Heather Chauvin: Motherhood, Self-Abandonment & Feeling Alive Again

She is an author, speaker, podcast host — and someone whose work asks a question so many women feel, but don't always say out loud:

What happens when being "the good mother" starts costing you yourself?

In this episode of Mostly Together, I sit down with Heather Chauvin, author of Dying to Be a Good Mother and host of the podcast, Emotionally Uncomfortable.

Heather became a mother at 18, and for a long time, her son was the reason she got out of bed every morning. Motherhood gave her purpose, drive, and a reason to keep going. But over time, she began to ask a deeper question: was she truly living for her children, or losing herself in the identity of being a mother?

This conversation lives in the space between devotion and self-abandonment.

It's about motherhood, burnout, ambition, survival mode, and the quiet ways women learn to put everyone else's needs ahead of their own.

Heather also opens up about the diagnosis that forced her to look at the life she was living, the whispers she had been ignoring, and why feeling alive, energized, and connected to yourself is not selfish — it's part of how we show up for the people we love.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• Breaking generational patterns

• Resentment and the cost of abandoning yourself

• Heather's Stage 4 cancer diagnosis and the wake-up call it became

• Listening to the tiny whispers before life gets louder