Bonus Episode 3: How to cope with identity loss as a mum

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Hello beautiful today. I want to talk to you about a topic that comes up so much in the conversations that I have with my moms, my clients, and that is the topic of identity loss.

The fact that when we become a mum, we are suddenly so-and-so's mum or so-and-so's wife or partner or whatever it is, but we're no longer us. We're no longer Wendy Griffith the business owner or

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Wendy Griffith, the, you know, whatever it is that existed outside of you becoming a mother. And it's such a hard one to get your head around because they don't prepare you for this, whoever they are.

I don't think we talk about this enough. And this is why I wanted to record this bonus episode, because I feel like. We get prepared for all that. Maybe the physical stuff that's going to happen in becoming a mom, the, you know, the breastfeeding and the bottle feeding, whatever it is that we, you know, all the prep, how are you going to have your baby?

Like all the labor, all that kind of stuff, but

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no one prepares you for that. Feeling of like, oh my goodness, like I've got this human being who has completely reliant on me now buck stops with me. This is it. I will never not worry. I will never not be attached to being a mum, but also this yearning that starts to creep up on you.

Does anyone know what I mean? Where you're just like, oh, Need to reclaim a bit of my old life. And it's not because you're not absolutely overjoyed and grateful to be a mom. I mean, I went through a very difficult fertility struggle to have my

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little girl and I was so unbelievably grateful to have her like every day.

I thank God for her, but it doesn't mean that we don't crave that identity outside of being a mum. So for me, it was so important to continue to work my business and grow my skills through that period. And I have to say it was such a difficult thing because a lot of family, friends, moms didn't understand why it was that I wasn't just straight out on maternity leave.

Just put my business to the side for the first year of my daughter's life.

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Because for me, it was so important to keep engaged in that because it was really helping me to be a better mom and just helping me to feel more grounded and well-rounded, but also when I speak to moms now, who's maybe their children have started school.

or their children have gone to school and they just feel this profound sense of loss of like now what, like the house is quiet. Perhaps they've taken a career break to focus on their kids and they want to reclaim that identity, but they completely lost their confidence. They don't know how they're even going to look

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at getting back into this or working or whatever the case is.

And I think this is just something that we need to talk about more. The fact that it's okay to want more outside of just being a mom. And I feel like sometimes as working moms, we will just, as moms, we damned if we do damned if we don't. So if we were expected to work as if we have no kids and we're expected to mother, our kids as if we don't work, like, I feel that judgment so much

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sometimes from.

Perhaps family members who just really kind of should on you with their looks and their judgments and their, you should be doing this. You should be doing that. And our lives is so different nowadays. I'm always talking about this with a beautiful friend bestie of mine. Who's just the most incredible single mom.

She works in a very high powered job. I have so much respect for her, how she's juggled. She's gone through a divorce. And yeah, she doesn't always get it right. She can be a bit scatty at times, but she loves her

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kids and she's doing her best. And I'm just in awe of the juggle of moms, whether or not you're married, you're not married.

You have family support, you don't have family support, but it's that identity. It's how do we reclaim our identity around the fact that we're a mum. And that's the million-dollar question. How do we do that? So referring back to my first bonus episode that I've done about chasing the joy, it's finding the thing that is going to spark that joy for you again.

So maybe it is that all you seem to do is work and look after your

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kids. So maybe it is that you need to carve out some time to invest in a friendship or go for a walk with a friend to spark that joy. Maybe you don't work. Maybe you're wanting to get back into work and you don't know what that looks like.

So maybe it's that you can look at taking a course at a local college for like a couple of months just to do an evening class. And it might be that you have to ask for childcare for support, for somebody to come and sit and be with you while your kids are in bed so that you can go and invest in that and start to build that confidence.

Maybe it is that you have to start

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again in your career, start something new, start investing in further skills, but just know it's never going to just all come together overnight. You're going to have to lean. You're going to have to push some doors. You're going to have to work out. It's going to work for you.

And this is why I say you've got to chase the joy. It's like, does this feel good? Okay, great. I'm going to nudge that a bit more. Oh no, that doesn't feel good. Okay. No, I'm not going to do that. And this is how we start to reclaim our identity. One step at a time. I hope this has really encouraged

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you today to know that you're not alone, that many women feel this way and that you can reclaim that identity.

It's just that step-by-step. If you want to unpack this further, book a clarity, chat with me. It's a 30 minute, no-obligation call where we just unpack this for you and we get an action plan together for you in your life. What's going to work for you and your circumstances right now. So I would love to chat to you.

So link in my show notes Look onto that. And I look forward to speaking to you really soon. lovely, take care.