Who am I? The Identity Crisis of Motherhood.
The motherhood identity crisis is the internal questioning that happens after you start having children. “Who am I?” and “What do I want?” are fundamental questions that need to be answered for you to continue operating as the woman you want to be.
Being a mother is perhaps the most important job that you will ever have. But what if you find yourself longing for your career as it can provide another sense of purpose?
To discuss this in more detail, we invited author of Hush, and mum of two, Kate Maxwell to our first Mother+ literary session.
Kate was an ideal choice as her debut novel, Hush, about a woman who swaps a glamorous life in New York for solo parenthood in London, was inspired by her own experiences of maternity leave, and the gap between her expectations of motherhood and the reality.
Kate gave us such a great insight into how she came to write her excellent debut novel and the importance of the themes within it from losing your identity to career changes after maternity leave.
We covered a range of topics including how to navigate the feelings around identity that can arise during maternity leave, the depiction of motherhood and the ‘mother’ figure in fiction and using maternity leave as a time to change direction professionally.
If this is something that is on your mind, here are some key take aways from our conversation.
It is not uncommon to feel like you have lost a part of yourself and your identity after you have a baby, there is even a name for it ‘matrescence’. It is something her character Stevie deals with at the start of her novel and a prevalent theme that came up in the research of the book. You are not alone in feeling like this!
Maternity leave is an interesting period for re-evaluating your life and your professional choices. If you are looking to make a change in terms of your career or you want to set up something of your own, use this time to explore opportunities. From speaking to people in this field to looking at courses to see if this is viable and more importantly something you really want to do.
However, it is important not to see mat leave as a ‘sabbatical’ or ‘time off’ - you are looking after and raising a baby and potentially older children too. This is a job and it is of value.
If you are looking for a book to make you think about motherhood in a different way, we highly recommend Hush by Kate Maxwell.
After five exhilarating years in New York, Stevie has a successful career and a glamorous social life. But what she most wants is a baby, an aspiration that feels impossible given that she is single, thirty-eight and living in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, far away from most of her family in England.
Determined to become a mother, Stevie returns to London and has a baby on her own. When she gives birth to Ash, she finds motherhood painfully at odds with her former life and her expectations. She begins to wonder if having a child was a mistake - and what she might be willing to do to escape.
As she struggles with what her future might hold, revelations from the past change everything she believed about family and love.
We found the storyline of Stevie and the way in which her old life and new life weave together a really clever way of showing how motherhood can bring up so many feelings of one’s identity. It was also refreshing to read a story of a woman choosing to have a baby in her late thirties and via a donor, therefore going against societal norms. This book will certainly make you stop and think about the intensity and absurdity of the early motherhood experience.
You can order your copy here and the audio version is available here.