Is it Okay to Miss Who I Was Before Becoming a Mom?

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Yes, sweet mama. The answer is a gentle, sure yes. You’re allowed to miss the person you were before your babies, the one who had time to fix her hair (let alone wash it), put on makeup, and leave the house in something a bit more stylish than sweatpants and a stained t-shirt.

You’re allowed to miss the woman who could sit through a movie without being pulled from the couch, who could light a candle and not think twice about the house going up in flames, or who could have a conversation with her husband that didn’t center on diapers, toddler birthday parties, and who’s carrying more weight around the house.

If you didn’t miss who you once were, who were you? A person not worth missing? I seriously doubt that, my friend. You can miss days when your jokes were wittier, your ability to serve the community was steadier, and your dance moves were less likely to make you pee yourself.

There was a beautiful you before your babies, a beautiful you so brave and bold and adventurous that it woke up one day and said, “Let’s do this mom thing.”

Who you were and who you are are all part of God’s process of your becoming. If you’re a believer, each life season presents new lessons, which force you to become someone new. Sometimes, the new is much harder and pushes you to your wits’ end, like motherhood, but you can appreciate the good, wholesome parts of the past while allowing God to do something special in you today.

Looking Back Isn’t Always Bad

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Most of us believe that retreating to the past is always a bad thing, like we’re trying to escape the present. Sometimes, we are. But other times, it’s a reflection on days gone by. Here, it’s a reminder, a faithful push from God, that the beauty that rested in the past rests in today. We just have to dig a little deeper to see it.

It’s one thing to look back as Lot’s wife did, when God has strictly called you to run away from a life of sin (Genesis 19:26). It’s destructive to occupy a headspace that lingers in wickedness and evil. But it’s a different ball game to reflect on the former days of goodness and joy, to understand how to find that same mercy for today. Just as the author of Hebrews reflects on the great heroes of faith to stir up and motivate New Testament believers to remain faithful to their ever-faithful God (Hebrews 11), we as mothers can practice the same reflection.

One quick trick I’ve discovered to actively see God’s good, kind hand in the daily grind of being a mama is to pause and thank Him each time He grants me a small grace. It’s what Christ refers to as “our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). We aren’t to ask for and praise Jesus solely for physical food, but for the spiritual, emotional, and mental sustenance He provides each day.

I find these bits of grace when I’m driving down the road with my babies and someone nearly rear-ends my car, but everyone is untouched. I find these servings of daily bread in moments when my brown-eyed boy looks at me and giggles because he believes Cookie Monster is the best thing in the whole wide world. I find God in nearly everything when this mama heart pauses long enough to practice gratitude, and in that, I can appreciate everything I was before having my son, and everything I’m becoming now that he’s here, challenging me to become more resilient, fearless, and faith-filled than I ever dared to become before him.

Thank Him for the healthy poop diapers when your little one’s gassy tummy finally lets up.

Thank Him for the princess dresses littering your floor, as your healthy girl makes music with her tiny hands and feet.

Thank Him for the scrapes and scratches on your son’s knees that could’ve been broken limbs had he not fallen out of that tree in just the right way.

Thank Him for the teenager who put down their phone long enough to want to have a conversation with you.

Thank Him for the adult child who still calls to tell you they tried one of your old recipes.

Remember, mama, you can look back on the sweet days before kiddos and hold them dearly. I’ll never forget slow, cozy mornings making breakfast with my husband, or the times he and I could hop in the car and make it to Dairy Queen right before it closed. But if you sense that this remembering is more of an escape, give gratitude a sincere, conscientious try, and see what beauty you find in today (even if you’re a bit exhausted in the process).

Sharing Who You Were with Your Babies

I’ve curated a bittersweet (but mostly sweet) habit of telling my son about who I was before him. He loves to read, just like me. So when he picks up a book that was a childhood favorite of mine, I tell him. When he points to a picture of Dada while we were traveling overseas, I share those adventures with him. If an old 2000s song is playing in the grocery store, I pause to sing it to him so he knows the music that makes this mama feel like she's 14 again.

You’re allowed to walk the balance beam, dipping toes from the past into the future. Those lovely things that made you, you at five, fifteen, and twenty-five, can and should be shared with your children.

