When you are comfortable enough to speak your truth.

In October I posted something on my Instagram that sparked some conversation. It was raw, honest, and it felt great to write out. But as I published it, I was scared. I was scared of a bad reaction, I was sacred some family members and friends would dislike me because of my thoughts and opinions.

It caused a rift with some friends, one friend even unfollowed me. Processing this isn’t easy - I am a natural people pleaser and a friend unfollowing me (in life or online) isn’t comfortable. But the thoughts behind the post were swirling around me for months, years even. And they are MY thoughts and feelings, they do not reflect my thoughts on others.

My thoughts behind posting were that if I had gone through these thoughts, surely others will have too? And it seemed they did.

Am I fully comfortable sharing and speaking my absolute truth? It depends on the day! I am a work in progress. Always.

I am sharing the post here, maybe it will strike a chord with some of you reading.

Deep breath - My children are not my world.

I see so many posts which say their children are their world, and on some levels I feel jealous. Because mine aren't.

I see friends and family who live for their children, and there is a pang of not being great enough because I don't feel that way all the time. I felt like I should do more to feel like they were my whole world.

Social media plays a huge part, seeing family fun and posts about families helped my feelings about not being good enough.

I longed for children for so many years, it didn't happen easily for me. Those who know me closely know in my early 30's I did a lot of soul searching to help me be okay with not having children. People would say to me "it'll happen for you" and I would reply "or it won't. And that's okay." Even before being a parent, on some level I knew that the role "mother" could not define me.

However, I believed once I was a mother, that everything would be perfect.

It wasn't. In fact, some days life was harder.

I realised that for me I was looking for something external to fix the internal. I had a general feeling of being lost and broken, but believed that kids would make me feel right. Because I felt this, I would never shake the indescribable feeling from the outside.

Because, the truth is, the external will never fix the internal. We need to tune into our gut to really know how to be okay with our feelings.

Even deeper- there is no fixing, because we aren't broken. But we feel broken, because the world tells us that if we don't look, act and feel a certain way, we aren't okay. We feel lost.

I wanted to be a mother instinctively, but I believed my life would be perfect once I was a mother because society told me so.

My children are not my world. I am my world, my children are a huge part of it. My heart is full of love for my children... But also full of love for othet things too. I am a mother, but I am also many other things. And that's okay for me.

Do you read this and think "this is me!"?
Do you struggle finding your identity?

If it made you think, then I would love to know. Let me know via the usual channels.