Being in the position to be a stay-at-home mom right now is a massive privilege, but choosing to be a stay-at-home mom is hard, just like choosing to be a working mom is hard. Being a mom is a beautiful, hard thing.
My experience as a stay-at-home mom over the last 18 months has tested me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Much of my identity had been wrapped up in what I do, how I earn money and what I create with the time I have left over… So, when I chose to forgo everything and focus on one tiny living, breathing project, I had to completely relearn how to be me - without the armor society expects of us.
Various moments-in-time on the journey from “baby” to “toddler”…
The challenges I’ve faced would be completely foreign to my grandmother’s generation. She would never have felt unseen sitting at a table of women, slowly becoming more and more invisible once they realized that she was wasn’t one of them... that she wasn’t a working mother.
But stay-at-home moms are workers: we are the backbones of our households, we are the nannies, the au pairs, the private chefs, the chauffeurs, the secretaries, the personal assistants, the nurses and the carers. In my first year as a stay-at-home mom I’ve become an expert in self-sacrifice. I’ve slowly allowed myself to dissolve into motherhood, and now one and a half years later, with a beautiful baby girl, who grows stronger every day, I’m ready to reclaim my sense of self, and reclaim what it means to be me, as a stay-at-home mom.
So, this series is about me, exploring how to “mom”, while becoming myself.