Motherhood and Identity

Motherhood is a profound experience that brings about countless changes. For many women, it comes with a huge identity shift, sometimes even an identity crisis. Before having children, you might have felt like a confident, capable individual with a strong sense of self - but the transition into motherhood can come as quite a shock. A lot of women feel out of control, overwhelmed, isolated and like they no longer have a sense of self. 

In 2018, I hit a wall—an experience I term as "falling into the black hole." I felt lost, my confidence shattered, and my identity blurred. Transitioning from an ambitious career woman to a mother gave me so much joy, but it was also incredibly challenging. I was left grappling with the question— "Who am I now?" 

Who Are You Really?

Motherhood not only alters your routines but also your inner world and this transformation involves meeting and embracing a new version of yourself. The truth is, the roles we identify with—wife, mother, daughter, colleague, friend —don’t define us. 

You are not just the roles you play or the titles you bear. You are not merely your thoughts, physical body, feelings, behaviour, or career. When you strip all of those things away, you are a soul—a spiritual entity living a human experience. 

Navigating the Enormous Changes

Nikki McCahon, a leader in matrescence education, writes about the various changes women go through when entering motherhood. It’s not just a matter of things changing physically. In various ways, we all experience an upheaval in our psychological, relational, spiritual, cultural, career, economic, and political lives. It's no surprise that amidst all these changes, you might feel lost, questioning what you’re doing wrong. But know that these changes are part of an immense, transformative process and you are not alone. 

Reflect and Reconnect to Your True Self

If you’re struggling with your sense of identity in motherhood, ask yourself these questions:

When do I feel like me?

What do I love?

What am I good at?

What comes naturally to me?

Even amidst the chaos of motherhood, take a few minutes to journal or reflect on these questions. Remember, you are worthy and valuable simply because you are you. Your worthiness is never in question, even if your confidence wavers.

Connecting with yourself at a soul level, away from labels and titles, is vital. Recognise the need to update your self-image to reflect who you are now, not who you were before having children. Allow yourself to explore and remember who you truly are underneath the daily roles and responsibilities.

If you feel the need for support, consider seeking guidance from someone external to help navigate your way through these changes. Establishing a new direction and understanding your true self can be profoundly empowering. And above all, know that even in those dark moments, you have the innate capacity to reconnect with your essence and embrace this evolved version of yourself.

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Transcript

[00:00:24] Benita: Hello beautiful mama, I hope this finds you well wherever you're tuning in from. Whether you're out for a walk, driving the kids to school, doing a workout, folding the clothes, doing some shallow work in the office that doesn't require too much thinking, whatever it is you're up to, I hope you're well and happy and I hope this conversation we're going to have today adds value to your life and your motherhood experience.

[00:00:50] We're going to talk about motherhood and identity today. It's a big topic and there's a lot of like sub Topics within it. And so I'm only really biting off a small section of small snippet of this whole identity and motherhood conversation. I'm going to guess that it's relevant for you though. as it is for most mums, I dedicate most of my coaching work to working with beautiful women who have encountered an identity shift, an identity crisis at times in motherhood.

[00:01:26] Where they've gone from being a self confident, really capable, in control, sort of person as a woman. And then as they've stepped into motherhood, felt a sense of losing that. Losing their confidence. Losing their sense of self. Losing like they, feeling like they have control. Feeling anxious. Experiencing so many changes.

[00:01:49] that they've never experienced, they didn't expect, and are not sure how to deal with. So it's such a common thing. If you, as we go through, if there's anything that resonates with you know that you're not alone. I certainly have been through it.

[00:02:05] And this was the impetus for, for my coaching work, focusing on moms, because in 2018, I, I feel as though I really hit a wall. And some of you might've heard me talk about this before falling into the black hole, I called it where. I honestly felt so lost, like I'd lost a sense of who I was and my confidence in myself because of baby brain, I felt like I couldn't string a sentence together, I felt like I'd gone from being this really intelligent, ambitious career woman to Thank you.

[00:02:40] being a mom, which I loved and I loved my children, but it was such a shock to really grapple with this sense of like, who am I now? So we're going to talk about that in today's episode. I wanted to start with, um, a quote by Nikki McCann, a leader in this space, in this space.

[00:03:04] Um, she's Australian and If you're not aware of her work, go and look her up. I'm going to mention a few things from Nikki today. I love this quote from her. Becoming a mother leaves no woman as it found her. It unravels and rebuilds her. It cracks her open, takes her to her edges. It's both beautiful and brutal, often at the same time.

