My identity has shifted so extensively over the past decade that at times it can feel a bit dizzying. Prior to having kids I mistakenly thought I had life more or less figured out. I spent over a decade growing my corporate career and ceaselessly climbing the never ending corporate ladder. I was proud of the outward success, the promotions, the accolades, and the achievements.
Identity (noun): the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is; our sense of who we are as individuals.
My identity was tightly wrapped around my work and my ceaseless desire to get ahead and I rarely, if ever, paused to access whether the path I was on was actually benefitting me or not. But then I had my first kid and almost overnight my entire world changed. The moment the doctor handed me my son, I felt the cracks in my foundation form.
My identity was suddenly split in two, I had my pre-kid self still struggling to keep my corporate career in tact and I had my new mom self desperately trying to make sense of these massive changes. I couldn’t quite reconcile how to get ahead at work while attending to the needs of my young son and standing still was not a position I was comfortable with. I knew almost immediately that things on the inside didn’t feel quite right, but it took me almost a year to seek help for my own faltering mental health and by then I was a shell of myself (identity loss #1).
My nearly two year struggle with postpartum depression culminated in the loss of my decade long corporate career. Letting go of that job robbed me of my last little sliver of my pre-kid self and left me in a full blown identity crisis. It would take years and the birth of my second kid, before I found the strength to dig myself out of that incredibly dark time.
I stayed home with my kids for two additional years, and while I wasn’t exactly fulfilled, I also wasn’t drowning in work while trying to juggle the demands of motherhood. I had been taught that my career, my independence, and my mental health were less important than my kids, so I willing threw myself into motherhood often ignoring my own desire for more and tabling my own neglected ambitions.
But as my son turned four and my daughter neared the age of one, I couldn’t quiet my own internal longings anymore. I knew I had to do something (read anything) to save myself from motherhood. While that might sound dramatic, that is exactly how it felt. I was drowning, I was miserable, and I knew I had to make a change.
I knew I had to do something (read anything) to save myself from motherhood.
It wasn’t so much a choice but an absolute necessity. My previous struggle with postpartum depression left me acutely aware of my own fragile mental health and when I felt the walls closing in I promptly booked an appointment at my therapists office and once again found myself sitting in her familiar oversized chair.
Through tears I tried to explain how frustrated I was to be back there, specifically inside of her office but also once again fighting against myself. I mistakenly believed I had made the necessary changes and broken through the darkness that had penetrated so much of my life in those first two years of motherhood. I thought I had closed that chapter and moved on.
It was my therapist, who ever so kindly suggested that “staying home” might not be the right path for me. I don’t think she said it in that way, I believe she actually quoted a study about maternal mental health and the positive impact that has been shown for women who pursue outside interests, but what I heard in that office is “you should be working” and almost immediately I knew this was my truth.
It was my therapist, who ever so kindly suggested that “staying home” might not be the right path for me.
I had given up my career out of necessity, the final last straw, an attempt to save my last sliver of sanity, to learn to take care of myself. After trying and failing to do it all, I was burnt out, overextended, and desperately in need of a break. And it had worked; for a time, but it was a bandaid at best. Staying home with my young son was what worked best for our family, the fact that it came at the expense of me seemed honestly irrelevant as I had been taught that motherhood was a sacrifice, a selfless act.
But despite my best attempts I couldn’t quite figure out how to make the stay-at-home mother identity stick. Instead of feeling excited about this extra time with my kids, I felt detached from them and from myself; once again a shell of myself (identity loss #2). However, the day my therapist mentioned that study and the impact of outside work on mother’s mental health, something flipped inside of my brain and I immediately got to work reimagining my life.
It it worth noting that this decision to return to paid work outside of motherhood did not come easily and the hurdles were vast, but with the help of my therapist I recognized that pretending to love a life that didn’t feel like mine wasn’t benefitting any of us and the harder and braver decision was figuring out who I was independent of them.
My therapist taught me that being a mother requires being honest with ourselves about which needs can be met through motherhood and which needs must be met through the continued development of self. I clearly had a long road of self development ahead. In this season, perhaps the biggest motivator for pursuing work was creating tangible space between my kids and me. Slowly disentangling my identity from theirs, learning where they ended and where I began.
The razor thin margins we were living on without my previous salary coming in, and my own misconceptions about my own self-worth sans job and income and paycheck, meant that I was unwilling to seek outside help in the form of childcare. Up until this point I had rationalized staying home in a way that directly correlated with the money that I was saving, by not paying for a nanny we were able to mostly offset my prior salary and this made me feel like I wasn’t a drain on our families expenses, but paying for childcare while building - a not yet income producing - business felt irresponsible. Instead, I set out to create the thing I desperately needed with my toddler and one year old sidekick in tow. Oh if I could hug that past version of me.
I am not entirely sure when the fully formed idea hit me, but I do know that I repeatedly day dreamed about a space I could go, a place I could escape to, a place that would take care of my kids while I took care of myself. I will be the first to admit I did not imagine creating it, so much as enjoying it.
But as the years wore on and I became accutely aware that “work” was the thing I needed, I decided to jump head first in creating my own dream. I started my first business in the Fall of 2018, designed to be an anecdote to the challenges I had faced in navigating work in the midst of new motherhood. A solution for other mothers struggling to keep their careers afloat, their identities in tact, and their kids cared for.
