There was a season when I was a nobody. I left a big career to care for my mom with cancer, met my husband, married, and then.., my mom died, I could not get pregnant, and I did not work for the first 2 years of our marriage. I was an outsider in the womens events at church not being a mom, not much to offer at gatherings of my work friends as not part of the group anymore.
what I learned is labels are lazy, surrender is where God does a lot for us, and it changed me forever. Stopped evaluating people, opinions, and choices and just lived for a season as available for whatever came. When my daughter came along, when the career took off years later, I still carried a sense that I was just me. and God was good.
Still wrestling with a few of these things. I did lose myself in motherhood...I was stripped of everything I might have been "proud" of beforehand and given a job and role that is (as you mentioned) very low status in our culture. Moreover, I have never been good at (or very interested in) any of the domestic arts, so it has been a steep learning curve. (And being good at the domestic stuff is basically equated with virtue in my conservative Christian subculture.) But it was in the very circumstance of losing myself that I found God again in a more powerful way and realized that my life had been on a selfish trajectory that would have ended in a more dramatic and costly loss of self than the one I experienced. I feel like my "self" is slowly being recovered-much the same as it was before--but in many ways very different. So this new "self" has a mom bod. But, frankly, I think she's a better (less selfish) person. Like I said, still wrestling with it.
I can relate totally re: not being interested in or skilled at the domestic arts. And yes, all that is so pedestal-ed in conservative Christian culture.
Thank you for sharing some of your journey❤️ It sounds like your loss of self was really gain, but I know it doesn’t necessarily feel that way (and of course I don’t know all the specifics of your life).
I hope we can stay in conversation because you sound so much like me. I walked through some really hard years in early motherhood. Remind me how old your kids are? (You can DM me too if you want.)
YES to this! Wow, I was so struck by your observation that no one says they don’t want to lose themselves in their career. Woof. I did lose myself in my career in a bad way, and I found myself in motherhood (by losing my past self)!
Thank you so much for writing this! I’m in the early days of motherhood (3 weeks postpartum with first baby). It is a whirlwind for sure. It started with a traumatic emergency c-section, having to feed her donor milk (and crying about it) and currently still triple feeding (thankfully with my own milk as the supplement though). Of course it’s also beautiful, but my emotions are all over the place. I already feel anxious about going back to work in 9 weeks but also feel like I don’t know how I could ever stay at home full time. I already have experienced so many instances of “mom guilt” and it’s our first week with my husband back at work full time! I’m not sure yet what surrendering to motherhood looks like for me but appreciate this as something to contemplate over the coming weeks.
Hi Alexis. Thank you for sharing❤️ I’m sending you lots of strength and love. Postpartum with your first baby can be very intense and hard! I’m so glad you found this encouraging as something to chew on as you transition to the sacred role of mother.
This is a lovely piece that will stick with me but I have to pop into the comments with a huge “thanks” to whoever said “replacing furniture for purely aesthetic reasons” because that made my day 😂
Yes that one is quite specific haha. But I think there's something deeper there... learning to live frugally (which often means in more humble conditions) so that you can be with your babies! (I know the person who said that and that's her situation)
Oh 100%. And even beyond that situation, learning to care more about the function of a space than its appearance (is the couch good for hosting or just pretty and uncomfortable) and learning to preserve and care for what we have. Lots to unpack behind the statement—that’s exactly why it warmed my heart and made me chuckle!
There were things about our little, old house (and our old furniture) we didn't love, but two years living here and so much has been banged up, destroyed, poked holes in, colored on (I promise the children aren't feral) that I wonder how anyone with littles can live with themselves when they buy or build amazing new homes or whatever. lol Like how stressful.
I’ve thought this so many times too! Maybe this is a cynical take but I’d say what often happens is either kids are on screens a lot (so they’re not messing anything up) and/or they’re very much feeling the priorities of the parents (having everything just so over all else)
I would say motherhood is about sanctification (as is marriage, along with many other life experiences), and sanctification requires surrender. It just does.
I love your distinctions about the different perceptions of surrender!
Yes, for sure! The way I wrote this is more for a secular audience. There's a whole God/Christian culture angle to the topic that I didn't really get into here. (I did in the podcast!)
Once again so spot on and reassuring to read! I’m still learning to “surrender” home furniture that just isn’t realistic to have with an energetic toddler!Nobody told me my sanctuary would involve potties in nearly every room!!
