Therapist Erin Barbossa Says Moms Need Connection, Not Advice

Moms have never had more access to parenting advice.

There are books, podcasts, experts, social media accounts, courses, newsletters, and endless social media videos explaining how to raise emotionally healthy, resilient children. Mothers now have more access than ever to information about child development, attachment, regulation, boundaries, and nearly every other aspect of parenting.

So why do so many mothers still feel like they’re barely holding it together?

Erin Barbossa, LMSW, therapist and founder of LionFlower Studio, believes the conversation may be focused on the wrong place.

After nearly 15 years working with women through pregnancy, postpartum, trauma, and major life transitions, Barbossa has noticed a pattern: Mothers are often given plenty of information about how to care for their children, but far less space to consider what they need themselves.

“We have more information about child development than ever before,” Barbossa says. “But somewhere along the way, we started treating mothers as if they were simply the vehicle for raising healthy kids, instead of whole human beings with emotional lives of their own.”

And those emotional lives don’t disappear when you become a mother.

Moms Are Carrying More Than Society Acknowledges

Barbossa’s perspective was shaped not only by her work with mothers, but by her own experience with grief. When her best friend of more than 30 years passed away, grief became something she wasn’t simply helping other people navigate. She was living it herself.

“That experience changed the questions I began asking,” she says.

She started thinking about how often women are talked about as burned out, overwhelmed, or even unmotivated, without really pausing to ask what might be under those feelings in the first place.

For a lot of mothers, she says there can be grief wrapped up in the person they were before motherhood, like a birthing experience that didn’t match their story, a partnership that shifted in ways they didn’t foresee, a career that was placed on pause, or just the version of life they imagined would happen.

“Sometimes it is burnout,” Barbossa says. “But sometimes it’s grief. Grief for the version of yourself that has slowly disappeared beneath the weight of responsibility.”

That doesn’t mean every difficult experience of motherhood is a mental health disorder. Barbossa is clear that conditions such as postpartum depression, anxiety, OCD, and psychosis deserve recognition and treatment.

But she believes the intense focus on identifying what’s wrong can prevent people from asking what happened — or what a mother may have lost along the way.

Who Is Helping Mom?

Parents are constantly taught how to help their children regulate their emotions.

But Barbossa says another question deserves attention:

Who Is Helping The Mother Regulate?

“Motherhood can be one of the most connected and one of the loneliest experiences we’ll ever have,” she says. “You’re rarely alone, yet it’s easy to feel like no one truly sees you.”

Mothers spend their days anticipating needs, solving problems, managing schedules, carrying invisible labor, and caring for other people. What can get lost in the process is the opportunity to simply exist without being responsible for someone else.

That’s where connection matters.

And connection doesn’t necessarily mean having a giant group of friends or a picture-perfect “village.”

A mother’s support system might be her sister, a neighbor, a therapist, the woman she walks with every Wednesday, or someone she met online who understands exactly what she’s going through.

“A village isn’t built because everyone has the answers,” Barbossa says. “It’s built because people keep showing up.”

Her definition of a village is even simpler:

“A village is the people who stay.”

Less Fixing, More Witnessing

One of Barbossa’s biggest concerns is that support has become confused with problem-solving.

When a friend says she’s struggling, the immediate instinct is often to help. People offer advice, share what worked for them, send an article, or try to find a solution.

But sometimes that’s not what another mother needs.

Sometimes she needs someone to listen without trying to fix her.

“Some of the most meaningful moments in my friendships haven’t come from brilliant advice,” Barbossa says. “They’ve come from someone saying, ‘I’m here,’ and meaning it.”

That kind of friendship can be especially important during motherhood, when women may feel pressure to appear like they have everything under control.

Support can be as simple as asking how a mother is doing before asking about her children. Inviting her to do something she loves. Remembering something difficult she’s going through. Giving her space to talk without immediately offering an answer.

In other words, noticing her.

Mothers Need Permission To Be People, Too

Barbossa also believes mothers need more opportunities for creativity, play, autonomy, and genuine connection.

She calls this “creative health” — intentionally making room for expression, beauty, curiosity, and play as part of emotional wellbeing.

That could mean writing, gardening, dancing, singing in the car, decorating a room, making something, or trying something completely new.

It may sound insignificant compared with everything else on a mother’s to-do list.

But that’s exactly why it matters.

“We’ve spent decades studying how to raise children, but much less time asking what helps mothers stay fully alive,” Barbossa says.

The goal isn’t to become a more productive mother or add another item to the self-care checklist.

It’s to remember that there is still a person underneath the responsibilities.

For mothers wondering where to start, Barbossa has one question:

“Who Helps Me Feel More Like Myself?”

Those are the people worth making time for.

“They are your village,” she says.

And maybe that’s what mothers need more of — not another person telling them how to parent, but more people reminding them that they don’t have to disappear into parenting to be a good mother.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. If you are seeking medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, please consult a medical professional or healthcare provider.

BDG Media newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.