The Nine Lives Series - The Mother

The Mother: Motherhood Was Never Supposed to Erase the Woman You Were

By Dana L. Cox | Executive Coach, TEDx Speaker, Author

Here is the moment. You are filling out a form. One of those routine ones. School paperwork. Doctor’s office. Something that requires the same information you have written a hundred times before. Name. Address. Emergency contact. You move through it quickly without thinking.

Then you reach a question that should be simple. Occupation. You pause for a second. Not because you don’t know what you do. Your days are full. You manage schedules, meals, homework, appointments, emotions, rides, logistics. You hold the entire rhythm of the household together. But the space on the form is small. One line.

You start to write “mom.” Then you stop. Because something about it feels incomplete. So you sit there for a moment trying to think of another word. Something that explains who you are now. Something that sounds like a life. Nothing comes. Eventually you write something down so the form isn’t blank. But the question follows you the rest of the day. Not the word. The realization.

For the first time in a long time, you cannot remember the last answer that belonged only to you.

What is happening to you is not that you became a mother. It’s that somewhere along the way, you stopped being a woman who is also a mother and became a mother who no longer remembers the woman. It didn’t happen all at once. It happened slowly.

You started organizing your life around everyone else’s needs. School schedules. Activities. Appointments. Emotions. Making sure everyone had what they needed before you ever stopped to ask yourself what you needed. At first it felt natural. Even good. You were showing up for the people you love. But over time something quiet started happening. Every decision started being made through the same question.

What does everyone else need?

And eventually you stopped asking the other question.

What do I want?

Not because you don’t care about yourself. Because you got so used to being responsible for everyone else that your own life slowly moved to the bottom of the list. Then one day someone asks you a simple question. “What do you want for yourself?” And you realize you don’t have an answer. Not because there isn’t one. Because it has been so long since you asked.

The Lie That Made It Possible

The lie is that a good mother disappears. That loving your children means putting yourself last. That your dreams should get smaller so their lives can get bigger. No one usually says it that directly. But the message is everywhere.

Good mothers sacrifice. Good mothers are selfless. Good mothers make their children the center of their world. And over time that message becomes something dangerous. Because when a woman hears that long enough, she stops believing she is allowed to have a center of her own. So she pours herself into everyone else. And one day she looks up and realizes the woman she used to be is hard to find.

What I Tell Her When She Is Sitting Across From Me

I want you to know something that almost no one tells mothers. Your children do not need you to disappear. They need you to be whole. They need to see what it looks like for a woman to have a life. A voice. Interests. Dreams. Boundaries. Joy. Not because it takes anything away from them. Because it teaches them something powerful about what adulthood actually looks like.

Motherhood was never supposed to erase the woman you were. It was supposed to be one part of the life you are building. Not the entire definition of who you are. And if you are sitting here telling me you don’t know who you are outside of being their mother anymore, that doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It means it might be time to start asking yourself a question you haven’t asked in a long time.

Who am I now? Not as their mother. As you.

About the Author

Dana L. Cox is an executive coach, TEDx speaker, and author of From Burnout to Badass. She is the founder of FIX Coaching & Consulting and creator of the Positioned to Paid™ framework, which helps high-achieving women move from invisible to unstoppable in their careers and lives. Learn more at danalcox.com.