Rebel Mothers

Today we're going deep into a common topic that resonates with many mothers – the journey of losing, and rediscovering, one's identity in the context of motherhood. It's a story that many mothers share, but it's one that society doesn't often pause to truly understand. I’m going to cover what our identity is and how it’s formed, why we go through such an identity shift, or identity crisis, when we become mothers, and then I have some very concrete actions you can take if you are in this phase of your life, if you’re one of the mothers out there stuck in this debilitating sense of, “I don’t feel like myself anymore. I don’t have the same hobbies or friends or priorities in life. Who am I now that I’m a mom?” and I think a lot of the advice out there isn’t actually that helpful. You’ll read blogs that say things like, “join a gym! Start a hobby! …” and leaving aside the obvious “who has the time and energy for that,” especially whe you’re a new mom, it’s not that helpful because it’s putting the pressure on the mother herself to reclaim her identity, and not stepping back to see the systems in play that have made her feel like she doesn’t even know who she is anymore. Because part of the deeper truth is not that we’ve lost ourselves in motherhood, it’s that the identity of mother isn’t one that garners the same respect and appreciation, and we are struggling with the reality that we are now mothers in a society that doesn’t value mothering.

Today I want to examine the cultural systems that contribute and create this loss of identity in motherhood. Because What if we’re not actually feeling a loss of identity, what if what we’re feeling is a loss of validation that what we’re doing is worthwhile and contributing to society?

What is identity
Let’s start from the beginning. What is your identity and where does it come from? It’s really the sum total of who you are and your sense of self - your memories, experiences, likes, dislikes, relationships, values, hobbies, appearance, gender, favorite flavor of ice cream, you get the picture. Your identity starts forming as soon as you understand yourself to be a separate human being. Childhood and adolescence are important periods for trying on different identities - experimenting with sexuality, new hairstyles, friendships, sports and activities, and so on. We spend these teenage and early adult years trying out different identities, perhaps copying friends or famous people, to see what feels right to us.

But we have to acknowledge that as we’re growing up and forging our identities, we’re also receiving feedback about aspects of our identity from the world around us. Sometimes the feedback is positive- maybe you have a natural skill for running fast and it feels good to run and you won an award in high school for running, so being a runner becomes part of your identity. Positive feedback about our identity can include compliments, inclusion and acceptance, or celebration of achievements. Or when society honors individuals with similar identities, that can positively reinforce your own sense of self.

But sometimes the feedback is negative. And the truth is, if there is any part of your identity that doesn’t align with what bell hooks named as “imperialist white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy,” you’re going to get more negative feedback, which makes you question, hide, or feel ashamed of these parts of your true self. Negative feedback will include discrimination, body shaming, marginalization or exclusion, stereotyping, microaggressions and more.

And this feedback is hard to ignore. When you’re receiving feedback about your identity, whether it’s consciously spoken to you or unconsciously reflected in what you see praised in the media, that matters, and it shapes the way you think about yourself. So we cannot ignore the very real fact that when I think about WHO I AM and what my identity is, that has in some way been shaped by the society and culture around us.

Why does your identity change when you become a mother?
Well, obviously, when we become a mother, we go through this massive transformational shift in our identity. There’s a little known word out there called matrescence, which is the name for the period of transition where a person goes through pregnancy and birth or adoption, to the postnatal period and beyond. It’s similar to the developmental period of adolescence, when a child transitions to adulthood, that transitional period to motherhood is called matrescence.

The fact that matrescence still isn’t well known or researched is a big part of the problem, because if we don’t even recognize that the transition to motherhood is it’s own thing, we don’t even have the language to talk about what it does to us. We make so many allowances for teenagers when they’re going through adolescence, we know they’re experiencing huge hormonal shifts, major changes in friendships and relationships, abrupt and obvious physical changes, taking on more responsibilities, and so on. We need to start extending this same amount of grace and compassion for new mothers too, because becoming a mother changes every facet of our being. I’ll touch on a few here, but this is by no means an exhaustive list

Physical changes
Your body does a lot of weird and gross things when you’re pregnant,
Social changes
Friends

Financial changes
Maternity leave, loss of career,

Shift in values
. A new mother’s focus is now redirected entirely toward the care and well-being of their child. Suddenly things that used to feel really important just don’t feel that important anymore, or you just don’t have the time or energy you used to.

These values can be things like shifting your focus from career to family, or it might simply be hobbies and activities that you engaged in that formed part of how you identified yourself. I used to do these long yoga classes before I became a mother. I'd spend hours on my mat moving my body, breathing quietly, sitting in meditation. And then once I had children it was like, who has the time? I might breathe quietly while I wait for my coffee to brew in the morning, but hours on the yoga mat? No way. Except yoga was a huge part of my identity before I became a mother and it caused me a lot of distress that I had lost that part of myself.

