You are not her. I think, those are the words I have decided I am going to tell myself every morning.
I came up for air over the weekend. My beautiful husband took over all things on the kid front, and I got to go just focus on one person for the day, me. I attended a conference with some incredible women from my church family and the simple act of taking a break, of coming up for air, that did wonders. Won. Ders.
You know what was craziest about coming up for air? I could breathe. Sounds like a no-brainer, right? But I think, sometimes, we can get so tangled up in the minutia of the every day that we forget that it doesn’t take much to catch our breath. It just takes actually doing. So I did and I got to sit, with my own thoughts, without having to get anyone a cup of water, figure out what was for lunch, load a gaggle into car seats, mediate bickering brothers, wipe anyone’s bottom, or anything else of that nature. I just got to breathe.
And it was refreshing. Because, I realized something very important. I realized that I’d been neglecting a very important piece of business. And that, is my mommy mantra. I need a new mommy mantra for my current life. I haven’t updated it as of late. The stages of motherhood are different for every mom. The stages of life are different for every person. And just like I change up my hair color for the different seasons of life {oh the curse of being born blonde}, I need to change/update/alter/or adopt a new mantra for different seasons of motherhood. For different seasons of life. I need to restrategize every once in awhile. And take time to rebrand my life. In order to remind myself of my purpose. And to re-focus my vision. And my goal. Because it can be hard to differentiate yourself from the titles of mom and wife, at times, at stages. And it can be hard to figure out where the old you might have gone.
So my theme… my words for this iteration of Project: Momma is You are not her.
Sounds self-explanatory, right? You are you. Should be pretty easy to remember. But I am a creative spirit. A funky soul. A deep feeler. And a mental wanderer… prone to getting lost far too deeply in thought. And a bit of a victim to being a passionate person. And so, I clearly plum forgot that I am me again. That I am not her.
I’ve talked recently about how I feel tired. But not like eyes-drooping-mouth-yawning tired… but physically-and-mentally-drained tired. First of all, let me divulge that once again, I’m going through a bit of a hormone craze. Not the crying and such like I had with Jonah, when I weaned him. But the milk sweats are back. And the feeling of being eternally tired, that’s hanging out, too. But that aside, as a mom, I feel like I am actually being physically tugged in 22 different directions on any given day. Yet my life is fairly uneventful. And my personality, well, my personality likes a little bit of eventful. I love my boys more than I could have ever anticipated or understood I would. It’s actually a little ridiculous to me how that happens… ridiculously amazing. But in staying home, in doing the same things day in and day out, I have realized, I don’t take a lot of opportunities to feel like the me I once knew. And I am at a place where I am questioning how I locate the person I was before the motherness… or how I become the person I now am since placing another piece of me into the world. But the fact of the matter is, I am not her anymore exactly. Because with each child, I have shifted my attention and affection away from myself, and onto them, and when I look up, I realize I’ve changed. And as I have felt with each child I have realized that I cannot go back to where I was because I’m now at a new place. And this… each time, this is a bit perplexing to me.
But I came up for air…
And now, it feels, at least for the moment, at least while the just-got-some-air high is still in effect, like I’ve been looking at it all wrong. Or like my hormones have been pointing me in the wrong direction {pretty likely}. Because, you see, I don’t think that I’ve actually lost myself each time I look up. I am actually just meeting a new part of me. The person I was before each new person entered my heart is not lost, but rather is changed… forever morphed into a new version wrapped in the same ol’ packaging. I cannot go back completely to the woman I was before I was a mother. Partially because it’s been 6 years since I had my first child and every single human being has a lot of change in a six year period, mother or not. And partially because she couldn’t hack it in my life now. She didn’t have any clue how much she would love children. Or how enthralled she would be with her own. Or how protective she’d be of them. Or how much patience she would grow. Or how much her world would go topsy turvy with the arrival of each fresh bundle.
Parts of her do remain. Of that woman I was. And those parts can be found when proper care and feeding are given. When I give her the attention she deserves. And parts of her are walking around on this earth. Which can be seen and found when snuggling close or hearing them laugh. But many parts, are gone/changed/altered and will never be the same. And those parts were probably not of much use anyway. Because they were just heavy baggage she schlepped around to make other people happy.
When I came up for air, I found a sense of peace. And an excitement stirring inside. That even though my days are currently much the same, I am ever changing.
And I feel refreshed in that.
You are not her, my mind whispered to me this morning. You are not her. Because you get to be more. You get to be mom. And wife. And even, still you. A different you than she was. And how fantastic that is. I think I did lose sight of me for awhile. And I am sure I will again, of that I have no doubt. Because I think you have to be a supporting character at times, even in your own story. But now, for a bit, I’m determined I should be the main character, at least for a sentence or two. Heck, maybe even a chapter. Because the only thing currently keeping me from the new is her. The idea of her being younger, more vibrant, and more fun… But I forget that she had her shit much less together. And she wasn’t always honest with the person she presented to the world. And she was wandering, too. So being her may not have been all it it feels cracked up to be.
You are not her, I will remind myself before my feet hit the floor beside my bed in the morning. Not anymore. And in declaring that I am figuring out how to be this newly minted me. Me with three kiddos. Me without breastfeeding an infant. Me without an outside career. Me with likely being done with the chapter of newborns. Me with a husband of a decade. The me who has grown up and grown in. And yet, continuing to become. I will never again be the person I was 10 years ago. Or before kids. Or even, who I was yesterday. And that’s a pretty cool part of life.
I don’t know where this mantra will take me. Maybe it will give me the boost I need and I will have a chapter written for a book by Christmas, maybe I will finally book guitar lessons, maybe I will oddly decide that I want to get on the floor and play pretend, maybe I will stop meal planning, or discover that this new me really likes Vala’s Pumpkin Patch. But I think it’s got promise. And I can get behind that. At least for this season.
You might also like
