Lessons in Self-Doubt: The Mother I Feared I Couldn’t Be

When I first found out I was pregnant, fear was the loudest emotion I felt. Not because I didn’t want my baby, but because I was terrified I’d mess it all up. Growing up in an unconventional household, raised by my grandmother after my parents’ divorce, I had no blueprint for what a “normal” family looked like. I doubted everything about myself as a soon-to-be single mom.

So I did what I always do when I’m scared: I went to the library. 📚 I read every parenting book Fayetteville, NC had on its shelves. I thought knowledge alone could erase my fear. But it wasn’t until almost a year later—after losing my grandmother and learning to trust myself—that I realized I wasn’t behind because of how I was raised. I was ahead because of it.

In this episode of Have a Cup of Johanny, I share how self-doubt shaped my early years of motherhood, how my grandmother’s love became my guide, and how fear can sometimes be proof that you care deeply about getting it right.

✨ Preorder my debut novel, The Ordinary Bruja—a story about finding strength in self-doubt and learning to trust your own magic: haveacupofjohanny.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Theme, Settle In
• 1:10 Naming The Fear: Motherhood
• 3:30 Unconventional Upbringing & Stigma
• 6:10 Preparing For Solo Parenting
• 8:20 Library Missions for Know‑How
• 12:00 Knowledge Helps, Peace Doesn’t Arrive
• 15:20 Grief, Grandmother, And A Blueprint
• 19:00 Promise To Mother Like Grandma
• 21:00 You Live Your Way Into Confidence