[00:03:28] It's so true. End. is in alignment with what I'm going to talk about today in terms of this meeting ourselves, meeting out this new version of ourselves. When we, start to get into a little bit down the way in motherhood, where we're faced with ourselves, faced to find ourselves in and meet ourselves in a different way.

[00:03:54] And learn to love that new, this new updated version of ourself. evolved version of ourself. also the inspiration for this episode came from actually from a movie that I just watched recently. And in that movie, the characters were asking one another, ask me who I am.

[00:04:16] And the other one said further into the movie, who am I ask me who I am. And that was sort of going through all their roles that they play in their life and trying to kind of strip back to, well, who am I really? Like, those are all the things I do, but who am I amongst all that? And it reminds me of, the book I've been reading as well by Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, where he talks a lot about this, about this sense of identity and the ego and our attachment to different things to, to kind of make ourselves feel like we have a sense of identity.

[00:04:50] So that thing, that question, who am I now? You are not your name. Your name is just your name. It's just some words that your parents allocated to you. You are not your thoughts because your thoughts are just thoughts. They are not who you are. They are just pieces of information, pieces of story that come to and through us and that we can choose to accept or reject.

[00:05:21] You are not your body. It's just a vessel. You are not your feelings. Feelings come and go. Feelings pass through us. You are not your behavior. You are not your work or career. You are not the roles, all of the roles that you play. You are not a wife, a partner, a daughter. Well, You might be, but those are not who you are.

[00:05:49] And yes, you may be a mother, but you're not just a mother. That is not who you are, though you may identify strongly with being a mother. So if we are none of those roles and titles and labels and responsibilities that we attach ourselves to, to have a sense of self, then who are we? We are a soul. a spiritual being, consciousness.

[00:06:19] There's lots of different terms for it, but we are a soul gifted with an intellect. So a mind, an intellectual mind in a physical body, having a human experience. Ultimately, when it comes down to it, that is what we are. We attach ourselves to things. And we create stories about who we are to give ourselves a sense of identity.

[00:06:46] Now, listening to this, for some of you, it won't be new and you'll be totally comfortable with it. Some of you may hear this and feel a bit unnerved by it or a bit unsettled or like, what the, what the hell? You know, because in our society, we, we do give ourselves labels to, to build a construct of who we are around us.

[00:07:07] to give ourselves a sense of safety, belonging, security, and there's nothing wrong with any of it. But when you boil it all away, when you take it all away, are you okay with who you are underneath all of that, without all of that? Because that is who you really are. A spiritual being, a soul, an inner being, a consciousness, the consciousness that, notices the thoughts, notices the feelings.

[00:07:39] So mother's an interesting one because there are varying degrees to which we attach ourselves to the mother title. Some of us will find it hard to see ourselves. Separately to the role of mother, it can be all encompassing for others. you may see it as a hat that you wear or a badge that you put on or a role that you play amongst many others in your life, sort of more, more segregated.

[00:08:16] You might have a vision of sort of yourself being segregated a lot across lots of different things. Again, it's just a role. It is not you, regardless of what we encounter, the experiences that we have, The different roles and responsibilities that we have in our lives. We remain a soul having a human experience, an interesting human experience.

[00:08:42] That is what we are at the core. So, Moving away from that then and thinking about what happens with our sense of self and the, and these things that we attach ourselves to, to give ourselves a sense of identity before becoming a mom, no doubt you will all have had a sense of identity. A sense of identity, constructed from all these different roles, titles, labels, things you do, the things you love, the way you spend your time gives you a sense of self.

[00:09:18] And then we go from being a woman with that sense of self to being a woman and mother where so much has changed. And we go through this enormous identity shift where things are no longer

[00:09:36] we'll say, who am I now? Well, who we are at the core hasn't changed at a soul level. We have not changed. But how we spend our time and the things we attach ourselves to. probably has changed. I'm going to share some of the changes. Again, this is an article by Nikki McCann where she talks about the changes that we encounter as we go through matrescence, which is the, the developmental process of becoming a mother.

[00:10:06] And you might've heard me mention this in some other episodes. It's sort of like adolescence, but in motherhood, it's, it's where we go from being a woman to a woman and a mother. Whereas in adolescence, we talk about going from being a child to an adult, being a period of time. It's the same for, for mums.

