Every sparrow had a delicious memory of having once been a hawk.
– Robin McKinley, Spindle’s End

In every occupation, you acquire proficiency in things you have no inherent interest in, and motherhood is no different. As moms we get good at handling human waste and fluids, mediating conflict resolution, triaging illness, sourcing and preparing meals, administrating and chauffeuring. We acquire esoteric knowledge about things like dinosaur species, truck models, animal facts, character franchises.

But even as we become skilled at all these things, there are other parts of ourselves that are slipping away. As far as occupations go, motherhood is uniquely absorbing: it never really stops. If you’re not with your kids, odds are you’re thinking about them on some level. Motherhood demands a totality of commitment that is intrinsically exclusionary. As a result, there is an unconscious loss of identity that occurs. You lose other sides of yourself. You lose the things you used to do that you have no time, or energy, or money for now. You lose the people you used to be.

Who is that for you? Maybe you used to be a student, a rock climber, a producer, a lecturer, a dancer, a decorator. Maybe you used to be someone who sat quietly in coffee shops alone, or browsed bookstores, or arranged flowers, or traveled, or wrote in journals, or browsed clothes in a store. Maybe you used to do those things with a depth, or intensity, or level of community or collaboration, that you no longer do.

I think as mothers, we have to remember these people we used to be. Even if we can’t have the whole thing, we have to recover what bits we can, because it’s good for us, and it’s good for our children. When I get to make music with other adults, or draw something just for myself, or read a novel just for fun—when I get to do those things after not having done them for a while, it feels like a breath of fresh air. It feels like I’ve recovered something about myself that I hadn’t even known I had lost. It makes me a better person, and thus a better mother, and it’s good for my kids to see me having my own interests. Quite often, actually, it encourages them to have similar interests.

Because motherhood never stops, we have to make these things happen, however much we can. Sometimes it’s not much, and that’s okay. Sometimes we don’t know where to start, and that’s okay. Over the years, hobbying has looked like any of the following:

• not “sleeping when the baby sleeps” but instead reading email or doing something else that makes me feel like a “normal” person

• getting a babysitter so I can go sit alone in a coffee shop or take my time browsing a store

• taking an art class, or ordering supplies to try out a new skill or craft after getting inspired online 

• finding a gym that offers childcare

• listening to music or a podcast

• reading a book, joining a book club

• buying groceries just for myself and making a dish I like

• hiring childcare so we can eat out at an adult restaurant, attend church small group, go to a conference

• putting on a movie for the kids and going outside to sit or walk alone

• finding a corner of a room (with a door that closes) that I can go to for solitude and decorating that space with things I like 

• dropping the kids off with grandparents so we can get away overnight on our own

It really could be anything that you find life-giving, anything that exercises, or recovers, or challenges, or touches a part of yourself that doesn’t normally get used as a mom. Anything that feeds your soul, that reminds you of who you are separate from what you do for your kids. After all, one day our kids will be gone. The truth is, our kids do not exclusively define who we are, and we are better, more whole, people when we live with some reminder of that reality.