Blog Post 6: My New Identity

Before I had kids, I never really felt ‘lost’ in my career. 

I was on a career trajectory that was pretty much laid out for me. 

I was on a set path, or at least on the same road with a few connecting paths. I could work in a law firm as a lawyer, I could work within a company as a lawyer.

My career trajectory ‘made sense’.

Also, I had always wanted children.

Even more so because I never thought I could have them.

Sometimes I would imagine my dad sitting at a dinner table with mine and my sister’s kids running around, and I would always tear up, not knowing if I would ever be able to have children of my own.

I had a medical condition that meant I never ovulated. 

So, as many doctors would tell me, “if you’re not ovulating you’re not going to be able to have children.”

This in itself caused me so much pain and heartache, which was compounded by me blaming myself. For somehow it being my fault that my body didn’t produce enough of a hormone to stimulate my ovaries to ovulate each month.

It’s so crazy what we do to ourselves. How mean we are towards ourselves. How much we blame ourselves for things that are beyond our control.

I will share more about my struggle with infertility in another post, because this post is about shifting and creating our identities.

As many of you can guess, with nothing short of a miracle (at least to me) I was able to have children of my own.

I had my miracle baby girl Chloe, and after my maternity leave I returned to work as Legal Counsel at a global company. 

I started feeling that desire to make a change, and I started feeling quite lost. 

This surprised me. 

I enjoyed my work as Legal Counsel, had a great team and worked for a great company, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I was going to spend time away from my baby girl, I wanted to do something meaningful, something that gave me purpose, something that aligned with my values.

So I moved into the not-for-profit space, at an organisation that helps people struggling with infertility. A cause that of course was, and still is, very close to my heart.

I rose up the ranks and became CEO.

After I had my baby boy I went back to work when he was 8 weeks old.

I had everything I had always wanted.

But it was NOT at all how I imagined it would be.

My baby boy Zac had chronic GERD (reflux), and he screamed non-stop for months.

Work was also not going well.

I left as CEO when my baby was 6 months old.

I couldn’t believe it. I felt so lost again.

I had always thought that as soon as I had children I wouldn’t ever again feel that feeling of desiring something else in my life, wanting to do something that gave me purpose or contributed to the world in some way. 

I had thought that having kids would be the missing piece of the puzzle, but now, with the identity of ‘Mum’, I realised that there was another piece of me that I had to rediscover, the ‘Me’ identity. 

Who I was now, what I truly wanted, what I could contribute to the world.

How could I discover this?

I was on a mission to figure it out.

And my mission to discover it for myself took on another form as I started speaking with so many other Mums that felt the same way as me.

I wanted, needed, to create something to help myself and other Mums with this shift in identity, with this reinvention of themselves.

Our identity shifts when we become Mums. 

If you think about it, our identity before we have kids has been our identity for years. 

For me it was 30 years of my life.

After I had my first child, my identity changed, it had to change, to make space for the identity of being a Mum.

As a Mum I believe we have our ‘Mum’ identity and our ‘Me’ identity. 

‘Mum’ identity + ‘Me’ identity = our New Identity

But our New Identity is as old as our eldest child. 

At that time, my New Identity was 2 years old. My New Identity was just a toddler.

The first step for me in discovering my ‘Me’ identity was understanding this and having compassion for myself.

Of course I still would be trying to ‘figure it out’.

My New Identity was only 2 years old.

As I was figuring out motherhood, my ‘Mum’ identity, I was also figuring out my ‘Me’ identity. 

And that’s OK.

In fact, it’s better than OK. It’s beautiful.

We as humans evolve over time. We have to evolve overtime in order to grow.

What would be the point of life if we weren’t evolving, learning, growing?

Really allowing myself to be in the space of “I’m figuring it out” and “it’s OK not to know yet” gave me a huge sense of relief and peace within myself.

For someone that has perfectionistic tendencies I previously had always felt that I had to know everything right now and needed to know the exact steps to take to get to the exact goal. 

Shifting this and giving myself the space and grace to be where I was and accept that it's OK to not to know yet, was perhaps the most powerful thing I could do for myself.

If I had tried to reinvent myself and discover my ‘Me’ identity from the desperate energy of “I need to know right now” and criticising myself for not having everything figured out, telling myself I’m such a mess, I would be trying to reinvent myself from a place of lack, criticism, perfectionism, hurried hustle energy, which would undoubtedly not allow me to reinvent myself to be the next best version of myself.

If I had tried to reinvent myself from that negative place, I would inevitably bring to my work and to my home life anxiety, stress and overwhelm.

So if I can offer one piece of advice to any Mum (or person) that is in a new phase of life and has a new young ‘Me’ Identity, please know that it is completely normal to feel a little lost, and to not have everything all figured out yet.

Your New Identity is still a baby. 

Look after it and treat it with love.

Allow yourself to not know yet what you want to do next. 

Allow yourself to not have it all figured out. 

Give yourself permission to figure it out in your own time. 

And trust that if you give your present self that acceptance, acknowledgement and compassion, you’ll be able to create your new ‘Me’ identity from a place that will serve you.

You will be able to reinvent yourself and your career, and the results you’ll be able to get will far outweigh the results you would get if you don’t give yourself that gift.

Love Loren x