Who I Used to Be
Before I became a mother, I measured my identity by the things I achieved and the independence I cherished. My sense of self was shaped by ambition, structure, and the freedom to define my future without interruption.
The Version of Me Before Motherhood
Career Driven: My job wasn’t just something I did it was who I was. I chased promotions, stayed late, and took pride in my achievements.
Fiercely Independent: I valued self reliance. Whether it was traveling solo or navigating life on my own terms, I felt empowered by my autonomy.
Self Defined Goals: My vision for success came from within not from social norms or external pressure. I had a plan, and I moved with purpose.
The Labels I Held Onto
There were identities I clung to tightly, unaware how deeply they rooted me:
“High achiever”
“The dependable one”
“The one who gets things done”
These roles gave me clarity. They shaped how others saw me and how I saw myself.
The Quiet Fear
As the reality of motherhood approached, a subtle fear kept surfacing:
“Who will I be when everything changes?”
This wasn’t just about sleepless nights or changing diapers.
It was about wondering if the person I’d spent years building would suddenly disappear, replaced by a version of myself I didn’t recognize.
The fear wasn’t just of change it was of erasure. Of losing the woman I had become in the process of becoming someone new: Mom. And yet, beneath that fear was the beginning of a transformation I hadn’t yet realized was essential.
The Moment Everything Shifted
No book, podcast, or well meaning friend could have fully prepared me for what was about to hit. Pregnancy came with its own chaos, but when the baby arrived, the transformation cracked me open in ways I didn’t expect. My body was no longer mine not fully. It was a vessel, a lifeline, and in some moments, a battlefield. Sleep became a memory. Food was an afterthought. Time bent weirdly, stretching and snapping by the hour.
Emotionally, it was like someone rewired my core and forgot to leave instructions. I felt everything harder, deeper, louder. Love came in like a storm, sweeping priorities off the table and pinning them to the floor. It was no longer about me, not even close. Suddenly, everything I once obsessed over career milestones, inbox zero, weekend plans felt like background noise.
My values reoriented in real time. Efficiency gave way to presence. Hustle got edged out by patience. I stopped measuring my days by output and began measuring them in glances, giggles, and stretches of quiet. It was disorienting and brutal and beautiful, sometimes all in the same moment. Motherhood didn’t ask politely it demanded that I show up, strip down, and rebuild. And that’s exactly what I did, one blurry day at a time.
Letting Go So I Could Grow
At some point, I hit a quiet wall. Not dramatic. Just a realization that kept showing up in the margins of every day: I couldn’t be who I was and also be the mother I needed to be. The way I used to move through the world driven, scheduled, always reaching for the next thing wasn’t compatible with a life built around someone else’s needs every single hour. I fought it at first, resenting the loss of autonomy, the fogginess that replaced my clarity. But eventually, truth settled in.
I started letting go. Not of ambition entirely, but of its previous shape. I released the routines that kept me feeling controlled but disconnected. Began questioning the metrics I used to define a “productive” day. Quit chasing the version of success that didn’t make room for naps on the floor, or long walks with a stroller just to soothe us both.
What surprised me was this: in surrendering who I thought I had to be, I uncovered a quieter kind of strength. The kind that shows up at 4:00 a.m. with a bottle and no bitterness. The kind that redefines clarity not as a five year plan, but as knowing what matters in the moment. And how to show up fully for it.
Rebuilding From the Inside Out
The truth is, I didn’t become someone new when I became a mother I just stopped running from the woman I already was. When the noise fell away the career hustle, the curated image, the need to prove something I landed here. Raw. Split open. Still standing.
Motherhood has a way of holding up a mirror. I couldn’t keep avoiding the parts of myself that were inconvenient or uncomfortable. The control freak. The people pleaser. The woman terrified of slowing down. Raising a child forced me to meet them head on. No room to hide when curious little eyes are watching you become, day after day.
This season of life didn’t erase my ambition. It made it sharper. But it also paused me long enough to ask myself: Who am I building all this for? Turns out, the version of success I chased before didn’t fit anymore. I stopped measuring life by output and started measuring it by presence. Intention over hustle. Depth over scale.
Now I live in layers. I’m a mother, yes. Also a partner, a creator, a friend, a woman who still dreams big but with her feet on the ground. These roles don’t compete. They overlap. They challenge each other. And they make me whole not perfectly balanced, but powerfully real.
Reflect more on this in: Motherhood and Identity
The Ongoing Evolution
Motherhood doesn’t hand you a map. It doesn’t wrap with a neat ending or deliver some final version of yourself. If anything, it signals the start of something open ended. A new life is born and yours cracks wide open too. Not all at once, not in perfect epiphanies, but in small moments that demand big shifts.
Kids change. Fast. And with each phase they grow through, you grow too. That means constant recalibration: who you are, how you show up, what matters now. Some days you lead with tenderness, others with grit. There’s no schedule, no symmetry just a mental and emotional pivot that becomes your new normal.
Forget balance. That idea sells well, but doesn’t hold up. What I’ve found instead is confidence in imbalance the kind you choose on purpose. Some seasons, the focus leans hard into family. In others, it tilts toward work, creativity, or rest. The key isn’t equal weight. It’s knowing what deserves your presence that day, and showing up fully for it.
I’m not working toward a final draft of myself. I’m building in layers. And every chaotic, beautiful, exhausting day is part of that blueprint.
Exploring more depth here: Motherhood and Identity
What I Know Now
People talk about losing themselves in motherhood, like it’s a guaranteed erasure. But I didn’t lose myself I met parts I hadn’t known existed. The version of me that can hold two things at once: chaos and calm, joy and frustration, love and longing. I wasn’t replaced. I was rebuilt.
Identity isn’t this fragile machine you have to protect from too much weight it’s more like a muscle. It stretches, rebuilds, adapts. And motherhood worked mine hard. I had to let go of a few assumptions. Had to accept that I couldn’t keep one version of myself frozen in time. But in return, I gained something layered and full.
Motherhood didn’t shrink me. It didn’t narrow who I am. If anything, it cracked me open. Now I move through the world with a wider lens. I care more deeply, speak more clearly, and forgive faster. I’ve learned to hold space for contradiction, for growth that doesn’t need to be perfect to be real.
The truth is, I didn’t get smaller I got deeper. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything.