Who are you when you're not someone's mom?
The question lands like an accusation. It isn't one — and being unable to answer it is more common than anyone admits.
Somebody asks what you do for fun, and there is a pause that goes on slightly too long.
It is not that there is no answer. It is that the answer is four years out of date, and you are not sure whether it is still true.
Why the question stings
Because it sounds like being told that mothering is not enough, and it is. The work is real and it is most of the day and it matters.
But a woman who has poured herself entirely into other people for years does eventually notice that she is not sure what she likes any more. That noticing is not ingratitude. It is a person checking whether she is still in there.
Wanting something of your own is not a complaint about what you already have.
The honest version
Nothing about this season leaves much room. You will not find yourself on a retreat, and you probably cannot take up anything that requires an uninterrupted hour.
What is available is smaller and less satisfying to write about: noticing what you are drawn to, and following it a little.
Questions that work better
- What did you lose track of time doing, before?
- What do you read when nobody assigned it?
- Whose life do you find yourself curious about?
- What would you do with an entirely free Saturday — not the restful answer, the honest one?
- What annoys you that other people seem fine with? That is usually pointing at something
You are not going back
The woman you were before is not waiting somewhere to be recovered. She has been living through all of this too, and she has changed.
What is actually on offer is not restoration but continuation — finding out who this version is, which is a more interesting question than who the old one was.
Start absurdly small
Not a new identity. One thing, this week, that is yours and has no other purpose.
A book on the bedside table you have no intention of finishing quickly. A walk without the pram. Fifteen minutes of something you were good at once. It will feel disproportionate to the effort it takes to arrange, and it is still worth arranging.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.”
Ephesians 2:10
