Why Every Mom’s Story Matters (And How It Can Help You Find Yourself Again) (E24)

Mom's Guide to Finding Herself
Written By Mom Identity Project

Ever feel like you've lost yourself in the whirlwind of motherhood? Like the person you were before kids has just...vanished? You're not alone. In this episode of the "Mom's Guide to Finding Herself" podcast, we're exploring why every mom's story matters and how sharing it can help you rediscover who you are, no matter how messy or imperfect it feels. This episode is for any mom who feels like she's become a background character in her own life and is ready to step back into the spotlight.

The Invisible Mom: A Common Experience:

As mothers, we often pour every ounce of our energy into our kids and families, putting our own needs and stories on the back burner. It's so easy to get caught up in the never-ending to-do list and feel like there's no time or space to even think about yourself. You might feel like your worth is tied only to what you do for others, not to who you are as a person. This can lead to a feeling of depersonalization, where you lose touch with your own identity and feel like you're just "Mom," a caretaker, a role to be filled. You might even start to feel invisible, like a ghost in your own life. I've been there.

The Hidden Impact of Staying Silent (It's Bigger Than You Think):

When you stop sharing your story, you lose touch with yourself. It's almost as if you start to disappear, even to yourself. You might not even recognize the person you were before motherhood, and the person you're becoming feels completely foreign. This disconnect can lead to a deep sense of frustration, isolation, and even resentment. You can also experience a diminished sense of self-worth, feeling like your needs and experiences simply don't matter. The cost of not sharing your story is feeling like a ghost in your own life.

Why Your Story Matters (More Than You Know):

Sharing your story isn't just about venting; it's about reconnecting with who you really are. It's about reclaiming your identity and reminding yourself that you have value beyond your role as a mom. Your story is uniquely yours, and it matters. It's a powerful key to finding your way back to yourself.

Reclaiming Your Voice (Small Steps Make a Big Difference):

Here are some ways you can start to reclaim your voice:

  • Reflect on Your Past (Who Were You?): Think about who you were before becoming a mom. What were your passions, skills, and dreams? How can those parts of you influence who you are today?

  • Acknowledge Your Present (The Good and the Messy): Share your daily experiences, your emotions, your challenges. How are you really experiencing motherhood right now?

  • Dream About Your Future (Beyond "Mom"): What are your goals and dreams, not just for your kids, but for yourself? What do you envision yourself doing as your children become more independent?

How to Share Your Story (It Doesn't Have to Be Grand):

Sharing your story doesn't have to be a big, dramatic gesture. It can be as simple as:

  • Talking to a Friend (Really Talking): Ask a friend for five minutes to talk about you, not just about your kids.

  • Texting/Voice Memos (Quick and Easy): Share what's going on in your heart and mind, or ask someone to genuinely ask you about your day.

  • Journaling/Blogging (A Safe Space for Your Thoughts): Write down your thoughts and feelings, even if you don't share them with anyone else. It's incredibly cathartic.

  • Connecting with a Community (Find Your Tribe): Find a community of moms who understand what you're going through. Sharing with people who "get it" is invaluable.

The Path to Rediscovery (It Starts Here):

By sharing your story, you're creating space for it to exist, which helps you remember who you are beyond motherhood. It's a way to process what's happening and make sense of it all. You are making your experiences a part of you, instead of just something that's happening to you. This is how you begin to step out of the cycle of losing yourself and back into the driver's seat of your own life.

What's Next? (Stay Tuned!):

In the next episode, we'll explore how podcasting has helped me feel like a person again by sharing my story, and how you can find a way to share your story that works for you.

Keywords: Mom Identity, Motherhood Journey, Rediscovering Yourself, Self Care for Moms, Mom Support, Balancing Motherhood, Depersonalization, Identity Loss, Share Your Story, Reclaiming Your Voice, Invisible Mom, Self Worth, Postpartum Identity, Motherhood and Identity, Finding Yourself After Kids, Mom Community, Storytelling, Vulnerability.

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For Your Binging Enjoyment…

24 Audio

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Have you ever felt like you lost yourself after becoming a mom? Like the person that you were before motherhood is just gone? Well, I've got some good news for you. Your story, every part of it, is key to reconnecting with yourself. In this episode, we're diving into why every mom's story matters and how sharing it can help you rediscover who you are, no matter how messy or imperfect it feels.

Welcome to Mom's Guide to Finding Herself, where we share stories of side hustles and surviving while parenting young children. I'm your host, Krissy Bold. Let's make motherhood less lonely and help you find joy in being you again.

As a mom, have you ever felt like you just can't find the time or the space to talk about yourself? Like, sure, you're there for everyone else, your partner, your kids, your friends, but when it [00:01:00] comes to your own story, your own experiences, it feels like it's too much of a hassle. Or even worse, it's just not worth sharing.