I’ve often told my husband that I’m afraid my mom worked so hard trying to be a mom that she never got to be herself. She gave up so much, threw all her energy into us, that it’s almost as if I miss a piece of her she never got to cultivate.

In my 30+ years of life, I’ve discovered that the conversations I crave most with my mama are the ones she shares about times before I was born, the ones when she was such an excellent ballet dancer that she was offered a spot with the Atlanta Ballet Company. I also love looking at pictures of 20-year-old her, with wild 80s hair, giant earrings, and shoulder-padded sweaters. I want to know that woman because I want to be her friend, even if that friendship lives in a place I never occupied.

It’s important to still find joy in your hobbies, to go on adventures, and to be your own person. This can be a hard concept to grasp when your children were conceived and grew inside your womb, when it was your body that birthed them into this world. It’s easy to feel they are forever attached to you. But there’s a reason the umbilical cord is cut, a reason they wean, a reason they drive off on their own, and move out on their own.

God destined them for a role that you cannot fulfill—a role they can’t fulfill if you never show them what it means to become the unique individual He created them to be. And you do that best by example, by showing them that mama finds God in volunteering at the church to play the piano or serve in the soup kitchen, that mama finds God’s beauty when she sits at her pottery wheel or makes her homemade earrings, that mama is more faithful to God when she honors quality time with her husband and godly friends who support and encourage her.

Your babies are allowed to see who you were and how those pieces of you can still live in the present as joyful sacrifices to the Lord that He can use to fortify independence and curate joy in your children’s lives. And in this, they feel your permission to grow into adults who bravely step into their God-given calling.

Resting in Who You Will Become

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A dear friend (and lovely author), Alicia Searl, once shared that the hardest season of motherhood is the one that you’re in. Each new season offers new challenges and forces you to stretch yourself in new ways. On one hand, this seems a bit, well, miserable, like the morning news you’d rather turn off and forget about. But if you’re brave enough to accept your limitations and humble enough to be challenged, you can accept this truth with a sense of freedom and grace that only comes from God.

As I shared with my blog readers only last week:

When a mama’s heart leaves her body, it’s not a silent, painless transfer.

It’s a screaming, sweating, white-knuckled tearing that no stitches, no time, will patch. The pain never fully goes away, only dulls until the little being now sustaining your heartbeat looks at life like it’s gloriously kind, and your mind instantly recalls that first swaddle, that first cry, that first desperate need to clasp them to your chest so maybe you can protect them from the very place you birthed them into.

When a mama’s heart leaves her body, it’s not a silent, painless transfer.

It’s surrendering your joy and patience and energy and time and dreams and needs to ten tiny fingers and toes that need to know they’re safe. The pain never goes away, only dulls until your patience fizzles, your temper flies, and your selfishness steals the wheel. Then you wonder if you’re not the very thing they need protection from.

When a mama’s heart leaves her body, it’s not a silent, painless transfer.

But mothers were made to withstand and be refined by fire.

On those hard, trying days when you feel so guilty for wishing for your old life, or thinking to yourself, “I don’t want to do this,” remember that it’s not that we don’t want to do this; it’s that we can’t do this on our own. But we weren’t made to.

It’s understanding and accepting that we only find God’s grace and rest in His sovereignty when we are at the end of ourselves, when every facet of our being is so spent that we understand the brick wall has been hit, the mental pep talk didn’t work, and our hopes to somehow grasp at the bare threads of perfection have unraveled.

When you’re at the end of yourself, mama, I hope you find a way to whisper, cry, or even scream, “Thank you, God, for daily bread.”

Thank Him for your ability to survive when your inabilities leave you defeated. And in this defeat, may you remember that who you were and who you are becoming is something beautifully resilient, someone called and favored by God Almighty to raise His next generation of world-shakers.

I’m cheering you on, mama! (And picking up the same toy for the five-millionth time right alongside you!)

Love,

Peyton

Related:

3 Biblical Truths for Moms When You No Longer Recognize Yourself

Peyton Garland is an author, editor, and boy mama who lives in the beautiful foothills of East Tennessee. Subscribe to her blog Uncured+Okay for more encouragement.