I loved being a housewife but I regret losing my identity

• It was always my dream, but raising two children as a household mom was more difficult than I thought.
• I lost my identity during the years of the child and toddlers of my children, and recover it took work.
• My children are adolescents now and I like to see new mothers hang on to their own identities and interests.

I was 27 when I was my first baby, and like most people at the end of the twenties, I thought everything understood. I had been raised in a conservative religious environment Where women learned their main objective was to become a wife and then mother. My husband and I have been married for a few years when we decided to start our family. Bringing a baby to our house felt, at the time, as if I finally fulfilled my goal.

When my son was 2 years old, I gave birth to Our daughter. Our family was complete, and I felt proud to have locked up a husband and had two babies before 30 years old. Everything left was to enjoy maternity – at least I thought.

I love being a mom, but early, I got lost

Being a mom has always been easy for me, but in these years of infants and toddlers full of tears and sleepless, maternity has cost a cost. Now in her forties With two teenagersI see how I lost my own identity somewhere between Halloween costumes in hand and schedule dates. Rediscovering who I was at the base was difficult once I realized that I was lost in mom’s life, but I am proof that it is possible.

Before having children, I played in community theater, I went to a monthly reading club, I traveled and I maintained things like nails and hair appointments. I also had a career. In an office. Where I interacted daily with other adult humans. When my babies arrived, there was no time to read, play or leave my neighborhood. I exchanged mani-ray and Dear blonde hair For the political and very bad misadventures of dye at home.

I do not regret being a housewife, even if it made consequences

My father, who was my best friend, died unexpectedly when my first child was a baby, and in one of our last conversations, he urged me to leave my job. “Babies are only small for a little while, terrible,” he said, “it’s time that you will never come back.” Two weeks later, my father had left, and a mixture of sorrow and thinking that his advice was his Leave a job that I loved – An executive director in a non -profit organization – and to become a household in a home. I do not regret it, but that does not mean that it was not incredibly difficult.

There are so many advantages to get lost as mom to two little humans. The memories, the love and the proximity that I still share with my children to date have these difficult years of wiping steps, manipulating toddler’s heads with grocery store and sailing in the world surprisingly Icky to make sure that “friends” are worth it.

Today, my children are approaching 17 and 15 years old, and I would give up almost anything to rock my little daughter who sucks her thumb to sleep or hear my son to pronounce “yogurt” once again. But I am also happy to recover – to know that I am mom And A billion other things, from a global traveler to a secret lover of Romantic Smutty novels.

Remember who I was before maternity

Many things broke in my life before rediscovering me. My marriage has suffered from the basic years of my children. I started therapy, making difficult decisions to distance myself from my family for mental health reasons, took control of my health and Lost 100 poundsAnd, more recently, Drinking alcohol completely. But it was not only the big changes that helped me rediscover myself. I chipped and distant my exterior from being “Bennet and Kennedy’s mother to find someone who loves long walks outside, moving away, keeping a small circle of trust and cooking friends. I am always their mom, but it is not the most interesting thing in my house, and that makes me a better mother for both.

These days, I am blown away by the young mothers who refuse to let go of their identity. I hear them on podcasts, I see them in my community and I look at them on social networks while they are parent And Write books, go to cinemas, travelless With their spouse and plan a lunch massage while someone else takes care of their children.

I would have liked to have mothers like that in my life when I was younger, but as I did not do, I am always the first to say to the new mothers, it is normal to take time for themselves in any form whatsoever for them. The young mothers for whom I delight the most are the ones I see clinging to themselves during parenting, because it is the key to all this.