My name is Beks and I am a Mom___?…….
This week, during one of my counselling sessions, I was asked to do an activity.
It was a diagram, a circle divided into different compartments. The entire circle represented me, while each compartment represented the different things that make up who I am as a person. The compartments weren’t equal….some were bigger than others, depending on how much space that thing occupies in my life.
At the very centre of the circle was the biggest compartment. That space represented the core …..the core of who I am, my sense of self, how I see myself.
Then I was asked a simple but heavy question,
“When you think about yourself, what is the core of who you are?“
Without hesitation, the first thing that came to my mind was ‘I am a mother.‘
So I wrote motherhood in the centre.
Then I filled the other compartments with things like religion, family, hobbies, passions, interests, things I enjoy, things that matter to me. But the truth is, none of them came close to that centre space.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realised that this wasn’t new.
Anytime I’m asked to introduce myself or asked questions like Who are you? Tell me about yourself ….the first thing I say is, I’m a mom. I have a daughter. That’s how I see myself. That’s who I am.
And I think it has been this way since I gave birth to my daughter, motherhood has become the core of my life. It’s the lens through which I see everything. It’s what influences my decisions, my priorities, my thinking, my fears, my courage. Every single thing stems from being Fara’s mother.
I wake up thinking about her. I go to bed thinking about her. Every day.
Coincidentally, this week as well, I had to be away from Fara for much longer than I ever have and I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I genuinely didn’t.
I kept asking myself, What am I supposed to do with this time? Who am I right now? And it became clearer once again — when you remove motherhood from my life, I don’t know who I am anymore.
That realization made me uncomfortable.
On one hand, it feels incredibly beautiful to experience this depth of love and see the way motherhood has become my entire being. I genuinely believe that kind of devotion is powerful especially because I can testify to how life changing it is. Motherhood has made me more empathetic, more patient, more self-aware, more responsible and I love the woman I’ve become because of it.
But on the other hand… it scares me because I don’t want motherhood to be the only thing that defines me….not because I want less of it but because I want more of myself alongside it.
I want to know that if, for a moment, I’m not actively mothering, I’m still someone. I’m still a woman. I’m still whole.
So this week, I’ve been sitting with the uncomfortable but necessary question – Who am I if I’m not a mom?
I don’t have an answer yet and this isn’t me trying to pressure myself to have one….
But I’d like to think this is something a lot of mothers struggle with, even if we don’t always say it out loud. It’s so easy to pour everything into motherhood…..your time, your identity, your dreams, your energy, until one day, years later, your child grows up and leaves, and you’re left staring at yourself, wondering where you went.
And I think this fear has also been sitting more with me because of a show I watched recently called Younger.
Younger’s main character is a woman who became a mother at quite a young age and had to put her entire life on hold to raise her child and take care of her home. Fast forward to eighteen years later, her marriage ends and her daughter, is now grown and leaving for college. This stirs up the desire to have something to do for herself and so she immediately tries to return to the career she once loved, only to soon realize the world had moved on without her.
Watching it made me see how easy it is to disappear into motherhood completely, how quickly years can pass when your entire identity becomes care, sacrifice, and survival.
And I thought to myself – I don’t want to lose myself while loving my child.
I don’t want to wake up 18 years from now and realise I paused my entire life.
I want my daughter to grow up seeing that motherhood didn’t erase me, but that it expanded me and that loving her deeply didn’t mean losing myself but instead pushed me to do more.
I know how easily love can turn into resentment when sacrifice isn’t balanced and I never want to look at my child and feel like she took something from me. I want her to know she added to my life and that I still chose myself alongside choosing her.
I don’t know yet what that “something else” is for me. I just know I’m searching for it. Slowly. Gently. Without guilt.
And maybe that’s enough for now.
Anyway, If you’re a mom and this resonates with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Have you found something outside of motherhood that anchors your sense of self? Or are you still figuring it out like me?
And if you’re not a mom yet, maybe this gives you a small window into the parts of motherhood we don’t always talk about.
Thank you for reading, as always.
With love,
Beks 💜
Beks Unfiltered 