You’ve Been Mom So Long You Forgot Who Else You Are

Welcome back, my beautiful Gen X women and midlifers. I'm so glad you're here. Last week, we talked about the guilt of finally putting yourself first. Today, I want to go a little deeper into the question of identity because here is what I have found. The guilt does not come from nowhere. It comes from the fact that for decades your identity and your roles have been the same thing, and when the roles shift, it can feel like you're losing yourself.

Today, we're revisiting a conversation about how your identity slowly morphs into the roles you were called to play, and what happens to you when those roles start to fade. Roles like mom, wife, caregiver, mentor, coach, advocate, manager, and the list goes on. Before we get into today's episode, I want to say something.

Over these next seven weeks, I'm going to be sharing some of my most meaningful archive episodes with you. Conversations that I chose very deliberately because I believe they speak exactly to where many of you are right now. Each week, I will tell you why I chose the episode and what to listen for.

And at the end of this series, I have something new to share with you, something I've been building quietly in the background. All you have to do is join the insider list at mommasmotivationmessages.com. And that's mamas with an O. M-O-M-M-A-S. This way you'll know what's coming next.

I chose today's episode specifically because of a moment I share from former First Lady Michelle Obama. And I think when you hear it, you're going to feel a little less alone in something you may never have admitted out loud. I also want you to listen for the nine strategies near the end. They're practical, and they're yours to start today.

Let's get into today's episode.

Welcome to the Momma's Motivational Messages Podcast, where women learn to stop putting themselves on the back burner and start paying attention to caring for themselves first so they can be better for everyone else in their lives. I know you'll be inspired by the stories of resiliency and starting over, of health and self-healing, of gaining clarity through journaling, of showing self-love through world travel, and the list goes on.

I encourage you to relax and enjoy. I'm your host, Peggie Kirkland, PK.

My beautiful Gen X women and midlifers, today's episode is titled You've Been Mom So Long, You Forgot Who Else You Are. This episode is for you if you've ever asked this question: Who am I now that I'm no longer needed in all the same ways? If your nest just emptied, or even if it's been quiet for years, this feeling can still catch you off guard, and that's why today we're going to talk about something that's not talked about often: how our identity slowly morphs into the variety of roles we're called on to play as mothers.

Think about it. You've been the one who managed it all. You know what I mean. The one who did the cooking, the cleaning, the grocery shopping, the laundry, the listening, the advocating, the comforting. And you didn't do it for applause, but out of a combination of love, responsibility, and, believe it or not, habit.

The thing is that when those roles fade, two things happen. Your time frees up. But then some questions start to come up. Questions like, "What now?" And, "Who am I without the to-do list, without all of those needs to be met?"

And that, my friend, is where today's conversation really begins. Because letting go of that role can feel like a loss. And it's not just a loss of tasks, but it can also feel like a loss of identity. It could feel like a quiet grief, like something that's sitting on the inside waiting for some attention, waiting for a return to the version of yourself who doesn't have to cater to everyone else's taste buds, as it were.

Let's see if you can take a break from obsessing over who wanted their burgers well done and who wanted them medium rare. You knew who disliked tomatoes in their salad and who was lactose intolerant and couldn't have creamy salad dressings. You don't have to worry about who needs scent-free laundry detergent and who needs lilac-scented detergent.

You don't have to arrange your schedules around theirs anymore or experience the moments of panic when your schedule conflicted with theirs. Boy, do I recall the evenings when I was delayed at work and my son would have to remain a few extra minutes in the train station waiting for me. Neither of us was happy about those times because he hated waiting at the station, and I felt guilty about not being there to get him when the train arrived.

You've been the thermostat for your household, quietly adjusting the temperature so everyone else could stay comfortable.

I'm here to tell you that now it's time to feel your own warmth and to set a climate that nurtures you. You don't have to carry that weight anymore. You get to shift from being in a role to being who you really want to be now.

It reminds me of what I heard former First Lady Michelle Obama say in an NPR interview where she spoke about not being able to fully actualize her own ambition because of the nature of what being the First Lady to the President of the United States and the mother of two young daughters entailed.

