After I dropped my daughter off at daycare, I made a pit stop back at home to take the dog for a walk before heading into work. We set off into the muggy morning, Louie dragging me toward the trail behind our house. I would have rather taken this walk alone. But as a mom, I’m learning, there’s always someone or something else to take care of.
We rounded the corner and caught sight of two older women crouched down peering at the ground.
“A snakeskin,” they said as we approached. I pulled Louie in closer. He fought against the leash, stretching his snout toward the long, scaly, translucent skin.
Kind of gross, I thought, but fascinating nonetheless. If Louie hadn’t been with me, I would’ve liked to take a closer look.
“You should take it home,” one of the ladies said to the other when we were almost out of earshot.
Entering motherhood is less like undergoing a graceful transformation and more like shedding a snakeskin.
“My husband would kill me,” the other one replied, and I chuckled because I can relate. Shells, rocks, and oddly shaped walnuts have found their way into my home on numerous occasions, much to my husband’s dismay.
Louie and I finished our walk, sans souvenir. But that image of the snakeskin remained with me.
Later, my friend sent me an Instagram post from a mom-fluencer. We often exchange content that we find relatable or inspirational as new moms. In the post, the author shares her perspective on the transition into motherhood. The opening paragraph states:
“Motherhood holds a certain magic that no parenting book can fully capture. It’s an experience that brings about a profound inner transformation, nestled somewhere between the depths of your spirit and the gentle whispers in the back of your mind. This change takes its time, gradually unfolding before you. If you’re not careful, you might miss it. Yet, it has a way of consuming you so entirely that one day you’ll look in the mirror and wonder where the old you has gone.”
Such beautiful words, and yet I recoiled at the popular sentiment.
My strong reaction to the post surprised me. I sat with the words for a long while until I decided that for me, entering motherhood is less like undergoing a graceful transformation and more like shedding a snakeskin.
For one thing, this journey hasn’t felt magical. It has felt physical, with the harshness of reality scraping against my pointed expectations.
A snake sheds its skin through a process called molting or sloughing, which can last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. When it’s time, the snake begins to rub her head against a rough surface to loosen the skin on her face. Her eyelids crystallize, becoming scales that will shed with the rest of her sheath. Temporary blindness makes an already uncomfortable process feel even more distressing and vulnerable.
Once the top layer of skin rips, the snake continues grating herself against rocks and squeezing through tight spaces in order to peel back the old skin. After much labor, she reveals a fresh new coat of scales and leaves behind a fully intact snakeskin for others to find.
Becoming a mom has been like that for me.
For one thing, this journey hasn’t felt magical. It has felt physical, with the harshness of reality scraping against my pointed expectations. Sure, we have had precious moments. But more often (or at least as often), we’ve had uncomfortable, difficult, on-the-brink-of-despair moments. The transition into motherhood has been painful. Less like walking through a portal into a sparkly new world and more like dragging myself through a rocky crevice where I don’t belong. It has blindsided me and left me groping in the dark, directionless and scared. It has made me bang my head against the wall more than once, forcing me to strip away old beliefs and self-stories.
And secondly, I reject the idea that motherhood morphs you into a completely new person. I don’t want to become a new person. I don’t want to look in the mirror one day and not recognize myself. I’ve had enough identity crises to know that “identity” itself is a myth and in fact we’re composed of many identities.
Motherhood is only one facet of who I am.
I loved the person that I was before giving birth to my daughter, and I still feel a lot like her nine months postpartum. I still love the same things that I loved before, and I long for more time to connect with those parts of myself that get neglected in child-rearing. And when I do get the chance to write, paddleboard, and take advantage of a sliver of the freedom that the “old me” used to have, I come alive.
I don’t want to become a new person. I don’t want to look in the mirror one day and not recognize myself.
Our society praises the martyrdom of moms. Losing yourself in motherhood is viewed as an admirable and necessary sacrifice. Many even describe it as beautiful, lovely, and good.
But I won’t do it, because it’s not my truth. I’m still the same person I always have been and always will be. A snake that sheds her skin is still the same snake. Her essence doesn’t change. She simply outgrows one layer and creates another, leaving behind her sheath as proof that there’s more to her than a veneer.