You Did Not Lose Yourself in Motherhood.
Everyone calls it losing yourself. But you know you are still in there. You are fun. You have a personality. You just cannot seem to find it when someone asks. Here is why that happens and what it
There is a version of this story that is often told.
You had a self before. A whole one. With interests and rhythms and a way of moving through the world that was distinctly yours. And then motherhood arrived, and somewhere in the years that followed, that self got smaller and quieter until one day you looked up and could not find her.
Everyone calls it losing yourself.
I want to offer a different name for it.
Let me share what I’ve observed about the idea of losing yourself in motherhood, and how it connects to everything that follows.
It implies that you went somewhere. That you made choices, got consumed, let things slide, stopped prioritizing yourself until the self gradually eroded.
It locates the loss inside you.
But what if you did not go anywhere?
What if the invisible structure of home and family life simply left no layer for you to show up in?
Think about what running a household actually demands from the person doing it.
The tracking, the anticipating, the coordinating; the invisible layer that runs continuously beneath every visible task. The mental calculations that start before your feet hit the floor and do not stop when the house goes quiet. The awareness that cannot switch off, because if it does, something slips.
Who needs what before Tuesday? What is running low? What is coming up that no one else noticed? The appointment. The permission slip. The thing you hoped to remember by morning.
All of that is running. All the time. Through one brain.
When your entire mind is holding the load, there’s nothing left for the part that wonders what you want or who you are when undisturbed.
That layer did not disappear.
It went quiet because everything else needed it.
I remember the first time after having kids that someone asked me what I wanted to do for fun.
And I went blank.
Not a little blank. Fully, genuinely, embarrassingly blank.
Because here is the thing about me: I am fun. I am a cool girl. I have always been the person with ideas, with energy, with the ability to turn an ordinary Tuesday into something worth remembering. That is not me being arrogant. That is just who I am.
So when I went blank, something in me wanted to say, wait. No. That is not who I am. I like things. I do things. I have a whole personality. I just cannot seem to find any of it right now.
And the look on people’s faces sometimes. Like maybe I was boring now. Like motherhood had flattened me into someone with nothing going on inside.
I was not boring. I was not flat. I was not gone.
I was running so much in the background, my fun and opinions had nothing left to run on.
The question landed on something that was not running.
Not because she was gone.
Because everything else had already taken what she needed to show up.
This is what happens when Mental Load and Invisible Coordination Work consume every available layer you have.
The cognitive responsibility of anticipating, organizing, remembering, and coordinating; and the unseen planning that keeps everything functioning; together they consume nearly everything.
Not because you are incapable. Not because motherhood erased you.
Because the load was using everything.
This is part of the Mom Life Harbor Structural Load System™. Nine pillars. One system. This is one of them.
This is the part the losing yourself story never names.
You did not make a series of choices that gradually eroded who you were. You did not fail to protect your identity. You did not love yourself less than you loved your family.
You carried a load built for many. When it demands so much, there’s nothing left for self-reflection or the quiet question of what you actually want.
The person who used to answer that question is not lost.
She did not go anywhere.
She is still in there; under the load, beneath the coordination, in the layer that goes quiet when everything else is running.
And when someone asks what you want to do for fun?
She is trying to answer.
She just needs the other layers to leave room for her.
That is not a personal conclusion. It is a structural one.
One brain. Holding a system built for many.
Karleen
If this named something you have been carrying, there is more of it here.
Great piece on motherhood