According to First Lady Michelle Obama, "I squelched my ambition."

I want to pause right here and ask you something. Have you ever used that phrase or felt it, even if you never said it out loud? Have you ever squelched or prevented the development of your own ambition so someone else's could advance? If the answer is yes, I want you to know you're in very good company, and I want you to know that the community I'm building is going to be a space where women like you can start reclaiming those ambitions together.

Subscribe and join the insider list at mommasmotivationalmessages.com. That's mommas with an O. M-O-M-M-A-S. This way you'll know what's coming next. Stay close so you don't miss a thing

I'm sure many of you empty nesters can relate to squelching your own ambitions for other family members to realize theirs. Quite frankly, I can tell you that my journey into podcasting was my answer to squelching my desire to have a career in communications. But I squelched that ambition to advance my family's interests.

So podcasting is one way I feed that ambition now. Don't get me wrong. The roles of motherhood are necessary, and fulfilling the roles you play give you structure and identity, and it gives meaning to your family. So you get used to playing the role of the glue stick in your household. You're the one showing up, holding it down, making things work.

The funny thing is that that very necessary role can become a trap you don't anticipate. Feeling invisible or disconnected or like you don't matter, and sometimes even a little bit scared when those roles shift or disappear. And that's because when your value has been measured by what you do for others, it becomes easy to forget who you are for yourself.

And so during this time of empty nesting, it's important to begin exploring who you are underneath all the titles. Believe me when I tell you, you're so much more than the roles you've played. At this point, you might be asking, "So how do we begin reconnecting with ourselves?" I'm going to give you nine strategies to help you to do that so you can rediscover who you are behind the roles and titles.

Here's strategy number one: Acknowledge what you've given. And I want to be specific about what I mean by that because this is not about patting yourself on the back as if to impress yourself or others. This is something deeper, something most women never actually stop to do. That's why I want you to take a real moment, an actual deliberate moment to honor what you have poured into the people you love.

Recognize that you didn't do what you did because it was on a list somewhere. You didn't show up at every school play, and every doctor's appointment, and every 2:00 AM need for comfort because someone was sick or scared or just unable to fall asleep. You did it because you love your family with everything you have.

Because you wanted them to be happy. Because you wanted them to succeed. Because watching them thrive was worth every sacrifice you made along the way, even the ones nobody ever noticed, even the ones you never mentioned to anyone. You were the one who remembered, the one who planned, the one who worried so they didn't have to.

The one who held it together on the days when falling apart would have been so much easier. And most of you have never stopped to let yourself appreciate that. You went from one season of giving straight into the next without a single moment of truly acknowledging what you gave and what it cost you and what it meant. So that is why I'm asking you today not to celebrate yourself in a way that feels awkward, just to stop, to sit for a few minutes with the truth of what you have contributed, to let yourself feel the weight and the worth of it, knowing that what you gave was real.

You loved well, you worked hard, you showed up.

And before you can figure out who you are in this new season, before you can dream or plan or reach for anything new, you need to let that truth settle somewhere in your body. Acknowledge it, not for anyone else, for you.

Strategy number two: I want you to name the role that's fading. I want you to say it out loud. "I'm no longer just the blank." The scheduler, the timekeeper, the advocate, whatever role you want to put in that blank, because naming that shift will help you to make space for what's next.

Strategy number three: I want you to reconnect with curiosity. Ask yourself, "What lights me up now? What brings me joy? What makes me excited? Is it doing absolutely nothing? Having a 24-hour pajama day? Sipping a cup of tea while watching the sunrise?" It's so important to reconnect with curiosity, and don't worry if at first you can't come up with the answers.

It'll take time. This is a new mode, a new season, so it may take some time at first, and that's okay.

Strategy number four: Create a no more list. Here's the question I want you to think about: What parts of the old roles do you not want to bring with you into this next season of your life? Not the love, not the care, not the deep, genuine devotion to people who matter to you. That's not what we're releasing here. What we're releasing are the habits that grew up around that love, the patterns that started as coping mechanisms and quietly became your whole personality, the ways of moving through the world that served everyone else beautifully and cost you something every single day.