Ah, so glad you connected. Yes, I think the decor/state of our home is a huge thing regarding surrender! It's like, little people live here too, but you have to adjust that it's not how you are used to or would ideally like to live ;)
Loved these reflections - thankyou. My son is 7 months old currently and my entire pregnancy was grappling with exactly this - ‘surrender’. I thought I had come to understand surrender, birthing him at home with only my partner present but motherhood has been another spiral deeper. So humbling. I feel like the process of purifying and aligning to divine will is kind of like being baptised by a flame. Intense! But so divinely perfect, that the experience of gestating, birthing and nurturing new life has this in built ability to guide such a profound process.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful and honest piece. It's so interesting to contemplate the term 'surrender' - I too love definitions/etymology of words as a starting place. A very wise person once told me that 'language is both revealing and concealing' - that is something that has always stuck with me and serves as a reminder to really look into the language we are using.
When I think about surrendering, I can get a felt sense of the here and now. The present moment emerges once I surrender. It feels like this is because I am surrendering to the moment and letting go of an agenda, idea, plan etc.
Another word that is present when I think about motherhood is 'opening' - 'opening to motherhood'. Perhaps this is the word that feels in support of my experience. I feel like when I open myself to it, as in literally make space for it, there is something new that emerges. I can both see my agenda and my plan and I can see all of the other possibilities available to me. And from there I feel like I can see what is needed - for myself and from others. When I feel myself opening to it, I don't have to lose anything - except maybe the idea that there isn't enough space. :)
Reading your post brought this to me, so thank you for that! Sending you all the best!
Coming in with a slightly hot take: it is good and wise to be concerned about losing ourselves to careers, motherhood, or any single role that threatens to displace our core identity (hopefully, child of God). And we are at a place culturally/generationally where people ARE concerned about losing themselves to careers - witness Gen Z’s refusal to put a job above all else. Witness most of the movies I grew up watching where the parent has to learn there’s more to life than work. Witness my MBA program that emphasized the importance of personal integrity and connection with family and community while developing one’s career.
I am someone who absolutely lost herself in a past career with disastrous consequences. As were others in my grad program. I’m still healing from the spiritual trauma of it 10 years later. I was five years out from that position when I had my first child and boy, was it hard to assure myself that this was not the same thing.
I agree that the danger is in the “battle” framework, which I suspect comes largely from the USA’s cultural obsession with scarcity. It is very effective at getting me to buy things from the Aldi aisle of rotating “stuff” and not so helpful in helping me keep my calm when it seems like my infant will never go to sleep.
PS I LOVE the example you give of the showers (and will be trying it with my 3yo who hates baths!).
This is a battle I have to fight over and over again. Because, even as I think I've surrendered, I will find myself grasping tightly to my own timelines, or ideas of what things "should" look like. I think one thing that often gets conflated with this surrender is the idea that we're not allowed to have our own ideas or ambitions or desires as mothers. And in some more conservative Christian circles, I actually think that idea is glorified -- that you really do lose your identity to your children or husband. But then you have Psalm 37 saying, "delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart". God really does care about our hearts, our desires, and our wellbeing, but that care doesn't always look like our plans for our own life. So often it's like it's this binary -- we're all evil, bad, nothing that we desire could be good OR it's like full on Disney, "follow your heaaarrtttt". I think the reality is that our desires always have to be purified, and so when we bring them to God, when we grapple with the confines of motherhood, reality, and our struggles, we can trust that God is good and will give us the things that are going to make us most ourselves. But, the process is messy, and sometimes it really feels like we're turning into slimy caterpillar goo.
Yes for sure! I had a whole part in there I ended up cutting where I talked about this. Apparently some conservative Christian voices also use this phrase to mean “surrender to your role as servant to all” with, like you said, no identity or life outside of motherhood.
Yeah, I've been around enough weird subcultures to know this isn't what you meant, Amber. But they're out there and it's sad and suffocating to feel like you can't be anything BUT a mother. What Annelise said is right on. Our desires get purified and we can be made MORE like ourselves as we surrender to the Lord.
Yeah it’s interesting — my experiences are mostly as a woman outside of a super faith-centric identity, so I often am not writing with women of faith in mind but rather a younger version of myself (who is spiritual but skeptical). I’ve learned that if I try to talk to everyone (especially in one piece) my writing becomes muddled.
The balance between surrendering to motherhood and completely losing myself (losing the person God made me to be) has been something I’ve grappled with for nearly two decades now!
There was a season when I was a nobody. I left a big career to care for my mom with cancer, met my husband, married, and then.., my mom died, I could not get pregnant, and I did not work for the first 2 years of our marriage. I was an outsider in the womens events at church not being a mom, not much to offer at gatherings of my work friends as not part of the group anymore.
what I learned is labels are lazy, surrender is where God does a lot for us, and it changed me forever. Stopped evaluating people, opinions, and choices and just lived for a season as available for whatever came. When my daughter came along, when the career took off years later, I still carried a sense that I was just me. and God was good.
