Just turned 35, this is such a weird age for me....
I just turned 35 last month and it feels weird. I'm a stay at home mom who used to work my tail off at different jobs and I don't work anymore...my only job is raising my two babies but I feel like something is missing. I should be grateful and I feel guilty for not, but I feel like just changing diapers and raising them is downplaying my real potential. They are thriving so I should be happy but I'm not, because I feel invisible now...
Thats rough. It seems like you're a darn good mom though. You're not invisible to the little ones. I know a lot of parents who feel similar.
Have you considered a side hustle while waiting for kids to get older? Some of my friends who are/were stay at home moms went the blog route, others design t-shirts, one sells stuff at farmers market on weekends. The cool thing is when the kids started school they were able to leverage side hustle success into a career.
I feel you; my kids are now teenagers but I definitely went through this. Here are some things I wish someone had said to me:
1) understand that this is a change in your identity and we have a lot invested in our identities. For me, child rearing felt like a loss of parts of my identity that I held in highest esteem. What I didn’t realize was that child rearing was ADDING to my identity. I wish I had thought of it as a phase of investing in a whole new set of skills rather than a phase where skills I had already honed were weakening. 2) i’m really happy I spent that time with my kids because mine are awesome :D and they make me laugh all the time and they are some of my favorite people to be around! Totally worth it! 3) assess your needs. What makes you feel seen and how often is enough to let that part of you that needs to be seen feel satisfied? What needs fall under the umbrella of being seen – creativity? Leadership? Producing a product of some kind? Exchange of ideas? Then take steps to fulfill your needs and do an experiment for a week or two at a time. For example, if demonstrating leadership is a way that you feel seen, where are some other spaces in besides work in which you could demonstrate leadership? If producing and having your work witnessed helps you feel seen, could you do something creative and share it on social media or even among friends and family… Let it be about your experience as a mother or the very questions that you’re bringing up now about identity. Experiment and see if these efforts bring you the contentment you desire. Finally, I would say 4) keep going! It just gets better and better and better, in my opinion. You’re doing the most important job on earth — you’re creating grounded, happy beings who will add to the goodness of the world. That’s amazing!
