You could say the title of this blog post is harsh... I suppose really thinking about it, it could be. In this instance though it is purely because it fits in with motherhood. Identity vs motherhood? Where's the connection? Well I've lost mine.
You spend days, months, years growing up and creating this character... You. I feel like you really start to experiment with your identity in the later years of Primary School. I remember this was the time for me that I fell in love with The Living End and decided I wanted to be like Chris Cheney... Just I was shit at guitar so there was a huge difference there. I would listen to them on repeat, stare at the album cover all day... That's when I started realising "oh he has a cool jacket, I want one of those... Oh he has badges on his jacket... I'll need those... Oh black nail polish *rushes to the bathroom". That was my life. That was when I feel like I first started to decide on my character. As I grew up I started to actually have my own identity rather than steal it from a rock star. I started to realise that I wanted my hair certain ways or heavy eye make up... I could be that kid with headphones in listening to Radiohead on my own if I wanted to, or I could be that girl in a band, loud and full of attitude. Every day you are doing something that is forming your identity and what you think of yourself or what other people see. This could be something as small as a motivational quote shared online, or remembering to take your keep cup with you to buy your morning chai latte. Everyone who sees that will get some sort of a sense of who you are... But is it really you? Since becoming a mother I have realised that this "person" that people see when they look at me is not actually who I truly am inside. I am now a mum, a "wifey", a partner. Yes, I am a Mum but guess what... I am a human too, one with thoughts, feelings and other interests that are not just to do with trying to keep up with a toddler all day. Don't get me wrong, I WOULD NOT change it for the world. I love my little family and my beautiful child who is growing up to be such an amazing little human... In fact motherhood is the best trip I've ever gone on HOWEVER... Just because I am a Mum, it does not mean that I don't have an identity, that I don't have my own "self". The amount of conversations I have now that just have to do with motherhood are astounding. It's like once you pop a human out that's all that you are, a human pop-out-ter-rer. "How is she sleeping", "Are you still feeding", "Wow she's crawling. Do you think she will be walking soon" or "cloth nappies are still going well then" are about 90% of my conversations with people now. The other 10% is probably conversations with my partner, or about what to cook for dinner, or conversations where I am just listening to other people talk about their lives. There is never the question of "So... What else have you actually got up to recently". I don't get asked what I want to be when I grow up, what plants I am growing, what sort of food I have been making, if I continued looking into studying, what I want to study, if life is good or what I want to do before I die one day... Because from societies point of view I am just a Mum. This weird thing around losing your identity when you become a Mum needs to be talked about. I probably don't have other ambitions than to get my kid potty trained right? WRONG. If you see a Mumma, stop, ask her how SHE is going, ask her what she does when she has a spare moment, ask her if she has tried anything new recently because she is still that person she used to be... Now just a 2.0 version because she popped a human out.
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A Mum on a mission to raise an Earth Warrior.
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