But feeling a loss of identity can be more than just a shift in values, or a lack of time and energy to devote to hobbies and activities we love. Remember how we talked about how our identity is also rooted in the feedback we receive from society. And our patriarchal society has very clear expectations of how a good mother is supposed to behave and what she is supposed to value. These expectations? They’re bananas man, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Patriarchal motherhood starts before working on us before we even start menstruating. Girls and women are raised with the expectation that they will become a mother, because under patriarchy, motherhood is the highest potential for women. We were given baby dolls to nurture, we were disbelieved if we said maybe we didn’t want children, we were told of course you want children, you’ll regret it if you don’t!

And then once you become a mother, you have to prioritize the role of motherhood above all other aspects of your identity. If being a mother is expected to be the highest potential for a woman, and supposed to be something all women want, then it should by extension be the only thing we care about. And yes, this sounds ridiculous when I say it, but I’m sure that every mother listening to this podcast can think of examples of times when they were consciously or unconsciously shamed for prioritizing anything else above their child. We lose ourselves in the identity of motherhood because that’s actually what’s expected of us. How many mothers have gone to work or gone out with friends and were asked “who’s at home with the baby?” revealing a clear expectation that it’s the mother’s responsibility to be at home with the baby at all times.

And this happens for all mothers. Even women who desperately wanted children, who wanted the identity of mother, it’s a huge shock to the system when that is all you are expected to be anymore. All those other facets and elements of your personality, your identity, your hobbies, your pleasures have all been reduced to one word - Mother. And this is why it feels like a loss. We spend so much time invested in our children that we forget to prioritize our own needs, desires, goals, and dreams.

This identity loss is usually felt very keenly in the early days of mothering, when it is so intense and exhausting, but it doesn’t necessarily happen right away. My own motherhood identity crisis didn’t actually happen until my baby, my third child, was around 3 years old and I’d already been a mother for 8 years. I mentioned in my intro episode that this was when I left my career in order to follow my husband's cross-country promotion to become a stay at home mom for the first time in my life. I’d spent years cultivating an identity around being a successful working mother, embracing my career that I loved and also having children that I loved. When I no longer had that career, I spent a few months in a really anxious state. I felt so invisible and small, like my voice had disappeared and I was no longer making any contribution to the world. And it was so frustrating because everyone around me was giving me this lip service of, “oh, but you have the most important job in the world! Stay strong mama!” but it didn’t feel very authentic. There was nothing in movies or books or news stories around me that actually made me feel like motherhood was the most important job in the world. I bet you can name some politicians, billionaires, movie stars, celebrated athletes, but can you name one single mother who is famous for her role as a mother? Even Barbie, one of the most famous toys of all time made specifically for girls, isn’t a mother. She’s been everything BUT a mother.

So I was grappling with really feeling like I lost a part of myself. And I also felt bad about complaining about it, because I knew that I was privileged and lucky to be able to choose to stay home. But I missed feeling like I was part of the world. I felt like everyone else was out shaping the culture and making a life for themselves and I was just cutting the crust of sandwiches. And there’s a lot of nuance and further discussion to be had around the value of homemaking and raising children, and have no fear, this podcast will continue to dive deep into this topic, but for the purposes of this episode the important thing is that I just kept questioning “WHY do I feel like this? I actually really do love being with my kids. I really am grateful that I can spend time with them while they’re little. But why did I go from feeling so clear about my value to the world to questioning it now that I was doing something that is actually pretty vital to the continuation of the human race? Why do I feel less valued as a mother than I did as an employee?

Asking these questions is what eventually led me to study motherhood in my master’s degree and even the creation of this podcast. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it’s because the institution of modern motherhood is not set up to actually support mothers themselves, it’s set up to support rampant consumerism, patriarchy, capitalism, and hyper individualism.

So when we’re feeling a loss of identity as a mother, it’s not just because we’ve given up our hobbies and we spend all our time thinking about our kids, it’s because it feels like no one else out there is thinking about us as mothers.

The COVID pandemic threw this into focus for many people - when all the schools closed in the spring of 2020, capitalism and patriarchy combined to disproportionately place the burden of caregiving, remote schooling and household management on mothers, many of whom were unable to continue working as a result. Suddenly it became very clear that our society still predominantly expects women to be the primary caregivers. Fathers faced less pressure to adjust their work routines and were less likely to have their careers hampered by the demands of childcare.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/03/17/the-pandemic-has-highlighted-many-challenges-for-mothers-but-they-arent-necessarily-new/

Of course, the experience mothers went through during the initial lockdown was not universally shared, and this revealed stark contrasts and compounded difficulties based on class and race. While some mothers were able to work remotely and adapt to the challenges of caregiving and homeschooling, others, particularly those in lower-paying jobs classified as essential labor, faced a much harsher reality. Women working in healthcare, retail, and service industries often had to choose between their livelihoods and the safety of their families, exposing themselves to heightened health risks. Additionally, mothers of color were disproportionately affected by both the economic and health aspects of the pandemic. They were more likely to hold frontline positions, often lacking adequate protective measures, and were also more susceptible to the virus itself due to systemic healthcare disparities.