I get it. When I first became a mom, I was so immersed in taking care of everyone else that I stopped talking about myself altogether. It was like I had become, like, a background character in my own life. I wasn't telling my story anymore because I felt like, No one wanted to listen. I didn't even know what to say.

All of the energy that I had went into my kids and my family and that, like, you know, the never ending to do list. And any thought about me, like myself, just got pushed totally to the side. But here's the thing. When you stop sharing your story, when you don't have a space to express yourself, you lose touch with who you are.

It's almost like you start to disappear. Over time, you stop recognizing the person that [00:02:00] you were before motherhood and the person you're becoming feels like totally foreign. You might even start to feel like you're not a person at all. Just a mom. Just a caretaker. Just a role to be filled. And this is where the depersonalization sets in.

You feel disconnected from yourself and that feeling of being nothing more than a mom can spiral into a deep sense of lost self worth. I'll be honest, it was a real struggle for me.

I felt like I was living in a fog, just going through the motions without any sense of meaning or identity. The worst part was that I didn't even know how to get out of it. I wanted to talk to someone. But I didn't even know where to start. I didn't even know how to begin telling my story when my entire world felt consumed by everyone else's needs.

And that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. I want to share with you why storytelling is so [00:03:00] important. Especially for moms and how not having the space or opportunity to share your story can lead to losing your sense of self. It's not just about your story for the sake of it, like it's not just about talking for the sake of talking.

It's about reconnecting with who you really are. Your story matters and sharing it can be the key to finding the way back to yourself. If you're feeling like you've lost your voice or that the person who you were before motherhood is slipping away, then today's episode is designed specifically for you.

Okay, so let's talk about why this feels like it's totally impossible, you know, as moms, we often find ourselves so wrapped up in it. Everyone else's needs that we forget about our own or that we, like, even have them be on the most basic of needs. You might spend your days meeting your kids needs or supporting your partner or managing everything that comes with family life, but how often do you really stop and think about your own story, [00:04:00] your own experiences?

It's easy to get lost in the routine of motherhood and the idea of sharing your story, like your emotions, your journey, your struggles, everything about you, can feel completely impossible. And this leads to a much deeper issue. Depersonalization. When you don't share your story with anyone, including yourself, you slowly begin to lose touch with who you are as a person.

You become a caretaker, a planner, a problem solver, but where do you go into all of that? How can you maintain a sense of self when there is no space for your story to exist? What happens when you stop sharing? And what is the hidden impact of keeping quiet? When we stop telling our own stories, we begin to feel invisible.

And this isn't just like a fleeting feeling that's going to go away, right? It goes deeper than that. You start to feel like you're just a mom and nothing more. [00:05:00] And you might, I don't even realize it, but this can cause your sense of self worth to plummet. Without the outlet of sharing your personal experiences and perspectives, we lose sight of our own identity.

You've stopped being the person you were before you had kids, but you also haven't had the chance to figure out who you are now. Depersonalization can lead to a deep sense of frustration, isolation, and resentment, right? That resentment goes deep. The longer you go without telling your story, the more distant you can feel from who you are.

And if you're not careful, you're It becomes a cycle and it's one that's really hard to break where you feel like you're just going through the motions of motherhood without ever truly being present in your own life. And the cost of not sharing your story comes in the way of feeling like you're like a ghost.

Ghost in your own life. I know for me, this became a huge issue when I felt like I was [00:06:00] only existing for everyone else. And it's easy to get caught up in the needs of your family, but without any time or space to process your own thoughts or emotions, you begin to feel like, like this ghost, like you're totally invisible, like a background character.

And this is what happens when you're not able to share your story. It doesn't just make you feel lost, it makes you feel completely invisible as if you don't matter. The worst part is that this feeling of invisibility leads to, again, that diminished sense of self worth. You feel like you aren't worth these things.

And it just piles on top of each other. It feels like your worth is tied only to what you do for others. Not to who you are as a person. So we need to make sure that you have that opportunity or a way to reclaim your voice, right? Telling your story, if you're trying to figure [00:07:00] out who you are again, is the key to reconnecting with yourself.

Right? And it seems scary. It seems big, but there's good news, right? Sharing your story can help you reconnect with yourself. The act of telling your story isn't just about getting things off your chest, right? That's important too. It's important to be able to vent and talk about what's going on in your life, but it's also about reclaiming your identity and figuring out who you are.

Your story is yours and it matters. When you share it, you remind yourself that you have value. That you are more than just the roles you play. It's important to create that space for your story to be heard, whether it's through talking to a friend, writing it down, or even sharing it with a community of moms who get it.

The act of sharing helps you rediscover your voice, and in turn, reclaiming your worth. Right? These go hand in hand. This is how you step out of the cycle of losing yourself. You make space for your [00:08:00] story And let it remind you of who you are beyond motherhood.

