How Do You Maintain Your Non-Mom Identity While Raising Kids?
My answer to a reader question. How would you respond?
"My children have always existed at the deepest center of me, right there in the heart/hearth, but I struggled with the powerful demands of motherhood, chafing sometimes at the way they pulled me away from my separate life, not knowing how to balance them with my unwieldy need for solitude and creative expression."
From Traveling With Pomegranates, by Sue Monk Kidd
Hi, it’s me.
A long time ago on the topic of writing my memoir, I asked — What is the parenting conversation you want to have?1 You responded generously in the comments and surfaced topics I hadn’t considered. Thank you! One of those comments was from Sarah, who had this to say:

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and I think my answer begins with how I was raised. As a GenX kid, I roamed free around the neighborhood or at the mall, going hours without my parents knowing where I was. The memes are true: we drank water from the garden hose, walked home from school alone, and generally did a lot of fucking around and finding out. (I recall “car surfing” with my friends, which was a competition to see who could balance on the roof of a car the longest while being driven around a parking lot). It was a time when we could lie about where we were and what we were doing with reasonable certainty that our parents would never find out, in part because they were living their own lives!
I grew up with a mom who had her own identity.
This never occurred to me until I started writing my memoir and thinking about parenting within the context of my own upbringing. My mom loved playing tennis, traveling, and sunbathing. She sang in the choir and could play anything on the piano without sheet music. She worked as a teacher, and then as a school director. She nurtured many friendships, both individually and with my stepdad, and enjoyed being married.
My mom never made a point of announcing she was her own person or declared that she was taking “me time.” It was simply the norm that our family life didn’t center around me or my activities. She just lived her life and I was a part of that life.
As I reflect on my own parenting years, this is a vibe I carried forward into my experience as a mom. Even during the most intense years when the kids were young, our family life wasn’t centered around them, but existed within a constellation of marriage, friendships, hobbies, and work.
Here are some themes that surfaced as I thought about Sarah’s question…
Cultivate your important relationships.
My husband Bryan is an active and involved parenting partner. We’ve worked hard on maintaining good communications skills, asking for what we need, and having fun together. When the kids were little, we prioritized date nights and got free babysitting by swapping every other week with another family. Spending time having fun together without the kids might be the secret to our (mostly) happy 24 year marriage!
I also made time for my friends, both with kids present and without. Yes, time becomes a precious commodity, and maybe we can’t do all the same things we did before we had kids, but to stay sane we need a community. We need people to reflect and absorb, to challenge and show grace, to remind us who we are.
My community has expanded and contracted over the years—changing with my age, interests, the kids’ age, and as our life gets more or less complicated. Specific friends come and go. My marriage went through weird and unsettling seasons. But I always had people I could count on who know me as a three dimensional person because I gave them my three dimensional self.
Don’t ghost your friends. Don’t sideline your parenting partner.
Your kids need you to have these people so they come to understand you as a kaleidoscope of feelings, interests, and talents.
Do things that recreate you.
Have you ever noticed that the words recreate (to create again, or refresh) and recreate (to refresh by means of relaxation and enjoyment) are pronounced differently but essentially mean the same thing? Whether we are re-creating or reck-reating, we are giving new life to something that feels tired, used up, or past its prime.
As the great Anne Lamott is famous for saying, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” We may not be able to engage in all the activities we loved doing before kids, but we can find at least one thing we love to do that refreshes us along the way.
For example, one year a girl from a nearby high school walked over one afternoon a week to watch my kids while I went to a coffee shop to write. Maybe your thing is book club, or weekend brunch with the girls, or gardening, or hiking. Figure out what makes you feel like a three-dimensional person and work with your parenting partner to make it happen on the regular.
Divide and Conquer.
My guess is most parents who are coupled struggle with division of labor in the home. When I was the primary home-bound parent, I handled most of the chores and cooking. Even though this was a decision we made together, I still felt under appreciated at times. And sometimes as the primary income-earner, Bryan felt under appreciated for his efforts to fund all the peanut butter and glitter glue. I don’t think there’s any way to escape this feeling unless you’re willing to have regular conversations about it with your partner.
