Who am I with kids?

Hint: not someone who makes beautiful quilts

The other day I was talking with a friend about why he chooses to commute into his office every day, even though it isn’t required.

“Turns out, I love commuting!” he told me cheerfully.

His commute is as follows: first, he puts his one- and three-year-old kids in the car. Then he drives ten minutes to the south to drop kid number one, gets back in the car and drives to another place to drop kid number two. He then gets back in the car to drive home and park the car, at which point he gets out and walks ten minutes to the subway to ride the train north into downtown.

Now, you might think, “what a nightmarish commute!” But not for him. In the car on the way to drop the kids, he told me, he gets a dose of NPR or music. Once the kids are gone he turns on a podcast. He finds the subsequent walk to the subway relaxing, and enjoys the buffer of time on public transit between family and desk.

“I arrive at my desk with a whole number of things already accomplished and also up to date on some news!”

*

I’ve been thinking recently about identity in the context of early parenthood, a topic that is hot on the minds of many of my mid-thirties peers who are transitioning into parenthood or second-parenthood. I recently wrote about suddenly losing all my ambition after having my second child, a shocking and unelected shift in my perception of my self, worth, and purpose, and even more surprising since this was my second child and I thought I knew what I was getting into (hah!). That post, more than any other recently, elicited a flurry of texts and emails from friends and even distant acquaintances, just basically saying, “same, same, same.”

Chris Duffy

recently put out a call for more parents to talk about the identity transition that accompanies entering parenthood, and he posed the question like this:

“I don’t want to fit into some weird cultural idea of what a dad is supposed to be. I just want to be me. But “me” is changing. This is a huge life shift and, like any life event, it’s changing me and changing Mollie. So how do we navigate who we are now and who we’re becoming? How do we hold onto the parts of ourselves that we value and give us joy without pretending like we’re going to be the same person in the future that we were in the past?”

Pretending an identity

In the context of this question, I am an unusual case among my peers. I started wanting kids when I was twenty-six, far too early for my cultural milieu and for my relationship with my eventual husband, which was about three months old at the time. Instead, I spent the following six years working like my life depended on it. When my husband and I finally did decide we were ready to have kids in our early thirties, our bodies declined, and so I began a years-long journey with infertility and IVF.

As a result, for much of the decade before actually having kids, I felt like my true identity was mother, but that identity had to remain stuffed away and hidden until I could actualize it with a baby. I have written about secretly listening to parenting podcasts and covertly gawking at the babies across restaurants. In my group of close friends and even at work, I often fell into a motherly role, watching out for the flock, protecting and nurturing.

In some ways, it was the opposite of Chris’s dad identity problem, where he doesn’t want to be caught flipping burgers on the grill before the big game just because he’s a dad now. Instead, I had all the desire to do the stereotypical mom things, but no kids.

The life force equation

As a result, the arrival of kids has made me feel like my mother identity is clicking into place. Even so, I have gone on my own journey with finding my “self” in this new mom reality, a journey that’s ongoing and, I’m sure, will continue for a very long time.

My biggest realization, particularly after my second baby, is that there is just a hard limit on energy that I have per day to do and make and care and build and grow. This is special energy, I’ll call it life force: the energy that powers creativity and relationships, dance parties and belly laughs, new writing and exercise. If I generally get enough sleep and live in a healthy way, then I have a certain amount of life force to spend on whatever I choose. I can get myself up early and drink coffee and push through the 3 pm slump and try to make more time in the day, but I cannot make more life force. Some days I have more and some days I have less, and that’s that.

Childrearing requires a huge amount of life force, particularly at my kids’ ages (0.5 and 2.5). This means there is less of it left for everything else, the things I used to spend all my life force on: my work, my marriage, my friendships, my hobbies, all of which comprised a major part of my former identity.

For the most part, I am OK with the idea of putting the lion’s share of my life force into raising young kids right now. The new worlds the parenthood has opened up for me are beautiful, and it’s a trade I’m happy to make. But this new reality still does raise in me some fluttering nervousness about who me is, in this same way I think it does for Chris. If I’m spending so much of my life force on mothering, will the other parts of me atrophy and disappear?

Over the past two years I’ve had this anxious thought many times. I still do, but I also have developed some solid responses to it, which help me feel good about the current phase. Here they are.

The things I tell myself when I’m worried that I’m loosing myself in motherhood, in case they help you too!

1. The first is simple: no, those special parts of me won’t disappear, you silly goose (I have a two year old, this is how I talk now). I have spent thirty-six years becoming who I am, and the core parts of me are here to stay. I have spent meaningful parts of my life investing life force into activities I love, like writing literary nonfiction essays and backcountry camping. I have developed a sense of self at work, and I have slowly, surely, built lifelong friendships. The things I care about are through-lines, even when a phase of life takes me away from them for awhile. They will come back, I am absolutely sure of it, perhaps in a new form.

2. There are a million new things within the context of being a mom that I can now choose to take interest in, based on my own preferences. My friend who loves his commute is a shining example of this. Within his chaotic two-kids-under-four life, this is a part that he can really enjoy, his extra complicated commute, no matter that it sounds like hell to the rest of us! I like this example because it’s so bizarre, but certainly there are more typical areas of parenting to select as a focus (and my friend obviously loves other parts of parenting even more than his commute).

   Recently I was mourning the fact that it’s been over a year since I’ve made a quilt, a former hobby of mine that’s currently on pause. Suddenly a thought popped into my head: “breastfeeding is my hobby!” Well, it is, in a sense. I’m choosing to do it because I mostly enjoy it and it makes me feel fulfilled (and this is VERY different from my last experience with breastfeeding). I spend a lot of time on it, and I’ve become quite good at it. It feels worthwhile right now. Sounds kind of like a hobby to me!

   The point is, within the category of “stuff I do to take care of the kids,” I actually have a lot of leeway to choose where I direct my life force. Other current hobbies of mine include chatting with my toddler, stoop-sitting (which means finding a stoop and sitting there together, while also chatting), and talking with other parents at the playground (can you tell I like chatting?). Making large-scale art on butcher paper with markers? Not so much, but I know some parents who love that activity. Playtime in the bath? Don’t love it, we bathe minimally. Creative cooking? Not my thing.

Me, pre-kids, with a quilt I made in a garden I used to cultivate with a dog I once spent a lot more time cuddling.

In this intensive momming phase, trying to hang on to all the things I used to do and all the me’s I used to be would be super painful. I don’t have enough life force to maintain all of that, and there’s simply no hack or workaround. But none of those parts of me are gone, at least not the important ones. When I return to them, they will surely manifest in new forms, more mature and informed by my new experiences. Right now I’m focusing on channeling my life force into parenting, in all the ways that resonate with me most.

✍️ ✍️ ✨ I’ll see you in the comments! I’d love to know…

1. What’s taking the lion’s share of your life force these days? Has that changed recently?

2. For the new parents out there, how have you been thinking about your shifting identity?