**It's basically about being enough as a new mom. Being enough even though you're not the same version of yourself that you're used to.
How I (reluctantly) accepted the “new” me and let go of “her”
Being a mother was not what I thought it would be. Sure, it’s incredibly difficult (to say the least). And yea, there are moments where I feel like my heart will literally explode from pure joy. But then there was the other thing I didn’t expect. It sounds like an obvious consequence of but, for me, it was reallllyyy difficult to accept the “new” me. And I don’t mean the person who now has a child, who can’t go out with friends as easily, who barely sleeps and who has a few extra pounds they’re not used to. That’s easy to deal with! I mean the new person that completely replaced the old person. The woman who would never go back to being who she was before pregnancy. Her…. I was a different human being altogether. I was now bonded/attached to a little human for the rest of my life. He was solely dependent on me (and my husband) to be fed, to be cared for, etc.
And it wasn’t a matter of “getting used” to things or realizing that eventually things would get easier. Eventually there would be more sleep and less fear. All of that does happen. But it happens to this new person. Not the old her. I kept waiting for the moment when things would normalize and I would start feeling like my old self. Those moments never really came. Not in the way I wanted them to come. Because she didn’t exist anymore, she wasn’t there to go back to. I was now a mother to a beautiful baby boy. And while that didn’t define everything I was, I had to accept that it was now a ginormous part of me.
When I slowly realized that my old self was long gone, never to return again…it was HARD. I mourned “her” like I would the ending of a friendship. I couldn’t believe it! Me! I’d work so hard to become a woman I was proud of. So head strong and so sure of who I was and what I wanted for my life. And in an instant (or really 9 months), she was gone. But I had to stop fighting it and come to terms with this new person that stared at me in the mirror. The day I stopped trying to fight it and stopped wishing it would get better, was the day that I had the biggest release. I gave up. Not in a defeated sense but I gave up the fight. I was the ‘new’ me and that was totally fine. We are not meant to be the same person for all of our lives. I’ve always been the type of person that welcomed changed and loved growing as a person. Why couldn’t I look at motherhood in the same way? I could not be my old self but my new self was pretty bad ass in her own way.
I can still see her sometimes. I can feel her. It took a long time and, honestly, some days I still get a little sad thinking about “her.” But I try to repeat to myself: she may be gone but You are here and You are amazing. This you is enough to fulfill all your heart’s desires just like the old you. There’s room for each part of me, at different points of my life to exist and to be amazing.
** Notes from author