Do you often look at celebrities and wish you were them? Do you envy the money? The fame? The help they get with raising their children? Do you judge them thinking they have it easy while you struggle to keep your eyes opened at 9pm, feeling exhausted and trying to plan the next day so your children won’t get bored in the house and drive you mad?

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I did. I looked at them and I envied them but recently I listened to an amazing podcast related to motherhood struggles.

It’s called Katie’s Crib and it’s quite popular specially amongst the Shondaland fans. It’s hosted by Katie Lowes (starring in the popular series Scandal) and had Camilla Luddington (Grey’s Anatomy star) and Karla Souza (How to get away with murder star) as guests.

The Shondaland moms talk pretending to give birth on TV (trust us, you’ll never look at jelly and cream cheese the same) as well as the experience of returning to work, breastfeeding, dealing with new mom anxiety, and all the other rollercoaster highs and lows of motherhood.

How is it to be pregnant and also acting? Is mom brain a real thing? – all these and more are spoken about in detail and they are as real as it gets.

I am not a podcast listener but this one is something else. Listening to these women made me realise that we are all mothers and we worry just the same regardless of social status, power, money or fame.

They openly spoke about motherhood anxiety – the days they walk down the street and all of a sudden they get insane thoughts about their child being hit by a car, waking up in the middle of the night and rushing to check on your child because you just opened your eyes in terror thinking they might be dead. The fear of something terrible happening to them and not being able to enjoy their children growing up was another big fear of the stars.

These are things we worry about as well and it looks like it’s a motherhood thing. The pressure of giving birth naturally, breastfeeding and getting back into shape straight away affects them as well. They even joked about not being able to watch the episodes when they were pregnant because they looked so big and puffy. Also that squeegee belly, the wider hips, the bigger boobs and bum… yeah, guessed it. They have it as well and they embraced it as it is feeling sexier and more confident than before becoming mothers.

What I learned? Anxiety affects us all. Motherhood is a real struggle and is not a shame to admit it. We all fear. We are all victims of social media and pressure. We all struggled with breastfeeding at some point. Sleepless nights and colds, flu, stomach bugs – we all got them and we got them bad most of times.

We all go through identity crisis in the first years of motherhood trying to rediscover ourselves and we struggle and feel alone and overwhelmed.

If you want to find out what their biggest fear was and what they wished they knew before becoming mothers you can tune in and listen to Katie’s Crib on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts!

Regardless of how you feel, you are not alone. There is always someone out there going through the same things, fearing the same fears and struggling just like you.

Reach out. Don’t be scared to share and speak the truth.