Sometimes I have the same dream over and over again – I am rushing, always rushing while my child is talking to me and I can’t hear anything he is saying to me and I keep asking him to speak louder and if only he could speak louder I would be able to hear him. Then I wake up in a pool of sweat with my husband asking what is wrong and my response being nothing, everything is fine. The biggest lie I tell myself is that everything is fine. Fine is a useless word that we sometimes use to ignore our true feelings of sadness, regret, anger, loss, resentment, or maybe even just contentment. I use fine a lot.

I have analyzed this dream over and over and I have only come to one conclusion – I am the child in my dream with my life quickly passing before my eyes and I just want to be heard. The journey of motherhood is a tricky one. Let me explain. I absolutely love being a mother, but motherhood is a whole different story. I never knew the illusions that we as mothers live behind. For many mothers, we act like we have it all figured out, we are in control and we can handle anything that comes our way. With this illusion, the lose of oneself starts to happen, so subtle that we usually don’t have any idea that it is happening, before it is too late. And before we know it, motherhood dominates our every existence, our marriage, our relationships, our emotions. We sink further and further into the abyss of motherhood with no clear signs of how to get out or how to overcome. You see, we are just looking for our inner self again. The inner self who used to get excited about every new day; who always looked to the future and not the past to define one’s journey; who was sensual and enticed by relationships; who had the drive to push one’s purpose; and who found her husband’s jokes the most amusing part of the day.

When I was young, I had my life planned out – career, marriage, children, success…. Then somewhere in the middle of all of these plans, motherhood took over. As I talk to many of my girlfriends and former coworkers who are also mothers, I ask them about their lives. We discuss our days that consist of driving our children to school and activities; potty training; our children’s various phases and transitions; and just the mundane, yet wonderful insanity of motherhood. As we end these conversations, I tend to wonder why we don’t discuss ourselves anymore. When did we stop discussing our journeys with one another? Not the journey of motherhood (we discuss this endlessly) but our dreams, our goals, our disappointments, our successes. I know when you are a mother you give constant and unending attention and energy to your children and you want to be the best mother one can be. However, it is a strange thing when your very existence is completely defined by being a mother and you, the individual, remain treading in the deepest of waters trying just to keep your head above sea level.

As cliche as it sounds, being a mother is everything I could have asked for. I can’t imagine my life any other way. I now can say that I truly understand the meaning of unconditional love. However, when people talked to me about motherhood it was always in the context of the parent/child relationship, not the mother/woman relationship. As wonderful a journey as motherhood can be, it can also be a struggle between the loss of oneself and the journey to discover a new self. For so many mothers this is a long and difficult transition. You see, once you become a mother you know your life will never be the same, however it is much harder to except the fact that you will never be the same. I don’t mean your physical self (although, we know how hard that journey can be, but that is another article for another time) but your spiritual, emotional and intellectual self. This exploration cannot take place until we as mothers, admit that motherhood is not the end all be all of who we are and what we can do. It is not the period at the end of our sentences, but a wonderful part of our journey as phenomenal women. And when we admit this to ourselves and each other, we will rise out of the abyss and firmly plant our feet on the ground.