Let me give you some examples, and I want you to notice which ones make you catch your breath. For example, the multitasking, the constant, relentless, never fully present multitasking that means you have not finished a meal without doing something else at the same time in longer than you can remember. The inability to sit still without feeling like you should be doing something. The guilt that arrives the moment you're not productive.

The over-functioning, doing things for people that they are fully capable of doing for themselves, not because they asked, but because it's just easier, because it is faster, because watching someone else do it imperfectly makes you anxious in a way you cannot fully explain. And because somewhere along the way, you became the person who holds everything together, and you're not sure anyone else even knows how to hold anything without you.

The people-pleasing, saying yes when every part of you wants to say no. Editing your opinions before they leave your mouth. Monitoring other people's moods and adjusting yourself accordingly before they have said a single word. Making yourself smaller, quieter, easier to be around because making someone else uncomfortable has always felt more dangerous than making yourself disappear.

The worry that has been running in the background for so long that you've stopped noticing it's there. Worrying about your children, even now that they're grown. Worrying about your parents. Worrying about whether you said the right thing, and whether you did enough, and whether everything is going to be okay.

Then there's the rescuing. Jumping in before anyone asks. Solving problems that were not yours to solve in the first place. Carrying emotional weight that belonged to someone else because watching them struggle felt unbearable.

Now, none of these things make you a bad person. Every single one of them came from love. Every single one of them made sense at some point. But here's the question that matters now. Which of them do you want to carry forward? Because here's what I want you to understand about this new season of your life.

You get to choose, maybe for the first time, what you bring with you and what you leave behind. The no more list is not a list of failures. It is a list of permissions. Permission to stop, permission to put it down, permission to decide that just because you have always done something does not mean you have to keep doing it forever.

So here's what I want you to do. Find a piece of paper or open your electronic journal or use your notes app, whatever works for you, and write at the top, "No more." And then underneath it, write the things that you are done with. Not the things you think you should be done with. The things you are actually genuinely in your body and your bones done with.

Maybe it's the multitasking. Maybe it's the people-pleasing. Maybe it's the rescuing or the over-functioning or the worry that never takes a day off. Maybe it's something specific to your life that nobody else would put on their list, but that you've been carrying so long you've forgotten it was ever a choice.

Write it down, all of it, and then read it back to yourself slowly. That list is not a list of things you're giving up. That is the first draft of a life that actually belongs to you.

Strategy number five: Start something that's just yours, just for you. Try pottery or ceramics. You've spent decades being the one who holds everything together. Now you can use your hands to shape something from scratch that allows you to just focus on what you're doing. You're not striving for perfection, so how your piece turns out is not that important. What's important is the release you provide to yourself. Or try archery if you want something that requires complete mental focus and gives you immediate, measurable feedback as you learn to aim at something and hit it.

Or how about trying genealogy and family history research? You've spent decades holding your family together. Here's an opportunity to discover where that family came from and to connect to a lineage of women who survived and thrived before you. The point is, you can now try out something that is just for you.

Strategy number six: Redefine being productive. Because being productive doesn't always mean that you have to be busy. You can be quite still while planning how you want to be productive next. Things like being joyful, resting, and exploring are also productive. You know, you don't have to earn your worth with busyness. In other words, learn to be lazy.

Strategy number seven: Journal from your future self. This is one of my favorite exercises, and I want you to actually do this one rather than just nodding along and moving past it. So stay with me for a moment. I want you to write a letter, not a letter to someone else, not a letter about what you need or what you're worried about or what you're planning to do differently. A letter from your future self, from the version of you who's already found her voice.

She's not a stranger. She's you, just further down the road, a little lighter, a little clearer, standing in a life that feels genuinely hers. What would she want you to know today?

