughts.
When she went to her university's counseling office, she expected the usual intake process. Instead, staff looked at her form and called her back immediately.
"They said, 'Please come right in.' It was an immediate: We need to get this girl help this minute."
That visit dismantled more than Monica's idea of herself as a high achiever. It also left her wary of trying. She had spent years believing that achievement required an all-or-nothing effort. Now she feared that wanting something for herself would mean paying the same steep price again.
She could show up for work and, later, motherhood. Her own goals, hobbies, and habits went onto the sidelines.
Monica had been a teacher before becoming a stay-at-home mother. By the time she was around 30, she was raising three children and struggling with severe depression. Her eating disorders were no longer as dominant, but she felt lost all the same.
"I really felt like I didn't know what the point of my life was anymore."
A second therapist helped her identify the perfectionism she thought she had already left behind. Monica laughed when the therapist called her a perfectionist. She hadn't planned her days down to the minute in years. She hadn't even picked up a goal planner.
But perfectionism, her therapist explained, could hide in the other end of the same all-or-nothing swing: if Monica couldn't do something flawlessly, she might not try at all.
That reframing began a decade-long experiment in making progress without demanding perfection. Monica started asking who she was apart from her outcomes and, eventually, how to build a daily life that reflected that answer.
The habits came later. At first, she wasn't trying to optimize her routine. She was trying to understand herself.
The "Water" No One Notices They're Swimming In
In conversation with host Emily Cleghorn, Monica describes perfectionism not simply as a drive to excel, but as a way of tying identity to results.
People can define themselves not only by their achievements, but by what they haven't done:
I'm lazy.
I never follow through.
I'm a procrastinator.
Habits and identity, she suggests, reinforce each other. How people see themselves affects how they behave, and what they do then helps shape how they see themselves. There is no single correct starting point.
"As you work on one, the other will change."
Monica's advice is less a prescribed sequence than a way to notice the loop and meet it with awareness and self-compassion.
Shame, she says, fuels perfectionism. Compassion helps people stay engaged when they miss a step, lose momentum, or discover that change is taking longer than they hoped.
She returns to an image of fish swimming in water without knowing what water is. For mothers, perfectionism can be so woven into family expectations, culture, and social media that it is hard to see as a system at all.
Recognizing that doesn't mean staying in it. Monica's phrase for leaving is "crazy courage": the nerve to reject the familiar model, even when it feels safer than trying something different.
"You Are Likely Going to Struggle With This the Rest of Your Life"
Early in her recovery from an eating disorder, Monica grew angry with her therapist. She was trying to change her thoughts and behaviors, yet she felt worse. The despair was sharpened by a fear that she would be stuck forever.
Her therapist told her something she expected might be discouraging:
"Monica, you are likely going to struggle with this the rest of your life."
Instead, Monica felt relief.
The comment gave her permission to stop expecting an overnight cure. She didn't have to fix everything immediately. It could be hard, and she could still make imperfect efforts.
Years passed before she began to notice that the struggle had changed. It became less constant, less consuming.
Now, she said, the old thoughts sometimes return, "but I can just, it's like a little fly now."
The image is striking in its smallness. Not triumph over a vanished problem, but a shift in scale: a once-overwhelming presence reduced to something she can notice and let pass.
Progress Doesn't Have to Be Perfect
Monica's version of progress is not a dramatic transformation on a deadline. It is a change that can be difficult to see while it is happening, built through repeated attempts, including the messy ones.
There will be days when we lose momentum. There will be times when our plans don't work the way we expected. We may even find ourselves returning to old patterns.
That doesn't mean we've failed.
"Doing isn't doing it perfectly. Trying is the doing."
Monica now works with women on habits and growth outside the perfectionistic model. Her podcast is About Progress, and her book, Sticky Habits, focuses on forming habits without making perfection the price of admission.
The central idea is simple: you can stop treating every detour as proof that you have failed. You can make an adjustment, rest, and keep going.
You can begin again.
And maybe that's part of what healing looks like.
Not becoming someone who never struggles, never gets stuck, or never falls back into old patterns.
But becoming someone who knows that a setback doesn't have to be the end.
Sometimes progress is simply having the courage to try again.
And sometimes, trying is the doing.
Resources
Emily Cleghorn’s Free Quiz: “Find Your Next Step to Calm and Healing”.
Monica's Website: https://aboutprogress.com
Monica's Book: https://stickyhabitsbook.com
If you’re a mama healing from trauma and seeking a new way forward, remember: You deserve support, your child deserves joy, and together, you can break cycles and build a brighter future.
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