Recognizing the “Mother-life” Crisis: Finding the New “Me” in Motherhood
“I’ve heard about midlife crises, even quarter-life crises, but no one told me that, when I became a mom, I’d have a full-blown, mother-life crisis. I wanted this baby, have been reading the books and going to all the appointments, but no one told me I’d feel a complete loss of self as soon as I started showing. It’s all about the baby. It’s like who I am as a person has completely disappeared.”
Hannah* a thirty-two-year-old journalist who lives in Washington, D.C. with her partner, came to our practice after experiencing a series of panic attacks during her second trimester of pregnancy. After her medical team ruled out any physiological causality, she sought psychotherapy with me to address the source of her anxiety: her perceived loss of self.
Changes in identity, especially those aligned with lifecycle milestones, have been a constant within the human experience since ancient times. Each part of the world harbors its own expectations, supports, and traditions around parenthood, with the United States known to value individualistic accomplishment over collective responsibility. So when a person is expecting a baby, it is often jarring when people start to focus almost solely on your pregnancy and baby-and not on what made you, well, YOU, as an individual before baby.
Here’s some truth: the ‘you’ before baby isn’t gone, but it’s changed. Instead of viewing identity from a black-and-white, all-or-nothing lens, view this time as an opportunity to get to know this newer, you. The concept of matrescence theory- or the idea of the identity shift involved when one becomes a mother, can be a helpful lens.. As you navigate this transition, here are a few key reminders.
Remember, You Get to Have It All-Just Not All at Once
In other words, having a new baby is a season of your life that won’t last forever (even if it feels like it). You have co-created a whole human being and as repetitive and exhausting as the early years are, what you put in counts, big time. I promise there will be seasons where you get to revisit – or discover – your identity again. But it will never be the same as when it was just you, beholden to only your wishes and needs. That said, as someone with two grown daughters, I now have plenty of time for myself, my career, and my interests PLUS I get the bonus of having adult children who want to spend time with me.
Make time for the things you used to enjoy, but be flexible with your expectations.
Whether you loved going to live music shows or puttering around a bookstore for hours, make a date to enjoy some of the activities you did before parenthood. Just be kind to yourself and keep in mind some of your former faves may need some alterations. For example, when I had my first child, being up with the baby every few hours meant I didn’t have much left in the tank for personal activities, so I learned to keep outings to an hour. If I went out with friends, I would give them fair warning about my limitations.
Express Yourself
Whether you like to record your thoughts via pen and paper, or through talking with other new parents through a support group, expressing yourself as you make sense of this new identity outside can be a helpful way to build more compassion and understanding around the identity shift.
The key is not attending to one identity (before baby identity) or another (parent identity), it’s integrating both into another version of yourself – one that keeps evolving and growing