Now, sharing your story can be as big or small as you want it to be, right? It could be recounting the events of your day. Like, what are you going through on a day to day basis? How are you experiencing it as a person? It could be as simple as that. Or you can go deeper, right? You can give voice to your experience and your emotions, like both past and present.

You can spend time reflecting, on who you were before becoming a mom, like reminiscing, going back through it. Or you can spend some time talking about your pregnancy because you probably never took the chance to look back on that and think about it because that was a big, big part of your life.

Now let's talk about you sharing your story and what it means to share who you were before becoming a mom. Because that level of reflection can help you reconnect with things that you really like, you can talk about your passions, skills, the dreams that used to define you, and then you can start to [00:09:00] decide whether it's worth creating a bridge to understanding how those parts of you influence who you are today. Or maybe you can decide that it's time to say goodbye and close the door to those things and move on and really like make peace with that. Maybe these were times of joy.

Maybe there were struggle. Maybe it was just transformational things, but regardless, whatever the experience is, it's worth it. It's part of your story, and it's really important to go back and think about that. These are ways that you can start to reconnect who you are with being a person, with being an individual.

And then there's the present day, right? Your daily life, the moments of chaos, your connection and growth. How are you experiencing motherhood? Right now, right? What emotions or challenges are showing up for you now? Sharing these pieces isn't like just therapeutic. It's not just a way to vent. It's a way to process what's happening and making sense of all of it.

Right. And by telling your story, you're starting to reclaim those things and. [00:10:00] Making them a part of you and not just something that is happening to you, right? This is you as an individual, not just you observing the world around you.

And then we've got the future. Talk about your goals, not just for your kids, but for yourself. What do you see yourself doing as your kids get more independent? What are those big dreams that you have? What are these ideas or visions? Even if you know that they're not realistic, or even if you have like lost hope that life is, you know, it is over and you have no idea what to expect, right?

You can start to think and dream and plan and, and wish, right? Really wishing is important. And that puts you in your vision. of yourself in your future. And that's a really important thing to start connecting with.

Now let's talk about what it means to share your story, right? Who you even supposed to share this with? Like all of these things, you know, you don't have the time to sit down and share like this novel, open up with the floodgates and talk about your whole experience with somebody.

I mean if you do, [00:11:00] wonderful, that's great, but let's talk about building it in in small pieces, right? Maybe you have five minutes for a phone call and you can call somebody and just start the phone call with Hi, I love you, I care about what's going on in your life, but can I have these five minutes to talk about myself for a little bit?

Because I'm starting to lose touch with who I am as a person and I really just need to talk to somebody. And they're gonna say, you got it, what's going on? Let's, let's chat and just open up, talk about your things. Or maybe say, listen, can we talk about me as a person and not talk about me as a mom for now?

I really need that. And they're gonna be like, yeah, sure, what's going on? Let's talk about you, and you can even ask them to ask questions about you. Like, hey, can you just ask me about my day? Because I really need somebody to talk to and I feel like I'm disappearing.

Wow! If you took the time to really come out and say that to somebody, they are going to know how important this is. And they're going to jump in, right? Give them the opportunity to be there [00:12:00] for you and tell them what you need. Tell people exactly what you need. Maybe a phone call feels like it's totally not an option.

You could text. Right? You can send some voice memos. You can send some actual, like, texting to somebody and talking about what's going on or ask them to ask you about your day. Hey, I'm feeling really disconnected. Can we talk about my day for a minute? Just, like, ask me some questions like we're normal.

Like, you can just say it that way. Like, can we just pretend that life is what it used to be and you can just ask me about my day for a minute? Right? And they're gonna laugh and come into it and jump in with you and that'll be great. Or you can just talk to yourself. Share your story with yourself. Maybe it's through a blog or a journal.

There are a lot of different ways that you can connect and share your story when it's not with necessarily another person, right? Because that can feel really lonely. If you are feeling this desire to share your story, but you're also like up against the wall of, but I have nobody to share it with, Now we're not just entering this cycle of depersonalization, we're entering this cycle of now like feeling bad about [00:13:00] yourself.

So let's give you a lot of other ways, a lot of other options for how you can share your story and start reconnecting with yourself again. And we're going to go into that a lot deeper in the next episode.

In the next episode, I'm going to share with you how podcasting has made me feel like a person again by helping me to share my story and how you can find a way to share your story that will work for you. If you've ever thought about starting a podcast or you just want to hear how this process has worked for me, you won't want to miss this.

Until then, take a moment for yourself and remember you are an amazing mom, just as you are. I would love to hear how this episode has helped you. Scroll down to the comments or reviews and leave me a note there. This will make a big impact in helping moms like us find the show. Make sure to click those five stars and follow so you can join me on this journey of finding ourselves.

Mom Identity Project https://momidentityproject.com
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