WEEK 33 - Done Apologizing
By Jennifer Dirksen · Sheer Photography, Youngstown OH · Est. read time: 6 min
You can adore your children completely and still want an identity that isn't exclusively "Mom." Those two things were never supposed to be in conflict.
I want to say something that mothers aren't supposed to say.
I love my daughter more than I have words for. She is one of the great loves of my life. Being her mom has changed me in ways I couldn't have predicted and wouldn't trade for anything.
And motherhood was never supposed to be the whole of me.
There. I said it.
Not because I don't love her enough. Not because I'm selfish or ungrateful or less devoted than the mothers who seem to have dissolved completely and happily into the role. But because I am a full human being with desires and ambitions and a relationship with myself that existed before she did… and that relationship deserves to keep existing.
We have been sold a story about what good motherhood looks like. And in that story, the good mother sacrifices. She puts her children first… not sometimes, not most of the time, but always, completely, without remainder. She measures her love by what she gives up. By how small she makes herself. By how thoroughly she disappears into the role.
And we have been quietly destroying ourselves trying to live up to it.
"Your children don't need you to disappear in order to prove that you love them. They need you to show them what a woman looks like when she's fully alive."
The identity that got swallowed.
Before you were somebody's mother, you were somebody. PERIOD.
You had things you loved that had nothing to do with anyone else. Dreams that were yours. A sense of yourself (what you wanted, what lit you up, what kind of life you were building) that existed independently of your role in other people's lives.
And then motherhood arrived. And it asked everything of you. Which is right and beautiful and also (if you're not careful) all-consuming in a way that leaves almost nothing of the original you intact.
It happens slowly. You stop making time for the things that were yours. The career goal gets deferred. The trip gets postponed. The hobby gets quietly abandoned because there's no time and you feel guilty prioritizing it anyway. The friendship gets thinner and thinner until it's mostly just likes on Instagram. The body that used to feel like yours starts to feel like something you're just living in, managing, apologizing for.
And one day you look up and realize: I don't actually know who I am outside of this role.
That's not a sign you're a bad mother. It's a sign you've been a self-erasing one. And the two things are not the same.
What you're allowed to want.
All of it!!! You're allowed to want all of it.
A career that challenges you and means something to you and takes up real space in your life… not just the scraps of time left over after everyone else is taken care of.
A business you're building because it lights you up, not just because it fits around the school schedule.
Travel that is for you… not the family vacation you planned and managed and photographed for everyone else's memories, but a trip where you get to be a person in the world without being responsible for anyone else's experience of it.
Adventure. Aliveness. The feeling of doing something that scares you a little and makes you feel like yourself in a way that carpool and meal planning simply cannot.
Alone time that is genuinely restorative and not just the fifteen minutes between when the kids go to bed and when you fall asleep on the couch.
Romance that actually reaches you… not the kind that happens when everything else is done, but the kind that makes you feel like a woman first and a mother second for an hour.
Friendships that go deep. That aren't just mom friends or work friends or people you see at the same events but people who actually know you (the full, complex, real you) and show up for that person.
Hobbies that are completely pointless and completely yours. That don't produce anything or benefit anyone and exist entirely because they make you feel good.
A body that feels like home instead of a project. Dreams that have nothing to do with your children's futures and everything to do with your own.
You are allowed to want every single one of these things. Not instead of being a devoted mother. In addition to it.
"Wanting a life that belongs to you (in addition to the one you share with your children) is not a failure of love. It's an act of it."
Your children don't need you to disappear.
Here's the thing I most need you to hear… and I need you to actually hear it, not just read past it:
Your children do not need you to disappear in order to prove that you love them.
They don't need you to give up every dream, every ambition, every piece of yourself that exists outside of them. They don't need you to model complete self-erasure as the definition of love. They don't need to grow up watching their mother shrink.
What they need (what they are watching for, whether you realize it or not) is a woman who knows who she is. A woman who has desires and pursues them. A woman who takes care of herself with the same devotion she brings to taking care of everyone else. A woman who shows them, by living it, that you can love people completely without losing yourself in them.
Your daughter is watching how you treat yourself. Your son is learning what women are allowed to want. The most powerful thing you can do for them isn't to disappear into motherhood.
It's to show them what a woman looks like when she's fully alive.
The guilt that lives here.
I want to acknowledge it because pretending it doesn't exist won't help anyone.
The guilt is real. The moment you want something for yourself (really want it, pursue it, make it a priority) something in you flinches. Should I be spending this time with my kids? Is this selfish? What kind of mother am I?
That guilt is not a moral compass. It's a symptom of how thoroughly we've been taught that our desires are in competition with our love for our children.
They're not. They never were. The guilt is lying to you.
A depleted, self-erased mother is not a better mother. She's a woman running on empty who has nothing real left to give. Only going through the motions. Only showing up in body while her spirit checks out from the exhaustion of having nothing left that belongs to her.
You being full (having things that are yours, pursuing things that light you up, maintaining a relationship with yourself that exists independently of your children) makes you a better mother. Not a worse one.
What a boudoir session looks like when you're a mom.
It looks like a Tuesday afternoon when someone else picks up the kids.
It looks like walking into a studio and spending the first ten minutes just exhaling… because for the first time in weeks, nothing is being asked of you. Nobody needs anything. The only thing happening in this room is you.
It looks like hair and makeup and looking at yourself in the mirror and thinking… oh. There she is!!!
The woman underneath the mom. The one who has desires and a body that belongs to her and a face that is more than just tired. The one who has been so thoroughly buried under the role that seeing her feels almost like meeting someone you used to know.
Women who are mothers book sessions at Sheer for a lot of different reasons. But the thread that runs through almost all of them is this: they want to remember who they are outside of the role. They want evidence that she still exists.
She does. She always did.
You are a mother. And you are so much more than that.
Both things are true. Both things deserve to take up space. 🖤
The investment is smaller than another year of waiting.
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