Love this, beautiful. Thank you for sharing your experience💕
That's so beautifully put.
Still wrestling with a few of these things. I did lose myself in motherhood...I was stripped of everything I might have been "proud" of beforehand and given a job and role that is (as you mentioned) very low status in our culture. Moreover, I have never been good at (or very interested in) any of the domestic arts, so it has been a steep learning curve. (And being good at the domestic stuff is basically equated with virtue in my conservative Christian subculture.) But it was in the very circumstance of losing myself that I found God again in a more powerful way and realized that my life had been on a selfish trajectory that would have ended in a more dramatic and costly loss of self than the one I experienced. I feel like my "self" is slowly being recovered-much the same as it was before--but in many ways very different. So this new "self" has a mom bod. But, frankly, I think she's a better (less selfish) person. Like I said, still wrestling with it.
I can relate totally re: not being interested in or skilled at the domestic arts. And yes, all that is so pedestal-ed in conservative Christian culture.
Thank you for sharing some of your journey❤️ It sounds like your loss of self was really gain, but I know it doesn’t necessarily feel that way (and of course I don’t know all the specifics of your life).
I hope we can stay in conversation because you sound so much like me. I walked through some really hard years in early motherhood. Remind me how old your kids are? (You can DM me too if you want.)
YES to this! Wow, I was so struck by your observation that no one says they don’t want to lose themselves in their career. Woof. I did lose myself in my career in a bad way, and I found myself in motherhood (by losing my past self)!
Mm yes. I think it’s just our elevation of career in this country. It’s how people have their identity. (It isn’t/wasn’t you!)
“I *found* myself in motherhood” - yes! You’re not the first person I’ve heard say that and I love it🔥 I feel the same!
Thank you so much for writing this! I’m in the early days of motherhood (3 weeks postpartum with first baby). It is a whirlwind for sure. It started with a traumatic emergency c-section, having to feed her donor milk (and crying about it) and currently still triple feeding (thankfully with my own milk as the supplement though). Of course it’s also beautiful, but my emotions are all over the place. I already feel anxious about going back to work in 9 weeks but also feel like I don’t know how I could ever stay at home full time. I already have experienced so many instances of “mom guilt” and it’s our first week with my husband back at work full time! I’m not sure yet what surrendering to motherhood looks like for me but appreciate this as something to contemplate over the coming weeks.
Hi Alexis. Thank you for sharing❤️ I’m sending you lots of strength and love. Postpartum with your first baby can be very intense and hard! I’m so glad you found this encouraging as something to chew on as you transition to the sacred role of mother.
*anxious and devastated about going back to work
This is a lovely piece that will stick with me but I have to pop into the comments with a huge “thanks” to whoever said “replacing furniture for purely aesthetic reasons” because that made my day 😂
Yes that one is quite specific haha. But I think there's something deeper there... learning to live frugally (which often means in more humble conditions) so that you can be with your babies! (I know the person who said that and that's her situation)
Oh 100%. And even beyond that situation, learning to care more about the function of a space than its appearance (is the couch good for hosting or just pretty and uncomfortable) and learning to preserve and care for what we have. Lots to unpack behind the statement—that’s exactly why it warmed my heart and made me chuckle!
There were things about our little, old house (and our old furniture) we didn't love, but two years living here and so much has been banged up, destroyed, poked holes in, colored on (I promise the children aren't feral) that I wonder how anyone with littles can live with themselves when they buy or build amazing new homes or whatever. lol Like how stressful.
I’ve thought this so many times too! Maybe this is a cynical take but I’d say what often happens is either kids are on screens a lot (so they’re not messing anything up) and/or they’re very much feeling the priorities of the parents (having everything just so over all else)
I would say motherhood is about sanctification (as is marriage, along with many other life experiences), and sanctification requires surrender. It just does.
I love your distinctions about the different perceptions of surrender!
Yes, for sure! The way I wrote this is more for a secular audience. There's a whole God/Christian culture angle to the topic that I didn't really get into here. (I did in the podcast!)
Thanks for the mention ♥️ I really enjoyed this piece, so much of my motherhood experience has been a process of surrendering.
On the idea of surrender…my husband always says that parenthood is making lots of plans and then being ok when none of them happen 😂
Thanks for the mention! 💜
Thanks for writing true things!
Once again so spot on and reassuring to read! I’m still learning to “surrender” home furniture that just isn’t realistic to have with an energetic toddler!Nobody told me my sanctuary would involve potties in nearly every room!!
