Recently a couple of ladies–older moms I respect and admire–made comments on a few of my blog posts that show me I’m not the only woman who grapples with the change in identity that comes with motherhood.
“I didn’t quite know who I had become,” one said, referring to how it feels to be a mother of young children.
“I was not prepared for the change and especially how being a wife and mother entwines you so much more intimately with another and finding your identity in that change,” said the other.
Yes.
And yes.
Pre-marriage, I thought I could go on being Luci, only married. Fill a role like a job. Be sweet and kind and loving and submissive (in the best kind of way), all while keeping my own counsel underneath. I found out marriage doesn’t work that way. I can’t just fill a role, because marriage is not a job. Instead of keeping my own counsel, I have to share myself–the negative parts, the critical parts, the hurting parts, the parts that have an opinion about things. I have to share these parts as equally as I share the sweet and loving parts (although all of it may always be shared with kindness).
If I share any less of myself, the marriage is less.
Marriage makes me larger. In making me give up a part of myself, it makes me more myself.
Motherhood is perhaps an even greater change in identity. I remember looking at my tiny, furry, dark-haired baby when she was born and thinking I did not feel the overwhelming, hormonally-driven surge of love and well-being the pregnancy manual had led me to expect. And yet I knew that I loved her. And I also knew she had to be the cutest baby I had ever seen (wink, wink).
Did you know that a mother’s body absorbs cells from her unborn baby that remain long after birth–even her entire life? “This cellular invasion means that mothers carry unique genetic material from their children’s bodies, creating what biologists call a microchimera, named after the legendary beasts made of different animals,” Viviane Callier of the Smithsonian writes.
So yes, a woman literally holds pieces of both her lover and her children in her body. No wonder we grapple with a changing identity.
Interesting!
My biggest change came when my daughter became an adult. I know this is way ahead of you all. Each life change is difficult and I pray my way through as only God can help me.
I guess I am still me and that part that is independent, opinionated, strong-willed did not change just because I got married, nor because I had a baby. My roles changed, yes, but not who I was. Maybe, that is because I was much older when I married and knew who I was and was secure in who I was. And I had a husband who respected the person he had married and didn’t try to change that.
When my oldest was born, I had to fill out some forms and the receptionist said to “fill the information for your daughter”. That was when I realized I was a mother and that my life had changed forever.