Maybe she wants to tell you that the fear you're feeling right now is not a warning sign that you're doing something wrong. That the discomfort of not knowing who you are outside of your roles is not evidence that something is wrong with you. It is evidence that you're standing at the beginning of something genuine. Maybe she wants to remind you of something you already know, but have been too busy or too scared to act on. Something about what you're actually worth. Something about what you actually deserve. Something about what becomes possible when you stop waiting for permission that was never coming.

So here's what I want you to do. Find a quiet space that's yours for this hour. Take a breath. Write the words, "Dear," write your name here. "This is a letter from the woman you are becoming." And then don't think too hard. Don't edit. Just write. Let her, the woman you're becoming, speak. Don't decide whether what is coming out is wise enough or eloquent, or whether it makes sense. Just write. Let the future version of you speak. She's been waiting for the chance.

Write until you run out of words. Then read it back slowly and pay particular attention to the parts that make you catch your breath or just stop in your tracks, because those are the parts that are most true. This letter is not wishful thinking. It's a map. And the woman who wrote it, the one who's already on the other side of this, is the woman you're in the process of becoming right now, in this season, with every brave and imperfect step you take toward yourself. She knows you're going to make it. She's writing to tell you so.

Strategy number eight: Surround yourself with real talk. Spend time with people who see you, not just what you do. People who see the woman beneath the roles and the titles. Not the mother, not the manager, not the one who holds everything together, but the curious, complicated, still-becoming woman underneath all of that.

There are conversations that leave you feeling seen, and there are conversations that leave you feeling like a function. And when I say feeling like a function, here's what I mean. You know the conversations where you leave having given something and received nothing? Where someone asks how you're doing, and before you've finished answering, they've already moved on to what they actually called to talk to you about. These are conversations where your role in the exchange is to listen, to advise, to solve, to organize, to show up, but never really to be known. And that's not because the other person is a bad person, but because in that relationship, you're useful rather than valued. You're what you do rather than who you are.

And the painful thing about feeling like a function is that it can happen inside relationships you've had for decades with people who genuinely love you. But they got used to a version of you that was always available, always capable, always fine, and neither of you ever stopped to renegotiate the terms of that relationship.

That is what we're renegotiating now. Not by burning anything down, but by deliberately seeking and protecting the relationships where you're allowed to be a whole, complicated, still-figuring-it-out human being.

And finally, strategy number nine: Give yourself permission to be in process. In other words, you don't need a new identity tomorrow. This is a daily unfolding. You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to return to who you were. You don't have to perform for anyone else's approval anymore.

So let's take a pause. I want you to take a breath in, and I want you to release the weight of expectations.

I hope you were taking notes or that you will come back and listen to this episode again because there is something in here for wherever you are on this journey. And if you want to keep this conversation going beyond the podcast, if you want a community of women who are doing this work alongside you, that is exactly what I'm building. More details will be coming very soon. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts and join the insider list at mommasmotivationalmessages.com. And that's mommas with an O, M-O-M-M-A-S, so you'll be among the first to know.

This episode is your permission slip to become someone new. Someone whose ambitions are just for you now, and so you can be more honest and more authentic with yourself. It's okay to miss what was, but I don't want you to stay there because what's ahead is so big. It is so full of possibilities. And it's full of surprises. And guess what? I'll be right there with you.

All right, ladies. That's it for today. If this episode stirred something in you, hold on to it. Don't scroll past it. Honor it, because every moment of awareness is a return to rediscovering who you want to be, and this is where your next chapter begins.

Until next time, remember, you're not the roles you played. You're the soul beneath them, and that soul, that woman, is worthy of freedom, joy, and deep fulfillment.

Next week, we go somewhere that I know some of you have been both dreading and waiting for. The roles themselves, the specific ones: the over-giver, the self-sacrificer, the invisible one. If any of those words just made you stop and think, stay tuned, and please subscribe so you don't miss it.

Thank you for joining me today on Momma's Motivational Messages. If today's episode inspired and encouraged you, go ahead and hit the subscribe button. And if you know another woman who could use a little inspiration in her next chapter, please share this podcast with her. I'd also love to hear from you. Drop a comment below and let me know what spoke to you most today. Until next time, I'm PK, sending you much light and a whole lot of love.

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