Becoming a mom literally changes your life forever and is both wonderfully amazing and challenging. Motherhood is all-consuming—especially those first years—and it is easy for you, as an individual, to get lost.
As moms, we take raising children seriously, but it is equally important to realize that you can still keep your creative, active self, too. In fact, you can incorporate many of the activities you love into how you parent. My creative outlets include cooking, gardening, photography, and reading, to name a few, and I didn’t stop any of these things when our daughter came into our lives. I enjoyed cooking our daughter the same foods that we ate instead of baby foods. My daughter sat outside with me while I gardened. I practiced my photography skills by taking photos of her (she was the cutest baby ever!) and my husband and I took turns reading Harry Potter to her when she was just days old. She spent a good portion of her early years strapped to one of us in a baby or backpack carrier while we hiked or worked cows, and as she got older, she enjoyed these same activities with us on a horse or the four-wheeler, or her own two feet carried her. We never stopped being active and instead used our favorite activities for bonding time and to enrich our daughter’s life.
You, too, can find ways to keep your creative side right along with being a Mom. These things are not mutually exclusive and this isn’t meant to take you away from being a Mom, it’s meant as an opportunity to enhance the experience for you and your children. Take your children with you to your activities or obligations just as you would take them to tee-ball, soccer, band, or any of their activities.
Instead of becoming lost in motherhood, find yourself. Expand on your own interests just as your child is figuring out their interests. You have the ability to become an amateur at anything. This time in your life can open up so many possibilities that you may not even realize you have.
