There is a quiet phenomenon unfolding in my circle, one that astounds me in its near universality among the mothers of elementary school children. It will show itself in unexpected moments - dropping off for a play date, standing around the table at a potluck. A couple of weeks ago I bumped up against a mom at the school that I barely knew. I looked at her to apologize for ramming into her and saw it all over her face. I stopped, and asked her if she was okay. That was all she needed, and as she let her guard down she tearfully painted a picture of overwhelm, of exhaustion, of utter joylessness.
She said, 'I don't know who I am anymore.'
Oh. Yeah, I get that.
She was probably the fifth woman in as many months to express this to me - and I am not even counting clients here. Just women I come across in my life. Maybe this is a secret of motherhood as old and well-kept as afterbirth (always a horrible surprise, even with my third baby!). Maybe our mothers and grandmothers felt this way. Maybe. I should ask them. Still, it feels like this is a side-effect of those of us Gen-Xers who went to college, started careers, then made a left turn to stay home with our babies. Or maybe, like I did, they couldn't figure out who they wanted to be in the world, what they wanted to do with all their competence and intelligence and education, and were relieved to have a family and focus on that instead. So defining.
Who am I? I'm mom.
So we focused on that. Not just on being mothers, but on being the best mothers. If we were going to stay home, we would be domestic fucking goddesses. We would read about parenting, attend seminars about the special needs of boys/girls in our broken society, conduct deep research about the best diet to feed a hyper child, watch documentaries about the perils of sugar, agonize about schools, about media, about vaccinations, about the correct balance of scheduled activities and free play. We organized potlucks, we attended potlucks, we, collectively, silently, dreaded potlucks. We. Volunteered.
And then our kids were kids, not babies. And they are gorgeous. And they are flawed. And they may need tutoring or counseling or special dietary restrictions. And now our youngest, our babies, are in school and we catch a glimpse of ourselves inadvertently in a supermarket window and it takes a full three seconds to register who that is. To realize that that haggard, puffy-eyed, frowny-faced woman is me.
Ouch.
We are like juiced orange husks - empty and bitter and dry. All of our sweetness, all of our energy, all of our juicy sexy life force - we have poured all of it down the gullets of our families, of our kids. And maybe we're a little less patient now. A little more resentful when there is giggling in the house and we're folding laundry. Stymied and sour when Daddy comes home and just plays with them while we make dinner. This isn't who we want to be.
The problem is, we can't remember who we want to be. Whatever we were super into before we had our all-consuming babies seems so far away now, so irrelevant, so impractical. We can't connect to joy because we can't remember how to connect with ourselves. We have carved out an existence and an identity that is defined almost exclusively by how we relate to and serve these other people. We have lost ourselves completely.
This happened to me four years ago. It was shocking. And it has been a long crawl back to myself - long and messy and expensive and complicated. But it was worth it. Looking for myself I found whole parts of me severed and locked away, parts that I unconsciously assumed would get in the way of fulfilling my mission as a mother. I had to face them. To let them out, to welcome them back, and to face them and their passionate complaints.
This is a process I have been working with for four years, one that I have honed and built upon, and one that I am ready to share. I am building a Spring Retreat to address this, to offer a day of restoration and hope, as we break down the breakdown and embark on a new beginning in the relationship with self. Keep an eye on my events page for more details.
Love, Nina