It's Okay to Have a Life Outside Motherhood
Read Time: 5 Minutes
Words by Colleen Tirtirian
The Scene: Summer evening, New York City, circa 2002. I was a teenager at the time and was thrilled to be parent-free, enjoying a punk-rock show at a small venue. My best friend, Lauren, and I felt on top of the world with our newfound freedom. We stood as close to the stage as possible, our ears ringing at the intensity of the vocals and thumping bass. A few songs in, I felt a tap on the top of my head. What the...? I was confused until I realized it was a crowd-surfer letting us know she was about to be lunged atop us. We quickly put our hands overhead and braced for impact. After she passed, I stared at her in awe.
“We should do that!” I shouted to Lauren.
“What!?” She replied, pointing to her ears. I gestured with my hands and body what I meant. She nodded in agreement.
I grabbed her hand and we moved our way to the back of the crowd where the crowd-surfers were being launched. We tapped the shoulders of two of the people responsible for giving flight. Each put their hands down, hoisting us above the crowd. One moment our feet were firmly on the ground, and the next, we were being thrown around above other audience members. Once we were up, however, it was not as effortless as I’d expected.
For starters, I realized I didn’t like strangers pushing my body around. Secondly, the ride was a bumpy one. As various hands pushed me up and forward, I sensed a feeling of lightness promptly followed by a thud as my shoulder met the floor. The lights of the venue flashed and a sea of strangers’ feet stomped around me. What looked like a thrilling experience turned out to be incredibly awkward and painful (and my 30-something-year-old self very much recognizes the absurdity of my choice). Despite being dropped, I picked myself off the floor and cheered like a maniac, excited that I gave it a try.
The teenage years are long behind me, and I have no plans to hurl my body over a crowd ever again. But now that I am a mother, I sometimes think back to that time in my life when things were carefree and easy — when my spunky side was front and center. It was a time in life where I felt as though I had license to be my crazy self in a judgment-free setting. Years ticked on, life happened, and I began to feel the heaviness of everything around me. I became a mother. With that title came the feeling that I had to fit into a mold, and thus became a person who believed it was not okay to be myself.
In the early years of my motherhood journey, I veered down a path that was not my own. I’d lost the fun, carefree part of my spirit because I was trying to be a “perfect” mother. In my eyes, a perfect mother was one who breastfeeds for at least a year, whose babies sleep through the night easily; one who has perfectly folded laundry and a squeaky clean floor, home-cooked meals ready for every occasion. Whether it was self-imposed or societal pressure to fit into a “one-size-fits-all” box, I lost myself in my new title.
When I birthed my twins nearly four years ago, being a mom was the only thing I cared about. I was obsessed. In the beginning, it was not so much a choice as to whether or not I would commit my entire being to my babies; it just happened that way and it was necessary. But as those early days morphed into years, I realized there was an entire part of me that was absent — I’d completely lost who I was at my core. It was a feeling of emptiness that slowly crept up on me and it dawned on me one day that I needed to do something about it. The only way out of that feeling was to nurture the parts of myself that I’d lost. To do that, I needed to first let go of some of the expectations I had of myself. I then created space for me to be, well, me! Not just “mom.” I then needed to participate in life outside of raising babies. In the first two years of motherhood, I completely and utterly gave myself over to life at home. I think that it’s natural, and it’s what so many of us do as mothers, whether we stay at home, work-from-home, or work full-time. But being a mother does not mean you have to change who you are at your core.
As a new mom, I committed every ounce of mental and physical energy to my babies. What I saw as my commitment to motherhood was also, I now realize, postpartum anxiety manifesting as an unhealthy obsession with being “the perfect mother.” My twins are nearly four years old now, and it was a journey to come out of that fog. I used to believe that the only way to be an incredible mother was to completely forego my own needs. Well, after hitting the inevitable rock-bottom of that journey, I started paying closer attention to what I needed. For me, it meant participating in life outside of motherhood. In doing so, I became — in my opinion— a better person and mother. When I filled my cup with activities that made me feel more like myself, I felt better in my role raising my children.
I am still who I was before I became a parent -- I am still the same person with hobbies and interests and it's okay (even, dare I say, healthy) to participate in life outside of motherhood.
So while I am not about to hurl myself over a crowd at a concert, I still am that fun-loving, concert-going, creative individual. Motherhood is a lot like crowd surfing: You have no idea what you’re about to get yourself into. One moment, your feet are planted on the ground and your head is on straight, and suddenly, you are flailing as you try to figure it out. Even if you think you’ve got it under control, something inevitably goes wrong. Yet somehow, you pop back up and keep going, as absurd as it feels at times. For me, the part that keeps me going is knowing that I am still a person who matters and that I can be myself and still be a kick-ass mama.
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About the Author:
Colleen is a mother, writer, editor, and New Jersey native writing from her home-office in Hoboken. She believes that sharing the journey of motherhood, especially taboo topics, can help to normalize the difficult moments we all feel from time to time. When she’s not writing and juggling mom-duty, Colleen enjoys playing guitar and crafting (specifically, miniatures). Some may say she’s a bit quirky, but she chooses to embrace her eccentricities and channels them into her creative endeavors.
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