It’s clear that there are much larger systems at play that shape our identities and also our experiences of motherhood. So what are you supposed to do when you get to the point where you’re asking yourself things like: “Who am I now? What is meaningful to me? What am I here for? What do I really want out of life? What’s the point of it all?” This is a sign you are in an identity shift. And even past the initial phase of matrescence, once you become a mother, nearly any major transition in our mothering journey will bring on these identity shifts - when your children start school, when they start high school and drive away in their own car, when they leave the house, when they become parents themselves. But this is when we get to use mothering as a springboard to living a more intentional and authentic life.

So part two of this podcast episode is all about what you can do to reclaim your identity. And remember, you’re not regaining the identity that you had before you were a mom, you’re forging a new one. You. Are. A. Different. Person. Now. Instead of trying to go back to where you were before, you are trying to figure out who this new person is.

Here’s some ideas you can do when you find yourself at this point of “who am I and what do I want out of life?”

Do a values exercise. If you just google “values exercise,” you’ll come up with a list of values that you can work through to get clear on what is truly important to you. If you’ve done this in the past, revisit it and see what’s changed and what remains the same. Then check in - are your actions aligned with your values? Are you living a life that actually exhibits these priorities? Checking in with your own top values can be a helpful way of checking in with what’s really important. And the power of motherhood is that it calls you into this space over and over again. With the birth of each child, and at each child’s progressive life stage, you can let go of what is no longer serving you and embrace new directions.
Reconnect with activities that interest you just for the sake of you, things that YOU like to do without feeling like you need to bring your kids along. You are forging an identity outside of being a mom. And it’s totally okay if what you like to do has been co-opted and ruined by your kids. I love finding new music to listen to, but for the last however many years the only music I seem to listen to is music my kids want to hear. So I just wait for them to go to school and then I turn up my own songs.
What DO you like to do? Cook and eat food that has flavor and complexity but lately you’ve just been eating mac and cheese and chicken nuggets? Go for long hikes without anyone whining about how tired they are or how their feet hurt? Honestly, sometimes kids just make everything so hard, no wonder you don’t like to do any of this stuff anymore. But that passion is still there. There’s got to be something you can think of that you like to do without your children around - is there a way you can incorporate that thing into your life again?
Lean into the fact that having children has probably woken up some fire in your soul to make the world a better place and really made you aware of the problems in society today. I’ve always been concerned with women’s rights but I really became a rampant feminist after I became a mom. In my coaching calls with clients, one of the areas we focus on is maternal activism. Maternal activism refers to the engagement of mothers in advocacy, social, or political movements to promote positive change in areas that directly impact families, children, and maternal well-being. It's a form of activism that is fueled by personal experiences and the desire to create a better world for current and future generations.
So what are you passionate about now? Climate change? Gun control? Healthy food in schools? More rights and understanding for neurodivergent kids? There are communities of people out there who are fighting for change in areas that are important to you, and you can go join them. Not only does this give you a purpose and connection to something that’s bigger than you, it also connects you to people with shared values who might just become your friends, because we all need more mom friends.
Get to know, and maybe even like, your new body. Your body is different now, and you probably have some feelings about that. All of these cultural systems, patriarchy, religion, capitalism, white supremacy, have something to say about what our body is supposed to look and feel like. Motherhood forces us to pay attention to our bodies in ways we’ve never maybe had to before, I noticed that a lot when I was teaching prenatal yoga, that a lot of my students were totally clueless about their own bodies. So get to know this body that you’re in right now. I started lifting weights when I turned 40 and it’s been awesome. I was never athletic, my whole life I’ve always been pretty soft. I think it's why I was so drawn to Yoga, it was something where I could lie down whenever I wanted. But it’s really nice feeling stronger in this 40 year old body and I like it.
What would it take for you to get to know your body? Moving around, dancing, going for a walk, lifting weights, maybe going to a physical therapist to finally deal with various aches and pains, or working on pelvic floor issues. Maybe it’s just taking a shower in the morning, styling your hair a new way, committing to washing your face every night or flossing your teeth. Sometimes spritz on a perfume that you like or wear sparkly jewelry that makes you happy. When I have the shower where everything coincides, you know it’s hair washing day AND leg shaving day AND exfoliating my face day, I feel like I can take on the world.

So to wrap this up, the process of discovering your identity in the context of motherhood is complex and nuanced and it’s deeply influenced by societal norms and cultural expectations. It’s not just about losing yourself in the demands of caregiving, but it’s a profound transformation that requires navigating an intricate web of external feedback and internal desires. Reclaiming yourself in motherhood means embracing new passions, seeking out communities aligned with shared values, and recognizing the potential for your new role as a mother to drive positive social change. It’s not about reverting to the self you were before you became a mother, but rather it’s a leveling up into a new and empowered version, breaking free from the confines of a society that has traditionally undervalued the role of mothering. It’s through this process that not only can mothers reclaim their identities, they can simultaneously reshape the narrative around motherhood itself.