A New Start

It's been a couple of years since I started this blog or added anything to it, but now that I have started a new chapter in my life- motherhood- I have a lot of things to say and feel the need to start anew. Becoming a mother turns your whole life upside-down. Everything about my days and nights is categorically different than before my son was born, and in many ways my perspectives and ideas have shifted accordingly.

There is an interesting paradox here, because while almost everything about my life is different (no more desk job, no more late nights out, very different social scene...), I am and I am not the same person. I still have the same needs, dreams, and fears I had before (plus a few more, now that I have a baby!); I still love doing the same things I did before and I do miss being able to go to dance class, take a spontaneous day trip, or act in a play when I feel like it. My heart is the same, it just has more love in it. My mind is the same, it just has more to tend to.

So in many ways, I am still the same Me; but from my experience of early motherhood so far it seems as though people treat you as if you are altogether a different person, not just that you have a different life situation, once you have a child. To the extent that some people I used to be social with barely seems able to say "Hello" when I see them in public. I should qualify that: people that I used to be social with who don't have children- which is almost everyone since I am the first of my friends to have a baby. It's not like I suddenly don't know how to socialize with people who don't have kids.

On the other hand, I am also very different than I was before I had a baby, and necessarily so. Aside from the obvious child-related responsibilities, worries, and joys, I feel different. I feel like I get to be a part of something totally sacred, but definitely hard. Personally, I feel like I have been given a very big challenge, but a one that is also a blessing. I don't feel like I was ever the center of my universe, but I'm definitely not now!

I also relate very differently to my body now. Granted, I have been pretty fortunate with my post-partum figure, but I really feel like I care less about my body looking a particular way; instead, I am grateful for it and what it has been able to do. I am grateful for its ability to house a growing baby and then deliver it into the world with such strength power. I am grateful for the nourishment it has provided my son before and after his birth. I don't fuss over the imperfections anymore; rather, I see it as a whole and as an incredible system that has done amazing things about which I feel really good.

So I am not the same person that I was before- but maybe "same" and "different" are inadequate terms. I am growing, developing, adding to my repertoire. Starting anew, but not from scratch.