Mar 19, 2026
Motherhood doesn’t just change your schedule. It changes your nervous system, your identity, and often reopens wounds you thought were already healed.
In this episode, Cait sits down with Natalie Brunswick, occupational therapist, trauma therapist, and parenting educator, to talk about the unspoken inner work of motherhood the grief, the overwhelm, and the nervous system realities no one prepares you for.
Natalie shares her own journey into this work, from clinical training in occupational therapy and trauma therapy to becoming a mother herself and realizing firsthand how parenting can surface unresolved trauma, grief, and sensory overwhelm, especially when raising sensitive children.
Tune in to hear:
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Why parenting is often more about re-parenting yourself than managing your child
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How unresolved trauma and grief show up after birth even years later
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The concept of the window of tolerance and why stress, birth trauma, and sleep deprivation shrink it
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Why many postpartum mental health struggles are actually unacknowledged grief
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How sensitive babies and children force us to confront our own nervous systems
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The problem with “gentle parenting” when parents don’t have internal regulation tools
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Why grief doesn’t need fixing or medicating
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How cultural parenting narratives disconnect moms from their intuition
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What healing actually looks like for mothers doing cycle-breaking work
Connect with Natalie
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nataliebrunswick.com
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Instagram: @nataliebrunswick