Grieving the Maiden - Postpartum Identity Loss (Part 2)

Postpartum Identity Loss: Why You Don’t Recognize Yourself (Yet)

People used to praise me for being adorable—Shirley Temple curls, dimpled arms, the whole chorus of “she’s so cute!” Over time, that attention quietly welded itself to my identity. Later, discipline did the rest. From seventh grade into college, I did at least 100 crunches each night. Abs became a personality trait. Thinness became a compass. I never said it out loud, but my self-worth stood on two pillars: my ability to earn and my body.

TV shows are cruel, making us new moms think our body will not look 6 months pregnant after birth

Motherhood shook both.

After giving birth, my body changes after pregnancy became like a foreign country. The mirror felt like customs, and I could never get the all clear. Clothes clung in the wrong places. Sensations were loud—like the volume on my own skin was turned up too high. Body positivity slogans bounced off me. I knew what feeling at home in my body used to feel like, and these postpartum body changes weren't it.

Numbers told a brutal story: in six years I carried four full-term pregnancies (with three miscarriages along the way). My weight gain pregnancy after pregnancy swung fifty to sixty pounds each time. With each birth I’d lose the baby-and-fluid pounds, then stare down forty more of on my own. Meanwhile, my brain was remodeling itself (remember synaptic pruning). For about 20% of my recent life, I was in nonstop transformation. No wonder my identity was so shook.

So I did what I knew: I started with the body. Physical therapy for diastasis recti, meal plans for postpartum weight management, any workouts I could actually do with the energy I had. When one plan for my postpartum weight loss journey stopped working, I shifted to another. Not because I hated myself or my body changes after pregnancy—because I wanted to find my way back home. I wish I could say I was immune to old patterns. I wasn’t. My inner critic could cut me to ribbons faster than any troll on the internet. But movement helped me hear a kinder voice despite the many postpartum body changes.

Here’s a truth I wish someone had handed me sooner: however your identity formed, it will need to be remade once you begin finding yourself after becoming a mom. If your sense of self was anchored in your appearance, the mental and emotional shifts may be easier to accept than the physical body changes after pregnancy. If it was anchored in your freedom, the body might be easier to bless than the loss of spontaneity. Either way, there is a grief to carry—and a choice to make.

We don’t just “bounce back.” We grieve the maiden. We thank her for getting us here. And then, gently, we let her go through the maiden to mother transition.

This isn’t a one-time goodbye. It’s a ritual you might repeat: in the mirror, in your journal, in prayer. Build her a small monument in your heart—for you wouldn't be here, now, without her. And then turn toward the woman you are becoming and open your arms wide with an intentional embrace -- for she is your future.

We must realize that the mother is not a lesser evolution of the maiden; she is a truer one.

Next in the series → Expectations Are Toxic: The Weight We Carry (and How to Set It Down)