photo credit | @lilacandhome
Pre-children, what did your mornings look like? Did you linger over a hot cup of coffee or take a leisurely shower followed by a multi-step beauty routine?
Fast forward a few years, and what’s changed? Well, not much. Unless you count the miniature human that demands attention at every single moment, the tiny tornado of emotion who can shift gears from pure devastation to unfounded ecstasy in milliseconds, the creature observing each and every movement, word and reaction of its mother. This tiny love that has completely and utterly undone us with a love so fierce that it has changed everything in us.
You never really know the measure of your insecurities or how deep their little roots are planted, until they are challenged. Motherhood and all of its out-of-body epiphanies challenge us to uproot and replant. At its core, motherhood is a curious paradox. It feels at once as though you’re wearing your very soul, your insecurities and your deepest fears in miniature human form and at the same time, you feel empowered, strong, invincible, bold and courageous.
It’s easy to feel a bit like you’ve misplaced your identity after becoming a parent. Who are you besides a mom? What do you like besides talking endlessly about your baby? Your spouse? What spouse? Do you even have a first name anymore or are you forever solely referred to as “mama”?
The deepest love we will ever experience is when we love and nurture our children; yet the same can be said of the second birth of our truest selves – the one whole emerges from the thicket of newborn haze and toddler tantrums. To assess within ourselves what it means to be totally transformed by love and responsibility is a great task. It's hard to even remember what you thought about before diapers and teething and sleep regressions consumed your life.
You live in constant duality of before motherhood and after motherhood, straddling the line of missing parts of yourself from the days before, but also knowing there’s nowhere else you’d rather be. We will ourselves to be the same, though we’re irrevocably different.
Because we are.
We are categorically different now. We brought life into this world and are raising that tiny human with every ounce of your love, all your soul, all your might—how could that not change you?
- We open ourselves up when we become parents.
- We see where our heart truly lies.
- We push ourselves to become the person that feels passionate and that can support our family.
- We carve out the time for ourselves to be women, complete with dreams, ideas, and talent to give, alongside our incredibly vital roles as mothers. Because we have to in order to survive.
It’s all a scrapbook. In the right light, our former selves will peek through. Their imprints remind us how far we’ve traveled. And through them, we understand how much is left to be written.
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