What happens when your lived experience or the external representation of yourself doesn’t match your ideal or the way you view your inner self?
Perhaps you’ve always expressed yourself as organised, in control, tidy. This is something you love about you and maybe measure others against. Maybe you love clean living – organic food, no packets, no sugar. Perhaps the life you envisaged was simpler, or busier, had fewer people in it, or more. Maybe you’re a workaholic or a family man. Maybe you love to surround yourself with others, or you could be a harry hermit (like me). Whatever you feel you are or describe yourself as we tend to have a great deal of attachment to it; it defines us, its who we are, it’s how we self-identify. What happens then, if we find ourselves living out a persona we don’t identify with? Or worse, that we don’t want to identify with, despite still loving and choosing the life we lead?
In a society of combined families, working parents, and celebrated extroverts, this dissonance can be the root of mental and emotional unrest, of anxiety and a loss of wellbeing.
I had a daughter. One daughter and she was my world. After 4 years of waiting she was here and she was my whole focus. A born extrovert, she loved people and would make friends with everyone. I remember when she was 3 we were on a beach in Byron Bay. Just her dad, our two dogs, me and her. She was desperate to play and as she chased other children along the beach her dad and I looked at each other and knew she needed a sibling. We couldn’t have any more children; as it was, Faith was a miracle. And so our life focused around her and I and despite always wishing for her a sibling, I loved it. She came everywhere with me.
Her dad and I parted ways, but I loved being a single mother of one child; Faith never went to childcare and I didn’t have parents to care for her so we were always together – work, uni, everywhere. The house was clean, organised, we were routined, I was in control, she and I worked as one…it was easy, it was as I wanted it in terms of food, aesthetic, activities, cleanliness – everything.
Fast forward 5 years.
Im the mother of 5, I share a house with my partner, and now, my daughter is distanced from me – she’s one of ‘the kids’. We don’t do things together, her and I, we do things as a whole or separately. I yell a lot. It’s them and me, and she has quickly been absorbed away from me and into them like spilled water rushes into a paper towel. Its what I wished for of course and I love my partner. She has siblings. She has fun, she has company. She a best friend who lives with her. The house, well, its’ almost never tidy. Why, for the love of God, do cushions not stay on the couch? They live permanently on the floor as though in defiance of being told what to do – maybe they’ve learned it from the kids? The pantry is well beyond my control now - filled with packets of things I would never buy. I’m not even going to talk about the bathroom. The harry hermit in me feels quite lost and at the very least overwhelmed, most of the time. I don’t recognise myself or my surroundings as something that resonates naturally with me. I miss Faith. I mourn her and the time we shared together. I am so happy that she is happy but I miss us. I miss giving her the things she wants and the experiences we had, in order to be fair or frankly because who can afford it, with 5. People introduce me as a mother of 5 and I don’t sit comfortably with all the connotations that has.
It’s not because I don’t love my life, or because I’m not grateful for the abundant family I have. It’s simply a recognition of the loss of identity change brings, and the difficulties in navigating the new road, and the new self.
This is something women (and men, but particularly women) face in various areas of their lives, especially in terms of the identity we lose in the workplace when we become a mother, and its’ not to be underestimated; suicide is the leading cause of maternal death and one in 5 women experience postnatal depression. The strong self-identity we have developed by our early 30’s is hugely linked to who we are in the workplace. Driven, career-focused, workaholic, switched on, sharp, well-presented, awake, available. The list goes on. Unequivocally, we change as we become parents. And how many of us return to work, torn, teary, tired, blurry, less available and to top things off, with Weetbix in our hair (that we don’t notice until mid-morning).
So what do we do? We try harder. In an age of self-care, wellbeing and speaking our truth, we put our heads down, and we try harder.
Dissonance. It eats away and creates unrest. It shakes the foundation of how we self-identify and how we validate ourselves; how we measure ourselves against others and against who we know we used to be. We don’t sit comfortably with the connotations our new self brings. We strive and compare and fight and mourn the loss of that special time, that one-on-one time with ourselves and our work. We miss it. We miss the focus and commitment. We miss who we were and what we represented all the while loving this new life. It’s both, we are both, and while it feels like there is an imbalance it’s all still there, in us somewhere. It takes some time to work out the new reality of what we are, who we appear to be and how this sits within us. Up, down, inward and outward we will travel.
I find it hard to be the me I am now and to let go of the image and the me that I was. Absolutely, it can be hard. And on those days I take a minute and allow myself the time I need to have those feelings – and to watch them pass. I know there is a richness and depth to my life and beauty in the chaos. It will pass. The bathroom will be clean again, one day. This ‘mess’ will form the memories of my children and it will develop who I am as a person to have increased compassion, empathy, and acceptance of all things, including myself if I let it.
I think back to that day on the beach, often. The peace, the ease, the quiet. Faith’s loneliness and our longing for more.
Saturday just passed, my partner and I took all 5 kids, with mayhem, noise, and a very cramped car, to the beach. I sat on the sand and watched Faith walk playfully towards the water, arm-in-arm with her sister; her best friend, and I knew that although I missed her, this was good. This was beautiful. And that although this moment too would pass, that her heart was full, and so was mine.