A solution for other mothers struggling to keep their careers afloat, their identities in tact, and their kids cared for.
It took me over a year to find the right lease and begin building my actual dream, but I remained steadfastly dedicated. Carl Jung once said, "The greatest burden a child must bear is the un-lived life of a parent,” and I felt this first hand. Neglecting to take care of myself, failing to honor my own ambitions, ignoring my own longings did not make me a better parent. Our children learn from our example and I would never want to teach my kids to be any less of themselves. Figuring out who I was, not in spite of but because of them, was my motivation from day one.
Figuring out who I was, not in spite of but because of them, was my motivation from day one.
I opened the doors to my co-working and community space built for moms to pursue work and build businesses and chase dreams while their kids played nearby on March 6th, 2020. After years of quietly dreaming, a year of steadfastly working to bring this concept to life, and six months of construction, I was thrilled to see the dream take shape. I couldn’t quite believe that I had turned my own imagined dream into a reality. 7 days later on Friday, March 13th I closed them as the pandemic threatened to hit and subsequently upended all of our lives.
My business remained closed for over a year and due to the brand new nature of this brick and mortar space I was ineligible for all small business or PPP loans. I could not prove lost revenue so I couldn’t count on any outside help, the only thing that could get my business to the other side of the pandemic was me and I willingly carried that burden for a very long time.
Needless to say my business held on by a very thin thread. I had poured tens of thousands of dollars, countless hours, and my own blood, sweat, and tears into this business to watch it sit empty, idle, unused. There honestly aren’t words to describe what it felt like to experience that time from the inside. I tried everything I possibly could to get my business to the other side of the pandemic, to persevere, to pivot, to fight.
When the delta variant hit in the Fall of 2021, a year and a half after the pandemic first hit and 3 years into my own entrepreneurial journey, I knew I had had enough, I knew I didn’t have anything left, I knew that I had pulled every lever and tried every trick and cried every tear. While devastating at the time, I have come to see that closing that business was perhaps the biggest gift I have ever given myself.
Closing that business was perhaps the biggest gift I have ever given myself.
Letting go of my dream didn’t come easily, but by the time I finally decided to close my doors I was already done. Breaking my lease, informing my clients, selling my furniture, and witnessing the wall I had built be torn down didn’t even phase me in comparison to the internal destruction I had felt for the prior year and a half.
Much like the destruction of my pre-kid self after unexpectedly leaving my corporate career behind, learning to move about the world without my entrepreneurial identity was far harder than the actual business loss. Closing a business is hard, losing the identity you have attached to it is harder (identity loss #3). Losing a job is hard, losing the identity that goes with it is harder. Ending a relationship is hard, losing the identity that you have attached to it is harder.
Closing a business is hard, losing the identity you have attached to it is harder.
Each identity loss I have experienced brought me to my knees. And yet, through each of my significant identity losses - the loss of my corporate self, the loss of myself while staying home, the loss of my entrepreneurial self - I was able to draw an even clearer picture of who I was and what I wanted.
I never could’ve anticipated my journey unfolding in quite this way, but navigating my own business failure, which once felt like a tremendous mistake, has become my absolute best gift as it led to an even deeper understanding of myself. Don’t get me wrong, closing that business cost me so much from money to friendships, and yet it offered me a perspective that never would’ve been available to me otherwise.
Pablo Picasso said, “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” I have repeatedly learned that our greatest transformations often come from our greatest heartbreaks and failures. Our most significant losses, in turn, create our most incredible leaps because what comes after great loss is profound change and growth. And I truly believe this is a trade off I had to make, I would willingly walk the same path again and again and again to learn the same lessons, and to be standing right where I am today.
I have come to see identity as the missing link between where you are and where you ultimately want to be. Who you think you are is a far larger predictor of success than one might believe. And navigating career changes, identity shifts, and work transitions often leaves us questioning and limiting ourselves rather than using them to fuel our own growth. How we view or perceive ourselves has the potential to either expand or derail our lives. Are you using your own losses, failures, and heartbreaks to propel you forward or are you letting them hold you back?
Identity Coaching:
If you are currently staying home with your kids, considering staying home with your kids, or downshifting your career and therefore your income in the midst of motherhood it is incredibly important to make sure you are not undervaluing yourself and your time due to the fact that you are not contributing financially. Your needs and wants and time still matters, you still matter!
Identity coaching explores how you choose to define yourself and the effect that has on your thoughts and behaviors as well as how effective they are at helping you achieve your goals.
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#74 Connection: All the things that make us feel alone connect us.
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#72 Comparison: What if comparison is trying to deliver you back to yourself.
#71 Stay: Why staying home didn’t work for me.
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#66 Decide: One day or day one, you decide.
Full archive here.
This essay was inspired by (To Let A Good Thing Die - Closing down a company) which made a little light bulb went off in my mind. I honestly thought I had exhausted this topic, this subject, this time in my life. I haven’t written about my own failed business in a while because I was a little burnt out on sharing that side of the story. But after reading about someone else’s business failure gave me permission to reframe my own.
Maybe wrapping my story around the concept of identity would allow me to see it in an entirely new way, maybe sharing this side of my story in one somewhat succinct post would allow me to fully close that chapter of my life, maybe my story and my words would find someone experiencing a similar loss or navigating a similar heartbreak, maybe there was more I could say, and that was all I needed to watch this particular essay take shape.