I can be all of me.

My number one fear when I was pregnant: can you guess?

Surprisingly it was not the labor, or wondering what would happen if I somehow didn’t love my baby. It was neither the promised sleepless nights, nor the lack of intimacy my partner and I were guaranteed to experience.

It was the countless times I heard this small bit of advice – from new to seasoned moms of three or five.

“Don’t lose yourself.”

Just a small, biting, worming-into-my-mind, over-thinking-the-meaning kind of advice. The kind of advice that had me questioning this whole baby thing. The kind of advice that’s more like a red flag.

How do you lose yourself?

My identity is something you probably wouldn’t guess that I treasure, if you looked at me. I am a very average human being, right down to my average shoe size. Despite and maybe because of my averageness, who I am is something that I have carefully guarded, crafted, tended to like an older lady with her garden bed.

Like the way I enjoy finding clothes that other people have discarded. Or painting a picture with yarn on a loom or threads poked into fabric. How I can sit down and write my words with twists and rhythm. The way I will always stop to admire the sunset or a beautiful flower, even if I’ve seen a million others like it. The way I love to bake and hate following directions. 

How could you lose all that? Because of a baby?

A friend had said, “Just pick one thing that is at the heart of who you are, and don’t stop doing that thing. Fight to do that thing, so that you can feel like yourself.”

I thought to myself, “How do you pick just one thing?”

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The day my son broke through my body (truly invoking the full meaning of blood, sweat and tears into my reality) the world I knew stopped, fell apart, and put itself back together again. In that new world, he was the only thing that mattered. To say the universe revolved around him is too big of a statement, because surely the universe had no idea about him, just a speck of sand on the shore. But if he was the sun, I was his earth and moon, twisting on my axel every chance I could to catch his rays.

Losing yourself, that’s not exactly what happens. It’s not like losing your keys. Oops, there goes my personality. Wish I had kept it in a different pocket.

You are reoriented, reconfigured, recalibrated – undone and then remade into a mother. The fun hobbies that I had so carefully constructed myself around seemed like silly little preoccupations compared to this new mother identity. Is it losing yourself if you throw all the parts of who you are happily out of the window? Who cares if I used to write, I can breastfeed! Who cares if I used to wear cute clothes, look what my body just created! Who CARES if I once had the time to stop and notice the flowers, have you noticed my son’s eyes? Do you think they’ll stay blue?

If this is what it means to lose yourself, sign me up again, I thought in those first few months.

Because in the first few months, everyone has told you what to expect. You and your child are one unit, nicknamed “the fourth trimester.” I wasn’t surprised that he still owned my body, my hours, and ruled every decision I made. He’s a newborn, and he was basically running the show the last 10 months anyways, so what’s new? Also, these little hands grasping for mine is all I had been waiting for. 

But then his ownership of myself continued longer than I expected. Month four, month five, six, seven, eight, nine… and he’s not sleeping through the night. He’s waking up more. I suddenly feel the sleep deprivation. The highlight of my private life is a hot shower and a walk outside. Didn’t I used to enjoy things? What was that called, thrifting? Remember when you could walk outside with just your wallet and keys? Instead of this diaper bag armed with every A, B, C to Z situation from blowouts to boredom? Remember when you had enough brain space to just think about yourself, think of all the stupid things you said when you were in high school? Now you just think about the last time he ate, the last time he pooped, how long he slept and when did he wake up? Count the hours for the wake window. Try not to screw this up, him up.

What if I screw me up?

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Fast-forward to January 1, my son is now 15 months old, and I’m actually giving myself a word for the year. I like words instead of goals because goals are for business and words are for artists. And I hate the rigidity of a goal, but a word can find a thousand different paths to becoming true. Either way, I still laugh at myself because new year’s resolutions are cheesy, even if a word is more enlightening than a goal.

I need this word because I need this new year. I’m just starting to believe that not everything pre-mom is lost. I’m just starting to believe that not everything in this new mom-life is in a fixed state. I know I was reborn when I birthed my son. And now with 15 months of practicing the mom part (thankyouverymuch), I’m able to acknowledge that there can be more to me.

And the word for the year comes easily across my mind, written like stars in the sky.

Integrate.

What if there is more to me? Is it ridiculous to think that while he is the sun and I am the earth and moon revolving to catch his rays, the hours spent in shadow are also me? Or must everything be focused on the rising and the setting?

Integrate.

Integrate the light and the dark because it’s all me. Pre-mom me. Post-mom me. Artist me. Wife me. Baker me. Thrifter me. Intellectual me. Driving-toy-cars-on-the-sofa me.

Integrate it all because while I can’t be everything, I can be all of me.

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The hardest part is believing the possibility, and then trading in the big leaps you desire for the small steps that are sustainable.

If I can be all of me, then while my son plays on the balcony, I can bring my book and read a chapter, even if it takes me twice as long as it would without the interruptions.

If I can be all of me, then I can jot down writing ideas in the notes section of my phone as I push the stroller to the park, playing with turns of phrase to the cadence of my steps.

If I can be all of me, then I will take some time in the morning to write and ask my husband to get up with our son, even though it’s so hard for me to prioritize myself.

If x, then z; even though a thousand y’s.

Five months in and I’m writing more now than I have combined in the past three years. The blog is awake. My mom friends know that I write, that I am a writer (wow it’s still hard to say). I am a part of Exhale – a group of moms encouraging and resourcing one another to keep creating in the margins. I am a part of a blog hop every month because of it – I didn’t even know what a blog hop was five months ago.

Integrate, a hope for a year that could have a thousand different paths to becoming true. And while the year is far from over, this is what is true now. I have always been a creator. And now I am a mother, which is just another word for creator, if you ask me. Creating has always and will always be in me.

I can’t be everything, but I can be all of me. 

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Create Anyway”.