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:13

To your breath to the point you're starting. You're starting. This is your space to reflect. So pour your cafecito and let's begin. Hello everyone and welcome back to Have a Cup of Johnny Podcast. This month's theme is Lessons in Self-Doubt. And if you've been following me all along, you already know that self-doubt doesn't just show up in writing or work, it seeps into every corner of your life, especially the moments that matter most. And today I'm going to talk about one of those moments. Are y'all ready? Let's begin. So one of the biggest fears that I've ever faced wasn't creative, wasn't even professional, but it was the kind of fear that keeps you up at night wondering if you're enough. And that is so insidious. It's so pervasive. And that fear was the fear of being a mother. When I found out I was pregnant, it wasn't joy that hit me. It was fear. And not because I didn't want my baby. Like as soon as I knew that I was pregnant, it was an easy, yes, I want my baby. No second guessing, easiest answer I ever gave. I wanted him with everything in me. But I was terrified that I was gonna mess up his life. Because there was nothing, absolutely nothing in my history that told me I'll be good at this. Absolutely nothing. My parents had been divorced for as long as I could remember. I think I said it in this podcast. I don't remember my mom and dad at all. In my childhood, I just remember my grandmother, my grandmother, mama, the woman who actually raised me. That was my constant figure in my life. But my childhood was anything but conventional. And I knew that as a kid. I knew that I carried a stigma, a self-inflicted stigma, really over it, that I was the one kid in school that didn't have parents that would go with them to meet the teacher and to do all these other things at school. And instead I had my grandma, this older woman. And she was like, it seemed to me at that time, like I was the only kid in that predicament, in that situation. And it was so embarrassing. So I knew since I was a child that I was in a very unconventional household. And because that made me different on top of how I looked, it was just like really disheartening for me. I think that's the best way I could explain it. And because of that, I didn't know it until I got pregnant, but I was carrying this heavy fear of parenting, of parenthood. And that fear was, what if I'm not built for this? What if the way I was raised means that I am bound to fail at this? And I will fail my child, this being that I love. It was like this instant love. This being was growing inside my belly and my womb. And I was like, yes, this is like part of me, part of my soul. I love it. I used to call him it because I didn't know the sex of my baby, and I wouldn't find out until I had him. People thought that it was funny, but I mean, I really I didn't know. So that was how I referred to him. And my son also had all sorts of yellow and green, all the neutral colors that you can think of secondhand because couldn't afford brand new things. So that was what welcomed him into the world. This very gender-neutral color palette, and me calling him it. But that fear weighed it heavily. And I knew I was pragmatic then. I'm still pragmatic now. I love it, but it was not enough. You know, you need to have some sort of knowledge, some sort of know-how, some sort of experience to be able to be successful at certain things. Because you can be passionate about something, you can love something, but it's still it requires you to have some sort of experience, some sort of knowledge behind it in order to be successful. You know, and I'm not saying it needs to be traditional experience or traditional knowledge as in degrees and things of that nature, but something there to back you up so that way you can be successful in this specific endeavor. And that's how I was looking at parenting and parenthood and being the pragmatic person that I am. I was looking at my son's father at that time. We were still together, but I knew that from what I've seen growing up, that usually the male figure is it's not a given. It's easy for them to just come out, either for work or come out and then just end the relationship and be with somebody else. But then it will always be the mother who stays with the child. Don't come for me. That has been my experience. That's how I traverse through life. So, in a way, that fear was slightly escalated because I also had to account in my mind for that. And spoiler alert, it did happen. I ended up raising my son on my own. You can say, ah, she brought that up on herself because that's how she was thinking, and blah, blah, blah. I was thinking in a practical way, how I can prepare myself the best that I can in case I needed to raise my baby on my own. And it ended up happening. And good thing, right, that I was prepared. But let me tell you how I got there because it's a very roundabout kind of way that it happened. So that fear of am I gonna fail it? Am I gonna be enough? Do I have what it takes? That fear just sat deep in my chest. And it followed me to every doctor's appointment I had, every midnight thought, those waking moments where I had heartburn and also this thought in the back of my mind. Been pregnant, you know. And every moment I imagined holding him, but holding him with this fear. And then I did what I always do when I'm scared and unprepared. Because when I feel unprepared, it brings fear and then it brings self-doubt because I don't have the confidence, like I discussed in the last episode. So I did what I've done my whole life. I went to the library. Back then, I like I said, I was very poor, so I didn't have my own books, but I had access to a library. And at that time, I lived in Fateville, North Carolina. So that was the library on post and the library off post was what I would go to so that way I can gain the knowledge that I felt I needed. And I remember walking into the library like I was on a mission because in my mind, yes, I was. The more I knew, this is practical Joa thinking, the more I knew, the better I'd be. So I grabbed every parenting book I could find, and I think somebody ended up gifting me in my baby shower what to expect when you're expecting. And I was so grateful for that. But I had read the library version of it. That was one of the first books. It was very popular back then, and it gave you like this map, this laydown of all the years, and I found that to be so helpful. And I read that book from cover to cover. I read Your Baby's First Year, Child Growth and Development, Toddler to like the younger years. I also read books on child's mental health discipline, early learning, you name it. I read it, and I didn't stop there. I read everything up to age 10. However, this is not a perfect story, obviously. I mean, I'm not perfect by any means. I didn't read anything about teenage years because I thought, okay, that'll be easier. He'll be more independent by then, or it will be more independent by then. So through him seeking his own independence, from what I know, I just figure things will work out. I was completely wrong. Super wrong. Couldn't have been more wrong. But nevertheless, back then I read like my life depended on it because, in a way, it did. It was not just my life, but the life of my child. And like I said, I was fearful that I was gonna mess this up hardcore. And I was trying to read my way out of that fear, and the books helped. Don't get me wrong, they helped so much. And I want to say that I still have a few of those around because they're like they're timeless. And thank God I kept some because I, you know, then I became a step parent and so forth. So, really, those things that I learned from my son came handy later on. But the books, what they did was they gave me a structure on how to track milestones, when to introduce solids, how to calm a tantrum, how to set boundaries, those tangible things. That is what they gave me, that knowledge. And with knowledge, I gained a little bit more confidence, which meant that it lessened my fear. But what they couldn't give me was peace. I still felt uneasy. And I don't know if it was the hormones, I don't know what it was, but I still felt very uneasy. And I still had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that maybe I wasn't cut out