When I became a mother, I went through a huge identity crisis. One that I really didn’t see coming.
Partly because if you’d asked me before I became a mother to tell you who I was…I wouldn’t have known how to describe myself.
And partly because I had convinced myself that after you have a baby, you are exactly the same person as before, only now you have a child in tow.
I now realise I was wrong about both things, and it’s probably what made the transition to motherhood so difficult.
I, of course, didn’t realise I was having an identity crisis at the time. Identity crisis symptoms are unclear, at best. All I knew was – I wasn’t comfortable one bit. Everything from how I looked post-partum, to going out with a big pram, to my husband taking over the cooking was sending me into a complete spin.
I suddenly didn’t know what my role was, and if I was no longer doing the things I used to do, what did the people in my life see in me?
I can only describe it as the Billie Eilish Barbie song hitting different – The one where she sings “what was I made for.”
Barbie and I have a lot in common, obviously.
In reality, the question I was asking myself was, what do the people in my life value me for? I’d gone through this massive change and it had suddenly brought this idea of who I am and what people see in me into question.
So, I did what any normal person would do and clung for dear life onto who I was. I was convinced I needed to engage in some kind of intellectual activity. Listen to the news, learn more about the tech world, learn some new skill that I could take back to work (because what was I doing during my “time off”). Yes, I still thought of mat leave as a gap on my CV! I clearly didn’t know how to function in the domestic world.
I had to get properly dressed in the morning like I always did. I had to have a shower in the morning. Failing to get into a shower before midday made me feel like it was the beginning of the end, and I’d finally become a hobo. (You can imagine how many hobo moments I had in that case.)
And I needed to make Eid brownies. I simply HAD TO MAKE BROWNIES. It was an annual tradition, and who was I if not the brownie maker?
Of course, part of this whole thing was my need to return to work. My manager had asked me a thousand times before leaving if I was “coming back, right?” and I had 100% assured her I would. After all, if I wasn’t an analyst / Economist, I wouldn’t even know how to introduce myself.
But of course, aside from what people valued about me. I myself missed doing certain things I used to do.
That included:
- Leaving the house whenever I wanted
- Leaving the house without luggage (baby bottles, hot water, nappies, etc.)
- Having a shower when I want
- Going to the bathroom when I want
- Having a conversation that isn’t about poop
- Doing anything when I want, period.
- Cooking
- Seeing other adults (only initially, kinda..)
- Going to the gym
- Watching TV (On account of falling asleep before I get to that bit of the evening)
The whole thing comes as quite a shock to the system.
Everywhere I looked online, I got the same advice. You need to mourn who you were.
But for me, it wasn’t really about mourning. It was about acceptance.
A friend of mine, who was already a mum, texted me out of the blue one evening. She simply said, “Your life is never going to be the same again. The faster you accept that, the easier it will be.” At the time, her message seemed a bit brutal. But I was grateful for some honesty rather than “isn’t motherhood a blessing?” And now that I’ve been through it, I’d say she was completely right.
If I could have hurried the acceptance along, I would have, but I couldn’t. It just takes time to adjust. But I wish I had realised that’s all it was.
A short adjustment period, which feels uncomfortable.
It’s not an identity crisis, it’s an identity evolution. A rapid one. It’s like growing wings in 3 months. You’re developing a whole other skillset, routine, and life. It’s not always going to be comfortable.
Of course, when I say it out loud now, it all sounds ridiculous. What is an identity crisis anyway? But it wasn’t at the time.
I think we all get used to seeing ourselves a certain way in a certain role. We attach labels to ourselves, and those labels so often come from what we think the people around us notice.
I had been so used to people noticing my educational background and how interested I was in my career. I was used to people associating me with healthy eating and exercise. I was accustomed to people seeing me always dressed and ready for the day. And I was always busy with some kind of hobby or interest.
All these things were true about me. In fact, they are still true about me. But I had gotten confused between people associating certain things with me as being the things they valued about me.
And I’d gotten confused between my habits, routines, and hobbies with my identity.
It took me time to realise that who I am at my core hasn’t changed because of motherhood. Identity is much more than the things we do. It’s our personality, character, experiences, and values. And so, while my habits and routines and even my hobbies might have changed, my character hadn’t. I was just me, but in a completely different context.
Me +, I should say. Because I’d had a whole new experience. I’d become a mother, and our experiences change us. I guess I didn’t care about the things I used to in the same way. And that was scaring me, which is why I clung to old ideas of myself.
It was only after I came out of the other side that I could see the difference between what my personality is, and it being ok to change my perspective and focus in life.
Being so scared to let go of what I was doing before I had a child was only holding me back from throwing myself into reading the next chapter of an amazing book that had all these new characters.
Of course, the negative association with being a mum was one of the things holding me back.
A lot of the time, mums are associated with being less relevant, intelligent, or fun. It was linked to being frumpy, tired, and boring.
I had just given birth, and I remember I’d already felt the pressure of working women seeing it as “giving up” or anti-feminist if I were to ever consider taking a career break.
I was accurately aware of how so many men belittle the amount of work that goes into being a mum. When I was pregnant, I had already conformed to “work like you have no children” and hid any pregnancy discomfort or illness because we shouldn’t let a little thing like carrying a child and giving birth interfere with our real jobs.
The narrative has always been that motherhood is the lesser job. It should be done quietly and apologetically.
Up until I’d become a mum, I had no idea what mums go through physically and mentally. It’s like it’s a secret until you join the club, and only then do you understand the extent of what mums go through. From difficult pregnancies, surgeries, complications, depression, sleep deprivation, strains on personal relationships, impact on finances and jobs, discriminatory practices at work, mum guilt, and social pressures around parenting. The list goes on and on and on.
It’s the hardest job anyone will ever have that has so little importance given to it.
The worst bit was that I was having an identity crisis because I wasn’t giving importance to what I was doing and the choices I had made.
The best thing that ever happened was when I realised that if I could grow a person, go through torture levels of pain to birth that person, then work 24/7 shifts on little food or sleep and make sure that little person was always taken care of. I most certainly couldn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone ever devaluing the work done by mums.
And it was the most freeing thing that ever happened to me.
In the end, one day, I woke up, and the identity crisis was no longer there.
It’s difficult to say exactly how. Maybe it’s because I’d recovered from my C-section, maybe because I’d become more efficient at packing a baby bag.
Mostly, though, I think it’s because I realised I was valued by the people around me for my character, and I started valuing the job of being a mother and was no longer scared of changing my priorities regardless of what anyone had to say about it.
