I felt like a failure when I became a mother, so I had to shift my perspective. I have always been a rule follower, and as a teenager, I rarely challenged my Indian immigrant parents' strict rules. Academic success became the cornerstone of my self-esteem as I entered college, and my priorities reflected this. I turned down invitations to socialize, travel, and explore in order to study, study, and then study some more. I struggled with breastfeeding, as many mothers do, and in my postpartum period, I filtered this experience through my default lens of success vs. failure.

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Persons: I've, I'm