Life Before Children
What did you use to do? You’ve heard mama friends use the phrase: “Oh I used to…..” , yes? The sentence may be completed with something about creativity, work, travel, culinary arts… You notice a faraway gleam in her eye, and perhaps a sense of regret that this is no longer.
Motherhood does bring changes. Everyone tells us it will. “Everything will change – just you wait!”, they warn us. There is something that happens at birth – an inner shift that allows us to step into this role and support our newborn child in the ways that are needed. We find ourselves giving & loving in ways that we perhaps could not have imagined.
Some things simply don’t fit anymore – activities and identities that we readily set aside, no longer feeling the connection to them that we once did.
Others have simply been set aside – perhaps for lack of energy, time, motivation, or resources. We look back on the days when we “used to….”
And yet there is another way. In Mama Renew groups we often see mothers who find a creative way to reconnect with an activity or identity from before children. One mama started her own business using the skills & activities she loved the most from her work before children. Another started to write again, using a blog to share her thoughts with the wider community. An adventurous mama returned to burlesque dancing.
Even if it’s just for an hour a month, when we take the time to reconnect with what once was we find new ways to be with ourselves in the midst of motherhood. As the following quote so eloquently shares:
Anytime we can listen to true self & give it the care it requires, we do so not only for ourselves but for the many others whose lives we touch.”
- Parker Palmer
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