The Parts of You Waiting for Space

Motherhood is all-consuming. It fills up your life, and day to day, there is little room for anything else, especially in the younger years when kids have higher needs and there is much more to hold.

It can feel as though everything revolves around caregiving. The hours of the day are accounted for, and most of them centre around your little humans. Life can feel a bit smaller, a bit narrower, because of this. There is much less space for you and the things that make you feel like yourself. Motherhood takes up most of the available room, especially without a village or support structure.

Identity needs time, space, and energy to breathe. It needs feeding and tending to.

In motherhood, opportunities to feed your sense of identity are fewer and far between. There is less space and time to give to your sense of self. The resources you have for yourself shrink, especially when you do not have a village to support you, and this causes life to narrow because it needs to be practical.

In everyday life, this narrowing can look like hobbies being quietly shelved, less time to think about your own interests, becoming very practical and task-focused, creativity and curiosity going a little quieter, and less room for a social life.

As mums who love our little humans with all of our hearts, we often do this instinctively, willingly and lovingly, but that does not mean it comes without a cost to ourselves.

Without a village, this is more pronounced. There are fewer places to hand anything over, even briefly. A lot of roles collapse into one or two people, and there are fewer opportunities to step outside of the role of mum and simply be yourself.

This is not permanent. This is a season of life.

Identity often expands again when capacity returns or grows, and seasons shift. These parts of you that feel quiet right now are not gone, they are waiting. Your identity has not disappeared, it has paused under pressure.

The parts of you waiting for space will still be there when there is a little more room for them again.

It is okay to feel the complexity of this too. You can miss having more space for yourself while also loving your little humans deeply, and wanting to give them the best care you possibly can. It can be intentional and loving, and also heavy. All of this can be true.

Be kind to yourself. You are holding so much quiet strength, and it is so understandable for this narrowing of self to happen in motherhood, especially when you are doing it without a village.

Be gentle with yourself this week.