Why Mothers Should Stop Trying to Get Back to their “Old Self”
5 min read
We’ve all been witness of the modern motherhood narrative. You have your baby and as soon as a couple of weeks later, you are supposed to go back out there ready to be part of the new mum lifestyle: going to all the mum and baby groups, breastfeeding ‘elegantly’ at the local caff, keeping your house, your children and yourself looking beautiful.
We are expected to loose the baby weight and as soon as possible and a few months later, go back to work and perform just as you used to before going on maternity leave. Paraphrasing matrecence educator Nikki McCahon: “we expect women to work as if they weren't mothers and to parent as if they didn’t work.”
Essentially, women are expected to bounce back to their old selves, to their old body and their old jeans as quickly as possible, as undisturbed as possible. This is the narrative that is all over social media.
Well, I say f$&ck the bounce back culture!
Yes, it’s great to recover your physical strength, to exercise and care for your body but not for the aim of bouncing back to your pre-baby body. But to feel stronger, healthy and with more energy.
And when it comes to work, through motherhood you are acquiring so many new skills that all workplaces should start to recognise and leverage rather than just expect to have the same old you! And this really opens up a full other conversation that I’m going to leave for another day.
You can feel like yourself again without having to go back to who you were before having children.
What I’m trying to say here is that we shouldn’t be so worried about going back to our pre-pregnancy self. I know I was worried about this for quite a while after my first was born. I was desperate to go back to my old self, to my old life… The truth is that I was feeling so lost in between nappy changes and cluster feeding sessions that I just wanted to feel like myself again.
But I have some news for you mama. You can feel like yourself again without having to go back to who you were before having children.
There’s more than a semantic difference between going back to your old self and feeling like yourself again, and it lies in getting to know yourself. Finding out who is that mother that you see in the mirror.
So, stop looking back and start looking forward. There’s a bright future waiting for you, mama!
Matrescence is an opportunity to reconnect with your purpose. Get out of auto-pilot and life inertia and start living with more intention, connecting with your wisdom and your intuition.
Enters Matrescence. If this is the first time you hear this word, I invite you to read “Matrescence: Motherhood expectations vs stark reality” to find out more about it.
Matrescence gives you the opportunity and the responsibility to grow, to expand, to reclaim yourself, and to create the life you dream of.
This is a time when you can better connect with your creative power, after all, you have created a new life! A time of existential and spiritual awakening.
During Matrescence, your identity shifts, and while this can feel scary and at times you can feel lost, it is also a chance to rediscover yourself. To find out what YOU really want, what’s important to YOU now and what you want for your life and your family life.
Matrescence is an opportunity to reconnect with your purpose. Get out of auto-pilot and life inertia and start living with more intention, connecting with your wisdom and your intuition. Ok, all this sounds great, but how? you may ask. Well, keep reading…
5 Steps for Intentionally Living
Spend time with yourself.
How do you get to know someone you just met? You spend time with them, asking them questions about what they like and why. You can do this with yourself. Journaling is an excellent tool to do this.
Switch from doing to being mode.
We spend most of the time in a doing mode. This is essentially everytime we are doing stuff: working, going about on our daily activities, but also when we are planning our day, and creating a list of things we need to do, even when we are watching tv. It’s everything that happens outside of us.
When you switch to a being mode, you become aware of the present moment. It is in this stillness where we connect with our feelings and our emotions. When we can get to understand what’s inside us, connect with our intuition.
Connect with your breath.
Humans have something like 6,000 thoughts a day - 90% of them are repetitive! That’s a lot of time and energy spent in your head! Our breathing helps us get out of our minds and come into our bodies. Just by bringing your attention to your breathing.
Digital detox.
Do you find yourself scrolling down your Instagram a little too much? You may be comparing yourself and measuring yourself up against the “perfect mum” images that are all over social media. The truth is there’s not such a thing as the perfect mother, what you see is a filtered version of motherhood, it’s not the real deal! Try to put your phone down more often and use that time to do any of the other steps include in this list.
Mother yourself.
The same way you nurture and care for your baby, nurture and take care of yourself. Create time and space for you, to listen to your needs and to start responding to them. The same we we all have basic physical needs, we also have essential psychological needs. They are both important.
Conclusion
Trying to bounce back or even slowly go back to who you were before babies is a pointless task. Instead, we should focus on tuning-in with ourselves. Get to know who we are now, as we transform as women and as mothers. Matrescence and motherhood are a time when we can leverage our creative energy and our intuition to create the life we dream for ourselves and our family.
Go and create your bright future, mama! And if you need any help, or would like to talk about any of this, I’m here for you.
End notes
Postnatal depletion, the gifts of matrescence and COVID with Dr Oscar Serrallach, Dear Mama Project podcast, Nikky McCahon, 13th April 2020
Four Forces of Life Inertia , Jim Taylor Ph.D., Psychology Today, 5th December 2011