I am 38 years old and I am not writing this to come off as pretentious or anything, but I just am struggling so hard to find anyone with similar life experiences that also decided to have a child. I am happily married and had a kid on on purpose. My parents have already passed & I’m an only child.
When I say I miss my life before motherhood, I sometimes think people imagine I mean sleeping in, going to brunch, or having more time for hobbies. I don’t.
I had a whole life in the NYC & LA art and music worlds. My friends and I went to Chelsea openings, screenings and premieres, curator events, sample sales, new restaurants and supper clubs, and somehow always knew about the strange little thing happening that night. At the same time, I was part of the much grittier art scene: installation art, fabrication, juried exhibitions, published criticism, being in a band, warehouse parties, drinking 40s on rooftops in Bushwick, going to shows in LA at Superchief and seeing music at Golddiggers. My work was reviewed. I made things people saw and wrote about. I have had a crowd sing my own songs back to me.
It was this bizarre combination of Eileen Fisher sample sales and illegal warehouse roofs, Michelin-chef menus and Market Hotel, art openings and making things with my hands for a living and morphing all of that into the pretty successful corporate career in entertainment that I earned. I’m the breadwinner of our family. It wasn’t glamorous all the time. Sometimes it meant I was broke and it was exhausting and ridiculous. But I felt intensely alive inside of it.
And I think that’s part of why I’ve struggled so much with motherhood. Before I had a baby, whenever women talked about losing their old lives, the reassurance was almost always some version of: “Yes, but what you get is so much better. Nothing compares. You won’t even care about the things you used to do.”
I believed them. I was like WOW! Now THAT must be the trip of the CENTURY! I should absolutely have kids.
And now I’m sitting with the uncomfortable realization that, for me, motherhood hasn’t automatically topped those experiences. There is NOTHING quite like hearing a room full of people sing something you wrote back to you. There is nothing like opening a publication you respect and finding someone seriously engaging with your work. There is nothing like realizing you’ve somehow built a life among people making strange, ambitious things and that you’re one of them.
I love my daughter. But I don’t look back at the woman I was and think she was waiting for her “real life” to begin. She was already living it.
That whole community I mentioned? Gone. Nothing about that life is friendly to children. I know there are museums, but I rarely had daytime activities. Bedtime is now at 7pm and everything I loved starts at 7:30pm. I had to give everything up and I am so sad. I hope having a kid is a slow burning love at least. Right now, I am pretty resentful and sad. I stopped going on social media, and it is pretty unfortunate that many people who were in the scenes I was in don’t have children. I feel as though they are the ones that should so that culture keeps going.
I think that’s the part of motherhood grief I wish people talked about more: what happens when the life you gave up wasn’t empty at all?
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