“unsure about who I am if I am not mom”

Because you were using what you were doing to define your identity, now you are no longer doing that thing, your identity has disappeared. Your disorientation and sadness is therefore understandable – of course, you think you’ve lost your identity!

But that’s because you were looking for your identity in the wrong place. You were staring at a thought-created identity (“I am mom”, “I am this”, “I am that”). That’s problematic because no thought you have about yourself can get anywhere close to describing who you actually are. You are infinitely more complex than any thought will have you believe.

What you DO notice now is that in the absence of your four children, you are still alive, you still exist and so on. So to come at it from a different angle: were you ever mom? You are you, right now. Correct? Yes. But you are not mom. So therefore mom doesn’t equal you. And you have been present since your birth, right? You have lived through all of your experiences. So if you aren’t mom now, but you are still you, then assuming you were you throughout all of your experiences, you were never mom. Do you see the logic there? And, also, there must have been points in your life where you hadn’t had any children yet. Were you you then? Sure you’ve changed in some ways but you wouldn’t say that was another person entirely, would you. You have lived through every experience of your life, after all. So therefore, YOU existed before and after your identity of “mom”. “Mom” was therefore never you.

What the hell am I talking about, you ask. Of course you were mom, you did X, Y and Z. Well, let’s put it this way: if I clap, does that make me a clapper? Even if I clap 10 times, or clap 50 times every day for 30 years, I haven’t become a clapper. Clapping isn’t WHO I AM. It’s something I did a few times. After those 30 years I might never clap again, but I’m still ME.

So where DO you define yourself? How DO you define yourself, if not in thought? Here’s where I recommend taking up mindfulness meditation, and speakers such as Eckhart Tolle, Noah Elkrief and Alan Watts have helped me to discover who I REALLY am. Hint: Anything you say you are is not who you are…and you are so much more besides!

You are not any thought you have about yourself. Think about it, if you can listen to your thoughts then there is a you who is thinking, and a you who is listening to thoughts. You are the YOU that observes: hears thoughts, sees things, feels things. You are not a thought, or an image, or a feeling. YOU are the observer of all of those things. That’s who you are.

Enjoy this journey of self – discovery, it is a great opportunity for you. It goes without saying that acceptance of “what is” is the way forward for you. Change is the essence of life and to deny or try to avoid change is to deny or try to avoid life itself. Accept what “is” now, and your “problems” dissolve.