Why do I do what I do?
I’m a maternal mindset coach, I work with mums who feel like they’ve lost a part of themselves in motherhood.
When I ask myself why I am doing this type of coaching, I know it’s because that was me a few years ago. I had made the decision to be a stay at home mum before I had my first baby and not for one minute do I ever regret that decision but when I look back over the past 5 years, I know that becoming a mother and being at home rocked the very foundations on which I had built my sense of self.
With hindsight, I can say that I had an identity crisis a few years into my motherhood journey. I wouldn’t have used these words ‘identity crisis’ at the time, all I knew then was that I felt out of sorts, like my life was not really my own.
The woman I was, the lifestyle and social circle I had built before babies seemed to abruptly come to an end. A new way of thinking, feeling, living and loving was born and although it was beautiful it also felt like Susan Maushart describes it – it’s as if I had just turned up in a different country, didn’t know the language and had to survive.
It was pretty fucking intense.
Although I had become the entire universe to these babies, something inside of me felt so displaced. I felt like I had no real sense of self in the world and if I’m totally honest, I felt suffocated by the demands of motherhood.
I found it so all-consuming and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t see anything for just me in the future, a horizon beyond what I was doing as a mum. I had always had something to work towards, a new job, a different country that I was moving to, even further studies.
Motherhood brought me so deep into the present moment, I think it kind of freaked me out. I had nowhere to hide, nothing to distract me from being full present with myself and my son.
It’s taken me a good while to get to where I am now. I’ve read extensively as I tried to put my finger on what I was feeling, I’ve talked until I could talk no more with friends who wanted to understand how I felt and I’ve wept with both happiness and sadness.
I do this because I want mums to know that there is no shame in admitting that motherhood is soul-crushingly hard at times. There’s no right or wrong way to be a mum, there’s only your way, and you will find it.
