Why It's OK (& Actually Very Normal!) To Grieve Your Former Self As A Parent

Much like author Rachel Cusk writes in her memoir A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother, many parents name how they do not feel like themselves when they are with their kids and they do not feel like themselves when they are without them. I can relate: I both want to be with my children and to be without them consistently. 

I remember learning about the Lebanese artist Huguette Caland, who left her husband and her three children in Beirut in order to prioritize her creative wellness and freedom. I thought to myself “how courageous and how cowardly.” Being in this duality can send us into a world of self-judgment and self-doubt. So many parents are left constantly questioning themselves, asking, Am I normal?

I recall pushing my then 2.5-year-old daughter on the swing, and another parent pushing alongside me asked “can you even imagine a time when you didn’t have this little one, when you weren’t a mother?”

She was implying that she couldn’t, which struck me because I have a mental file full of memory cards when “mother” wasn’t an identity I bore the responsibility of, and it’s a cherished Rolodex. 

I can see these moments in technicolor, but there are times when I do not know where they belong: do I hang them up like the section of my closet filled with clothes that no longer fit, but may someday? Or do I give them away, letting them remain a part of my past but not my present or future? 

As a psychotherapist and group facilitator for nearly a decade, I sit with people struggling through transitions—starting a new job, getting married, having a child, breaking up, or moving to a new city. 

When we are in a change process, we typically focus on what is demanded of us now, instead of paying attention to what we are leaving behind in order to embody this new role or way of being. But, it’s actually orienting ourselves to the many little and small endings in our lives that allows us to live better with them.

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Grief is an emotional and normal experience that follows loss. There is a lot that is gained by becoming a parent, but by nature, change necessitates loss–trade offs between what we get and what we give up. Many of us believe that we should “move on” from loss, instead of honoring it.

In a capitalist culture that places value on what we do and the speed at which we do it, we do not have space to slow down and feel. We are told to invest in progress, and in the forward motion of child rearing, it’s easy to disconnect from what we are leaving behind. 

What would it be like for you to revisit your past selves? To not only hang pictures of your children on the fridge but of the parts of you that you miss the most, bringing them into your present day? Images that reveal the hopeful look in your eyes during your early 20s? Or of you wearing your favorite dress out dancing? The first apartment you lived in on your own? The best wave you ever surfed? 

You do not have to remain the same as you were, life has changed you, but staying connected to the parts of you that mattered before your role as parent allows you to fuel all the sensations of aliveness within you.

Once we begin to orient to the endings associated with becomings, this allows us to get clear on what we are actually grieving in the first place and apply suture. 

Is it freedom, quiet time, the way you moved, your non-vanilla sex life that you are longing for? From here, you can decide if you want to integrate this emotion or experience back into your life in any way (read on to learn how) or acknowledge that, for now, it will stay in the past.

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2.

Understand the process of transformation 

Parents, in particular, are sent mixed messages–on one hand we are told that we are to “snap back” to the bodies and people we used to be, and on the other hand, we are expected to abandon those selves and fully embrace the demanding needs of our children. What remains conveniently unnamed by this black and white divide, is the messy reality of any transformative process. 

Every transition, even the best ones, bring up anxiety, grief, and fear; we are leaving something familiar to us and straddling the line across to the unknown. What would it be like if we expected that finding the answer to the question “who am I now?” would be preceded by a bumpy road filled with trial and error? 

The struggle itself—to find the sweet spot between ourselves and our children—is what helps us grow into the people and parents we are meant to be. Take the butterfly, for example, she must wrestle to get out of the chrysalis. If a human interferes to “help” the butterfly escape faster or more easily, she doesn’t build the necessary muscles in her wings to survive. This shortens the butterfly’s lifespan and inhibits her development. 

Know that this negotiation between identifying what’s right for you and what’s right for your children is a normal part of the developmental journey as a parent and an essential part of the hard work of loving yourself and another at the same time. 

3.

Hold onto the parts that are you

Maybe your grief exploration will lead you to the fact that you’ve given up more than you can spare. There is a misconception that self-sacrifice is what’s necessary in order to be an attuned parent—that putting the self aside will lead to better child rearing. 

Psychologist Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., calls this concept “de-selfing,” when one person does more giving in and going along than is her share and therefore loses contact with her own preferences and ability to make self-attuned choices. 

While putting your needs aside at times is essential, when we take ourselves (our feelings, beliefs, ideas) out of the relationship, we pose a threat to connection rather than feed it. Abandoning the core parts of the self, disconnecting from the things that make you you, impedes your connection to your child, rather than enhances it. 

In support circles I’ve heard parents make statements like “I love my children, but…” or “Being a parent is the best, but…” I pay close attention to what comes after the “but,” as this seems to be where the difficult truth exists, if we didn’t feel the need to pad it with the good feelings to protect ourselves from feeling guilt or shame. 

Listen to what comes after your “but,” to find the parts of you that you are longing to reconnect with. “But it’s so hard,” “but it’s so lonely,” “but it’s so boring,” are all acknowledgements of your unmet needs that require further investigation.

Getting these needs met by (being more social with your friends, traveling to a new place, trying new sex acts), might enable you to be emotionally alive as a parent. I remember the time that my husband and I brought the double stroller with our two sleeping children to a beach party in Costa Rica for New Years Eve. We parked them under the mangroves and danced close by. It wasn’t the same as it was, but it made us feel whole—a merging of our past and present selves. What does merging look like for you?

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4.

Create new rituals and experiences

Note from the writer

*This last question also requires us to do systems-level work to ensure the demands on certain parents' bodies, across the social identity lines of race, sexuality and class in America, don’t have to bear so much weight that they can only consider surviving and not thriving.

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