for this, you know, that I was going to fail my beautiful it somehow. Because no one book could answer the real question that I had. And that was can someone like me, who never saw a healthy family, be the one to build one? And in society, especially back then, with the Sally show and Jerry Springer and all of that, it was so prevalent. And it wasn't like it was written out for me to see, but it was indirectly given to me. And that is single moms are bound to fail. And single moms are bound to fail because they come from unorthodox households, you know, households where there are not two parents in there, but one. And when you see that imagery over and over and over, you hear about it, people talk about it. It becomes like Bible, it becomes this thing that is very real. And here I am, slowly but surely walking towards that. And I read books and I gained a lot of knowledge, and it made me feel slightly more confident about this new role that I will be embarking upon, but it still did not answer that question. Can someone like me build a healthy family? And then my grandmother passed away. I ended up having my son, and I want to say, I think I I said it in the podcast two weeks, two, three weeks after I had them, she passed away. And her absence cracks something open in me. I missed her more than I could describe. I miss her even to this day. And that grief, while it was still very fresh, I started thinking a lot about her, about what it must have been for her to raise my sister and I, especially as an older person. How she didn't have it easy either. She was older, like I said, she had her ways, and she still took us in, loved us, saw us for who we were, loved us, guided us, and never let go. Like, never let go. But she taught me unconditional love, and not by explaining it to me, not by giving me a definition from a book, but by showing it. And I get teary-eyed just thinking about this, but she showed me that. Because no matter how bad we were, no matter how weird my sister and I were, she loved us. She never let go. In those early sleepless nights with my baby. And if you you're a parent, you know these nights when it was just me and him, I was already on my own, a single mom, and I would watch him sleep, and it would be so sweet. The sound of his breathing, his super cute chubby cheeks. And I'm thinking about my grandmother. And I started realizing something that I hadn't seen before. And that was that while I thought I was behind on parenting, on building a healthy family because of the way that I was raised, I was actually ahead because I had been raised by someone who knew how to love hard, how to stay, how to keep going, even when it hurt. And it clicked for me one night. I was watching him sleep. I still remember it's so cute. You know how parents, no matter how grown their child looks or gets, you always see that little face. That's exactly how it is. Whenever I envision my son, it's like I just see that face. But I was there watching him sleep. I was exhausted, reading something as I usually did around that time. And I remember thinking, this is exactly what she did for me. She had given me the blueprint, and I hadn't acknowledged that until that point. And it wasn't like this blueprint of what to expect when you're expecting, or what I found, like these roadmaps in those shiny parenting books. But it was the one that truly mattered, that just surfaced in that moment. And that was to love them no matter what, stay with them no matter what, guide them even when they don't listen, and make sure they always know that they're wanted. And from that moment on, I remember I woke up. And you know how when you think something, you think about something at night, you just wake up with an answer in your head, because your brain had a time to like go through all that information. And I remember waking up and it was so clear to me. And I just I made this pack. And this is one of those promises that I have made to myself during these turning points in my life. And that pack to me, and I had made another one previously. I said it another another episode, but this pack was I would mother the way my grandmother had mothered me. Imperfectly but patiently and with a lot of love at the center. That was the promise that I made to myself. And that fear, that self-doubt, thinking that I was gonna fail because of the way that I was raised lifted. Because I knew then when I woke up that I had the blueprint. All I had to do was remember how my grandmother raised me. Sometimes I think we get so caught up in the fear of not being ready that we forget that life has been getting us there all along. It has been preparing us all along. That fear of failing is just really love in disguise. Because you only fear failing at things you truly care about. So looking back at it, I think about how much I cared about getting it right for this human being that I was bringing to this world that I felt that fear, but then I allowed it to fester and it turned into self-doubt. But I'm glad I had the books in the library to easen that fear, that self-doubt. I'm glad I had this moment of remembering my grandmother and how she raised my sister and I to also crush that fear once and for all. And when I look back at this in particular, I can see that fear taught me something important that preparation is good, but trust is better. You cannot read your way into confidence. You have to live your way into it. And that's true for motherhood, for writing, for everything, really. And talking about writing, these are the same lessons that show up in the ordinary Bruha. I tell you all, I talk about this a few times already, how I ride from the seat of truth and I tap into things that I've experienced, learned, felt to write fictional stories. And this, the fear of self-doubt, the trying to find my way imperfectly, and then realizing that life had given me that all along, those are the same lessons that show up in the ordinary Bruha. Marisol spends so much time in the story, believing that she's not enough, just like I did as a new mom. She thinks her past disqualifies her from the future she wants. But the truth is the one she learns along the way is that her past did prepare her for that. Her family, her pain, her roots, all of it gave her the strength that she needed. And that's exactly what my grandmother did for me. She gave me a legacy of love that I didn't fully understand until I had to live it. Till I was there in the middle of the night, so fearful, looking at my little chubby baby. That's when it came to me. So if you're a parent listening to this, or even if you're just someone standing at the edge of something new, scared, you'll mess it up. Remember this. You're not starting from scratch, you're starting from experience, from everything that shaped you, everything that happened before that moment in your life has shaped you. From everyone who loved you into the person that you are now. Because fear is gonna whisper, and it might whisper, you're not ready, but life's been preparing you in quiet ways all along. And maybe the lesson self-doubt teaches us most is this it's not there to stop us, it's there to remind us how much we care. So that's today's story. The lesson self-doubt taught me about motherhood, and how in the end it brought me closer to the woman who taught me how to love. If you found yourself nodding along or thinking of the people who prepared you in ways you didn't realize, I'd love to hear your story. Email me at Joa at have a cupboani.com or you can connect with me on TikTok. I have two profiles there. One is A Cup of Joanny and the other one is the book Bruja or on Instagram at have a cup of joanni. And don't forget, my debut adult novel, The Ordinary Bruja, is available for pre-order right now. It's the story of a woman, Marisol, learning to trust herself, her heritage, and her magic, just like we all have to. And you can pre-order your copy at haveacouplejoani.com. Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of your people, and remember, sometimes the fear just means you care enough to get it right. Oh we could we could fly. If today's episode spoke to you, share what somebody was finding their way back to. And if you haven't yet, visit have the cup of joining.com. For more stories, blog posts and started it all. Thank you for being here. Until next time.