One Thing I Want my Soon-to-be-Mom Friends to Know:

You won’t recognize yourself at first. Your body, your emotions, your reactions, even your hair and skin might be different. 

Or, you might feel like you truly recognize yourself for the first time ever. You’ll feel more like yourself than ever before. 

But either way, here’s what I can guarantee: you are going to feel differently about yourself after giving birth. 

The birth of a baby means the birth of a mom. So whether you feel more amazing and purposeful than ever before, or more alone and lost than ever before (and both are totally normal)–you’re going to feel different.

Some parts of you will remain the same, and some things will come back to you after the postpartum season, but some parts of you will forever be changed. And you may find yourself thinking, “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

So I want you to know that it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Change is scary. Suddenly not recognizing yourself can feel scary. But becoming a mom is an incredible transformation.

 

For me, becoming a mom meant letting go of some things that no longer resonated with me. Parts of my livelihood and my personality changed forever. And although I didn’t realize it at the time, and although I absolutely loved becoming a mom, I had to grieve the parts of me that were gone forever. I had to accept the new me in order to let her learn, and grow, and shine.

 

Because transformation doesn’t mean losing all of who you are–it means growing into an even better version of yourself. 

So my advice is to accept that you are going to change. Allow those changes to happen. 

The sooner you accept that you are a different person than you were before, the sooner you can learn how to love and care for yourself in this very new season. 

Just as you are caring for this brand new baby, you are also caring for this brand new mother. Be gentle with yourself and trust the transformation that is happening within you. 

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” –Maya Angelou