Woman AND Mother. Where Does One Start and the Other Begin? — Simona Mustață

As I am writing this I’m wondering: if you’re a mother, do you see yourself as a woman first? Or as a mother? Is there a first impulse to separate the two or is it hard to tell their edges apart?

In the huge rite of passage of becoming a mother the edges between mother and woman are often very much superimposed or on the contrary, very well marked, feeling like the borders of completely different universes.

Many women who become mothers do feel like they start forgetting who they were, they find it hard to separate being a mother from who they are as humans and often their mother identity takes center stage and overshadows all other aspects of their inner self.

I don’t know who I am outside of being a mother. I don’t really know what I like anymore.

As normal and common as these feelings are, they are just as much kept quiet, unknown and rarely shared. Mothers feel like this isn’t something to share, as they many times don’t even acknowledge it to themselves. They don’t give themselves the time or space to allow these questions to pop up.

When you become a mother, you start developing a new mindset that is vital to developing and successfully integrating your new role as a mother.

The mother mindset, as it was defined by Dr. Daniel Stern, starts its complex and slow growth during pregnancy and it keeps unfurling with every little mothering experience you have.

The mother mindset becomes your primary one, particularly in postpartum and although your other mindset is still present, it’s certainly somewhere behind the scenes. Your needs, your desires, your past experiences and learnings are contained in this other mindset. The woman you, before becoming a mother, is there.

It takes time for these two mindsets to learn to co-exist and to stop pulling you in separate directions.

And while it is normal and beneficial for these 2 mindsets to learn to share your mind and your being peacefully, with less conflict and more agreement, many women find it challenging to remember and to allow that other self to take the reins, to be seen, to be heard and cared for.

It becomes challenging to separate yourself from your mother role, particularly when you’ve been a stay at home mother, you’ve been quite isolated from friends and other social gatherings, you’ve not been encouraged or supported to get in contact with yourself to spend time alone or to do something other than caring for your baby.

I believe the separation and union of mother and woman lie beyond the birth of the mother mindset and its peaceful coexistence with your other mindset.

I think the way we perceive womanhood as a social construct and how each of us perceives their womanhood as the personal experience of being a woman, impact the inclusion of the mother identity and how it blends into our womanhood or, on the contrary, how it separates from it, like water from oil.

When we grow up, as little girls, we internalize and adopt beliefs about what it means to be a woman and about what it means to be a mother. While being a woman might mean that you also become a mother at a certain point in your life, being a mother might come with the expectations of canceling out the woman inside you and just living guided by your mother role and identity.

Think here of women who’ve had the experience of being mothered by women who sacrificed themselves and disappeared as women, remaining only mothers. This observed and lived experience, this way of being mothered is deeply rooted and imprinted into the lives of those little girls, now women and mothers themselves.

The perfect mother image created by society has preset expectations about what a mother should do, look like, live like, that are oblivious to the realities of being a mother and toxic to her wellbeing and her child’s.

When that image tells you that in order to be a good mother you must sacrifice yourself, put you needs last, stop having hobbies, stop having spare time, be interested only in your child’s life and blames mothers for caring for themselves, for prioritizing their needs, for going to work and not being with their child, for everything that goes wrong, you forget who the woman is. You forget who you are outside of mother. You forget what you like, what brings you joy, what excites you, what you value.

You don’t stop being a woman when you become a mother.

You don’t stop being a mother when you remember the woman inside you. I believe that honoring your womanhood and who you are outside of your role as mother and outside your mother identity is key to keeping these two parts of you in a symbiotic, authentic relationship.

Your needs, your desires, your sexuality, your passions and your experiences as a woman ask for a place at the table.

By allowing them to take their deserved share, you connect to yourself, the woman and allow that connection to co-exist and influence the way you mother. You start mothering authentically, from a place of rootedness and empowerment, that can only come when you let that amazing woman inside you bloom.

You bring your gifts as a woman into your mothering and you bring your gifts as a mother into your womanhood. And all these gifts are poured onto earth: your child, your family, your community, your city, your culture.

Your mothering ripples beyond your personal universe.

Your womanhood and your motherhood are both superpowers you can combine to bring out your best possible versions. Because it’s not going to be just one version, is it?

You're constantly growing, changing and shedding layers you’re no longer needing, to make room for new parts. You’re renegotiating your values and your priorities with every experience you have and having both the woman and the mother present and called for, ensures you make the most of everything you live.

So, if you the woman and you the mother sat down to talk, knee to knee and womb to womb, what would they say to each other?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to share in the comments or email me to talk about your experience.

✨

holding space for you, mama,

Simona

Woman AND Mother. Where Does One Start and the Other One Begin?