On Birthdays, Identity, and Motherhood.

I turn 38 this week. I’m not a huge birthday person, although I do think it’s good practice to take some time around your birthday to celebrate yourself and where you are in your life. We all deserve a little self celebration, right? We survived another year. Huzzah! I’ve survived 38 (which, when you consider the way I treated myself in my twenties, is a freakin’ miracle).

My mid (now late) thirties have been insanely challenging - in entirely unexpected ways. Primarily in the way of motherhood. I never dreamed of becoming a mom when I was young, let alone become a mom in my thirties and struggle with recurrent miscarriages after that. To be honest, I never planned on getting married or having children at all. It was something Will and I discussed early on in our relationship and agreed that we didn’t need to be married and we wouldn’t have kids (even though he wanted both - he was willing to make that sacrifice in order to stay together, which is completely crazy to me). I was convinced I was meant to be a female farmer - a strong and independent woman. I swore I would never be dependent on a man financially or emotionally and I would be able to support myself completely (childhood experiences and modern day feminism really did a number on me, but that’s a conversation for another day).

But here I am.

Almost 38, married to a wonderful man who supports me in SO many ways (including emotionally and financially), mother to a smart, funny, wild-child-farm-girl-princess, as well as three babies who were gone before I could love them they way they deserved. A wife and mother through and through - after years of rejecting that fate. It’s been interesting to reflect on my past birthdays, my changes in identity, and how I ended up where I am. Do you ever sit back and truly examine the trajectory of your life? Of all the small, sometimes impulsive decisions that took your life on a new turn and also the big, weighted choices you made that maybe didn’t end up as hoped. All the circumstances of how you got to where you are. Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe I ended up in such an amazing place, especially after fighting this life for so long. This life of family, of interconnectedness, of reliance, of service, of love.

And I do love it. Now that I am in my own marriage and I have my own child, it’s insane to me how wrong I was about it all. What I saw as dependency on a husband is actually being in a relationship with a man who is willing to do the things I can’t to support our family - who fulfills roles that are suited to him and I get to complement his role with my own. What I saw as giving up my life to raise children is actually loving another human fully and completely, integrating my life with hers, and guiding her through becoming a loving and thoughtful human. What I saw as giving up my identity is actually growing in ways I didn’t know I could or needed to. Marriage and motherhood have made me a better woman.

This is not to say it’s been an easy transition. It’s taken me years to accept my new role (and quite a bit of therapy). I’ve had to break down my past ideas about who I was and what was important to me. I truly didn’t know myself completely until I got married and had a kid. The roles of wife and mother have pushed me to acknowledge my shortcomings and try to fix them. Instead of just chalking up my anxiety, depression, impatience, and self-absorption as “part of who I am”. I’ve worked really hard to learn how to take care of myself - to mother myself, in a way - so that I can show up for my family. I’m working on healing from my past, so I can be present in my life right now. I work really hard at it every single day.

Just like I work hard at taking care of my husband and daughter.

All this to say, I’m happy to be where I am at 38. And I’m grateful for all the birthdays past, even though I was a mess of a human, because they led me to where I am now. So here’s to 38 - may it be another year of ups and downs and in-betweens because all of it is valuable and all of it makes us better in the end.