[00:10:23] Although we, you know, when the baby's born, we think of ourselves as a mum now. describes this whole developmental process, which involves changes across many areas of our lives. So. As Nikki says, whilst the changes in combination of changes each mother experiences will be unique to her, they will generally fall into the following predictable categories.

[00:10:46] So physical changes can include body changes, brain changes, hormonal changes, sleep and rest changes, vitamin and mineral changes. Psychological changes can include shifting values, identity, body image and goals. Relationship changes can include shifting dynamics in intimate partnerships, friendships, peer relationships, college and work relationships and relationships with our family of origin.

[00:11:11] Spiritual existential changes can include changing spiritual beliefs or practices, changing relationship to self, changing relationship to life and meaning making. So how we make meaning of life and cultural changes can include entering into a new social realm, which we call the institution of motherhood and subsequent subjection to new cultural experiences and norms, including the perfect mother myth and the pressure to perform the role of the good mother.

[00:11:40] Also, career changes can include changing working conditions, changing career directions, experiencing new forms of discrimination and biases, including the maternal wall and the motherhood penalty. Economic changes can include income changes, expense changes, shifting relationship with independents and interdependences, and political changes can include a shifting interest in politics, social justice, and environmentalism.

[00:12:04] So some people will experience these changes as a gain. Like as a growing and a deepening while others, you might experience as a loss. So there's a whole combination of changes that each mother experiences. And this will be unique according to you. But wow, when you start to hear it like that, it's no wonder we end up as mothers feeling lost and confused and thinking like, what am I doing wrong?

[00:12:31] And why do I feel this way? And does anyone else feel this way? a huge. amount of change to experience in this, transition of motherhood. It's enormous. So what I want to leave you with today is just a set of A set of prompts to have a think about if you are feeling that, who am I now feeling?

[00:12:57] In my experience, when I was in a dark place in 2018, I worked with a coach to help feel connected and calmer and increase some sort of sense of confidence and, um, Feeling like I had something for me and I had some direction again outside of being a mom. you may or may not want to do that.

[00:13:21] So there's some questions I wanted to ask you, which might help you to feel more connected with yourself because you haven't disappeared. Even though it feels like it, you're still the same at the core. It's just that you are experiencing this phenomenal number of changes that leaves us feeling really unnerved, unsettled, questioning, wondering.

[00:13:48] And it's a process of, this new, this new updated version of ourselves, getting to know her, meeting her. meeting her where she's at, getting to know her and love her and reconnecting with yourself at a soul level. away from the labels, the titles, the way you feel your day, reconnecting with who you really are and what's true for you, because those things probably haven't changed a deep, deep down level.

[00:14:27] And It's also about changing the picture of yourself. I know when I was really struggling, I was still holding onto this old image of myself, younger, fitter, independent, wild and free. And that's the image I still held in my mind that I was comparing myself to once I became a mom beating myself up against as well in comparison.

[00:14:52] So I've had to update that image of what is it that I look like? You know, what am I doing in that picture? How am I feeling? How am I spending my days? So that I could start to feel more congruent with that rather than this old image that was my old version of, and not me anymore. I had to give her a kiss goodbye.

[00:15:14] So some prompts to, to explore this new you, when do I feel like me? What do I love? What am I good at? What brings me joy? What am I fascinated by or interested in? And what comes naturally to me? So you might like to sit down with a cup of tea and a journal and a pen and start to remember those things.

[00:15:45] And I know this can be difficult if you're in the chaos of motherhood. But even taking 5 or 10 minutes to do some writing, to do some drawing, or speaking it out loud, reconnecting with some of these points helps you to feel more connected to your true inner self. And I want you to know that You are worthy and valuable simply because you are you.

[00:16:13] Though in motherhood we can feel unworthy, unloved, invisible. I want you to know that you are worthy and you are valuable simply because you are here. You are unique and you worthiness is never in question even though your confidence. May take a battering at times. So I hope those prompts are helpful for you.

[00:16:40] I hope they can give you a sense of. Reconnection with yourself and perhaps you would like some support in terms of setting a new direction or really unearthing what it is that you'd like to do, or if you're struggling with something, I absolutely advocate for seeking support and, finding a guide to walk with you through this whole journey, which at times is like a roller coaster, but maybe there's some quiet time for yourself as well in terms of feeling more connected with this new version of yourself.

[00:17:14] I hope this helps. I hope it's valuable for you. Lots of love. And I will chat to you again in the next episode. Bye bye.