Ah, so glad you connected. Yes, I think the decor/state of our home is a huge thing regarding surrender! It's like, little people live here too, but you have to adjust that it's not how you are used to or would ideally like to live ;)
Loved these reflections - thankyou. My son is 7 months old currently and my entire pregnancy was grappling with exactly this - ‘surrender’. I thought I had come to understand surrender, birthing him at home with only my partner present but motherhood has been another spiral deeper. So humbling. I feel like the process of purifying and aligning to divine will is kind of like being baptised by a flame. Intense! But so divinely perfect, that the experience of gestating, birthing and nurturing new life has this in built ability to guide such a profound process.
So beautifully put. Thank you for reading and for sharing your thoughts here❤️
Thank you so much for this thoughtful and honest piece. It's so interesting to contemplate the term 'surrender' - I too love definitions/etymology of words as a starting place. A very wise person once told me that 'language is both revealing and concealing' - that is something that has always stuck with me and serves as a reminder to really look into the language we are using.
When I think about surrendering, I can get a felt sense of the here and now. The present moment emerges once I surrender. It feels like this is because I am surrendering to the moment and letting go of an agenda, idea, plan etc.
Another word that is present when I think about motherhood is 'opening' - 'opening to motherhood'. Perhaps this is the word that feels in support of my experience. I feel like when I open myself to it, as in literally make space for it, there is something new that emerges. I can both see my agenda and my plan and I can see all of the other possibilities available to me. And from there I feel like I can see what is needed - for myself and from others. When I feel myself opening to it, I don't have to lose anything - except maybe the idea that there isn't enough space. :)
Reading your post brought this to me, so thank you for that! Sending you all the best!
Coming in with a slightly hot take: it is good and wise to be concerned about losing ourselves to careers, motherhood, or any single role that threatens to displace our core identity (hopefully, child of God). And we are at a place culturally/generationally where people ARE concerned about losing themselves to careers - witness Gen Z’s refusal to put a job above all else. Witness most of the movies I grew up watching where the parent has to learn there’s more to life than work. Witness my MBA program that emphasized the importance of personal integrity and connection with family and community while developing one’s career.
I am someone who absolutely lost herself in a past career with disastrous consequences. As were others in my grad program. I’m still healing from the spiritual trauma of it 10 years later. I was five years out from that position when I had my first child and boy, was it hard to assure myself that this was not the same thing.
I agree that the danger is in the “battle” framework, which I suspect comes largely from the USA’s cultural obsession with scarcity. It is very effective at getting me to buy things from the Aldi aisle of rotating “stuff” and not so helpful in helping me keep my calm when it seems like my infant will never go to sleep.
PS I LOVE the example you give of the showers (and will be trying it with my 3yo who hates baths!).
This is a battle I have to fight over and over again. Because, even as I think I've surrendered, I will find myself grasping tightly to my own timelines, or ideas of what things "should" look like. I think one thing that often gets conflated with this surrender is the idea that we're not allowed to have our own ideas or ambitions or desires as mothers. And in some more conservative Christian circles, I actually think that idea is glorified -- that you really do lose your identity to your children or husband. But then you have Psalm 37 saying, "delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart". God really does care about our hearts, our desires, and our wellbeing, but that care doesn't always look like our plans for our own life. So often it's like it's this binary -- we're all evil, bad, nothing that we desire could be good OR it's like full on Disney, "follow your heaaarrtttt". I think the reality is that our desires always have to be purified, and so when we bring them to God, when we grapple with the confines of motherhood, reality, and our struggles, we can trust that God is good and will give us the things that are going to make us most ourselves. But, the process is messy, and sometimes it really feels like we're turning into slimy caterpillar goo.
Yes for sure! I had a whole part in there I ended up cutting where I talked about this. Apparently some conservative Christian voices also use this phrase to mean “surrender to your role as servant to all” with, like you said, no identity or life outside of motherhood.
Your last two sentences 🔥🔥
Yeah, I've been around enough weird subcultures to know this isn't what you meant, Amber. But they're out there and it's sad and suffocating to feel like you can't be anything BUT a mother. What Annelise said is right on. Our desires get purified and we can be made MORE like ourselves as we surrender to the Lord.
Yeah it’s interesting — my experiences are mostly as a woman outside of a super faith-centric identity, so I often am not writing with women of faith in mind but rather a younger version of myself (who is spiritual but skeptical). I’ve learned that if I try to talk to everyone (especially in one piece) my writing becomes muddled.
Totally get that.
Yes! All of this!
The balance between surrendering to motherhood and completely losing myself (losing the person God made me to be) has been something I’ve grappled with for nearly two decades now!
Still trying to get it right 🥴