For example, I don’t mind being the laundry person in our relationship, but I got real irritable for a season after picking up Bryan’s dirty clothes off the floor. One day it dawned on me that I could initiate a grown-up conversation about how I felt. I said, picking up your underwear from the floor makes me feel like a hired maid. If you want it washed, make sure it’s in the basket. He shrugged and said, sounds great. It was so lacking in drama that I laughed. Fifteen years ago I would have picked a fight about it (therapy dollars well-spent).
Over the years our division of labor has shifted to accommodate fluctuating workloads, stress levels, commuting times, etc.2 But we had to be intentional about having these conversations and making these decisions together, because it’s too easy to mindlessly flip through life’s daily algorithm and not notice how unhappy you are.
I can hear you wondering what chores have to do with staying sane as a mom who wants to be a person with real thoughts again. Hear me out. I threw this point in here because there will always be chores, and everything will always feel undone. You can’t wait for your house to be clean before you live your life. Get your kids to help you (this is easier said than done, but that’s another newsletter for another day). Schedule a couple of hours for chores and errands or hire a cleaning service if you can, but time-box it and then get the hell out of there and do something fun.
Practice levity.
For the most part, this was not difficult for me—I’m really good at setting the bar low and not taking myself too seriously. This would often get me in trouble with the Serious People Who Take Things Seriously. Most of these people were in my church, and some of these stories will be in my book. I have not conducted a scientific study of evangelical parenting styles, but anecdotally I have run into a disproportionate number of rule-following parents in church settings who believe they can input values to achieve expected outcomes.
But the Bible doesn’t give us an operating manual for what to do when toddlers won’t eat anything but yogurt for six days then suddenly don’t like yogurt after we already bought twenty-four containers of yogurt. In those moments, the urge to stab yourself or your child is palpable. You will lose your temper. You will express curt impatience. If you act like a shitty parent in those moments, don’t beat yourself up about it. Parenting is hard and sometimes boring. In the long arc of parenting, these moments will be overshadowed by love.
If you allow yourself to fester with guilt, you’ll keep yourself from enjoying your life.
Believe in the trilogy.
I’ve had to remember that parenting has a beginning and a middle and an end. Sometimes it really sucks. Sometimes it’s hilarious. Sometimes it feels hopeless, like the scene when Han Solo is frozen in carbonite and I would think to myself, How the hell did I get to Cloud City in the first place?! But that crazy hard moment is just one part of a whole story that will eventually continue into a new chapter. Diapers aren’t forever. Sleeplessness isn’t forever. There were new and different things to look forward to as my kids grew up and got more independent.
Over the years, I pushed my kids toward milestones of independence. When they were four, they carried their own shit through the airport. When they were seven, they made their own breakfast. When they were ten, they started doing their own laundry. When they were eighteen, they took themselves to the dentist. As their independence increased, so did mine! It’s the number one reason why I’m not a helicopter parent!
When my kids see me living my life while still engaging with theirs, they learn to trust that I can help them navigate the more complex feelings and situations they’re growing into.
There’s a difference between losing ourselves and giving ourselves.
We can easily lose ourselves to the algorithm of parenting, mindlessly (yet joyfully?) swiping through each moment as the hours and days march on until we look up at the end of it and wonder where we’ve landed.
Alternatively, we can make room for parenting, allowing it the space to expand and contract as needed within the fullness of who we are. This requires intention, a supportive partner, family, or community, an acceptance of seasons that wax and wane, and a vision for the long game. We have to snap ourselves out of the algorithm.
Sarah, I hope this sparks some ideas for how you can make room for your non-mom identity, because I imagine it’s pretty awesome. But my experience is just one perspective, so let’s do this:
In the comments, FOR SARAH, please share ways you protected your non-mom (or non-parent) identity and how that benefitted your family in the long run.
Thanks for reading and joining the conversation.
Until next time,
Jen
👋 If someone came to mind while reading this, please help them find me!
🌼 Stay up to date on the progress of my book:
Here is where I asked, “What is the parenting conversation you want to have?”
My favorite season was when I was commuting to work full time and he worked from home. Most evenings, dinner was waiting for me when I walked in the door after work!
Having nights away alone, weekends away and longer if possible! Due to our kids' additional needs my husband and I aren't able to go away together but I Iove thr times I get by myself. Every few months one of us will book a room in a hotel up the road and enjoy some time to relax!
I think I only really started seeking out things that brought me pleasure away from being a mom and a provider once I graduated with my mba and started on Substack doing film and tv again. It opened the door to new career and digging into passions that fueled purpose.