My Identity Crises (yes, there are multiple)

I have been through 8 identity crises that I can remember and that I feel qualify as such.

Things happened in life that just kinda rocked my whole world. Everything I thought I knew changed, or something about me changed which in turn completely changed how I saw the world.

It wasn’t so much a question of “who am I?” as it was a statement of “I don’t know myself.”

Of my 8 identity crises, 3 of them were 1)when I started college, 2)when I served as a missionary, and 3)when I was a new wife.

The other 5 happened after each one of my children was born.

Every. Child.

I think part of it is that being pregnant wipes me out. To the point where I am just barely surviving from day to day. If I took a shower, that’s what I did that day, and I’m pretty proud of it. (I’ll do my hair tomorrow. And make up…haha!) So everything that I used to define myself is gone. It’s almost like a reset button.

But once that child is born, things don’t go back to how they were. The most obvious difference is that there is now a human in the world who grew in and then exited my body. And that in turn affects how my body looks and functions. Like how to put my pants on while standing up. Before I got pregnant I didn’t even know it was possible to not be able to put your pants on one leg at a time while standing up! Hitting that accomplishment, a few months postpartum, felt like a serious achievement!

With my first kid another HUGE difference was my entire LIFE! My days were spent completely different. My life didn’t even look like “my life” anymore. Work was gone. Sleep was gone. Hobbies were gone. I was so tired and overwhelmed that I didn’t even recognize myself. And it was hard!

When everything you know is changed (sometimes overnight) you don’t really know how you’re going to handle it. I didn’t.

I had heard stories and people had told me what having a baby was like. I was no stranger to babies and taking care of one. But I had no idea what motherhood would look like on ME. Nobody could have prepared me for that, because nobody is me.

With each kid I would go through another bout of “I don’t know me.” I figured out how to be a mom of one, and then I had to figure out who I was as a mom of 2. And then a mom of 3. And then a mom of 4.

And then a mom of 5.

Marie, mom of 5, is different than Marie, mom of 2.

But how could I possibly ever be the same?! I just added an entire person to my life and my heart, practically from thin air! (sorta)

That’s what life is, isn’t it? A continuous series of events and choices that shape us and change us into who we will be forever, when this mortal life is over. We aren’t meant to be the same as we were in high school, or college, or as a newly wed, or as a new mom.

Identity Crisis #8 has felt a little less hectic. I only cried the equivalent of a mountain spring. In Identity Crisis #4 (aka postpartum #1) it was more like the entire Pacific Ocean.

Three months after baby #5 was born, I literally hand-wrote a list of things that I believed I knew about myself. Good and bad. If I thought it, I wrote it down. It sounds a little self-centered, but I won’t be a mom with kids at home forever. And I really want to like myself when I have to be alone with myself.

Here’s a sample:

This goes on for 7 pages.

I know it sounds silly, but it helped, even more than I thought it would. It gave me a chance to see ME. To see my strengths and give them value, and to decide if there was anything I would like to work on to change. My husband laughed out loud when I told him what I had done. And then I let him read it and he laughed again, and said, “This sounds just like you!”

I’m glad someone knows me.

And I’m getting to know me better, too. Again.