Where is the woman that was here?
In my case, she got so lost, but so lost, that it seemed that she died and I could never find her again.
It is so funny, and so crazy sometimes to reencounter with memories about my childhood, my teen days and my life before being a parent.
Today, I’m only 37 years old (SO young hey LOL) and when I talk about the girl I was before having children, the woman I was before having children, it literally seems I’m talking about another life and another person. It has not been that long ago, but it seems that it has been a million years ago at the same time.
I can come here today and say that the majority of the women that have children (if not all), are somehow being reborn with their newborn babies.
There are so many layers we can talk about: woman that go through abusive relationships before getting pregnant, women that go through pregnancy and birth trauma, women that have to face the reality of exhaustion, women that meet with the unconditional love that is to have a baby, women that meet depression and anxiety, woman that have to leave their career completely as they are not accepted to that job role again after becoming a mother, women that have to live with an abusive partner, women that simply do not know who they are anymore.
There are so many things mothers go through from the moment they find out they are pregnant, yet they all lead to us losing ourselves completely and having to reinvent ourselves, to change, to rebuild our life, to start a new chapter.
When I lost myself since I had my first boy 7 years ago, I remember I thought I knew what I was doing, I thought I had control of things and everything was going to be okay. Then I remember the feeling of being punched in the face as everything I thought I knew, it was not there. How to make a baby sleep, how to breastfeed, how to function without sleep, how to make money while on maternity leave, how to have a relationship with my partner, how to exercise, how to eat well and how to meet all the expectations motherhood brings.
Plot Twist: I probably failed in 90% of them all (I just won’t say 100% because my children are still alive and healthy). But seriously, what the actual H***? Then if you add a second child on the equation or a 3rd or a 4th, how are we supposed to know who we are, what we like, what works for us in the middle of the absolute chaos. I’ve learnt the hard way that you are simply NOT supposed to know and that it is completely OKAY to just survive for a few years.
This was very powerful to find out, but it took me a long time to do it. Even though I was surrounded by mothers, there were conversations about it and we could share with each other our struggles, I can probably count on one hand (or even less), the people that I actually shared how I felt. Because again, you have to meet some expectations in the society we live in - topic for another blog.
Once I dropped all of those expectations and I started to do what worked for me, things started to get better. My way of doing it was: leaving all mothers groups on whatsapp, unfollowing lots of motherhood content on instagram, surrounding myself with people I felt comfortable with, leaving jobs that did not make sense, following a few dreams, speaking, crying, screaming sometimes and having anxiety attacks. Yeap, there is no right or wrong.
Once I said to myself: I cannot live a life where I do not have time for myself, where I do not know myself, where I’m doing things because I think they work from seeing from others, where I’m working on places and at jobs I do not feel fulfilled, where I feel lost and sad. And then I went to the actual work on changing those things, on finding myself again.
This was a journey that took 7 years, but I got here, and I’m proud of myself for that. I started by taking care of my physical body, from there I started to make and answer lots of questions about myself, my past, my life and who I wanted to be and where I wanted to get. From there, I took a few leaps which led me to a few failures but it gave me the courage I needed to fully trust myself again. Reconnecting to my body, my cycle (stopping birth control), with my emotions, understanding why I reacted the way I reacted, REALLY took me from the dark hole I was in. Being HONEST with myself, without fearing what society was going to think and those surrounding me, saved me.
I found myself again curled in a ball and started to take care of myself, nourish myself, empathise with myself, accept myself, my story and my journey. From there it has been easier to learn how to love myself again, to put myself first, because I also learnt that ONLY if I’m okay, healthy and happy, I’ll make the ones around me happy. Otherwise, it does not work.
Today, I was also able to build a routine where I prioritise myself everyday, where I take care of myself everyday. Where I’m attentive to my emotions, I’m alert to what is happening around me and I’m 100% sure what makes me feel happy and what does not. And Girl, this is SO powerful. Not just because I feel I can achieve everything, but because I met with the person that I really am and my children get to see this (and hopefully follow the same path).
If you are in the start of this journey, middle or end, I just want to say: DO NOT GIVE UP. It will be hard, it will be painful, it will ask you to be courageous and a bit selfish, but in the end, you will get to meet with yourself again, with a beautiful version of yourself that is waiting to be alive again.
Love,
Dea