This is i am still myself / i am not myself, a home for my parenting writing and reporting that didn’t find another home.
Why ‘i am still myself / i am not myself’? It’s a phrase I’ve found myself returning to time and again in my journal as I have navigated pregnancy and early motherhood.
Of course, I am the same person I was before I had my daughter. And of course, becoming a mother has changed me at the atomic level.
I still love to read and write, I still love to drink coffee and swim in the sea, I still care deeply and passionately about social justice and equality.
But parenthood has also been a seismic shift.
My life, my body, and my brain will never be the same again. My priorities and preferences have shifted. Some of my hard edges have been softened and smoothed, and at the same time, parenthood has uncovered a new sharpness in me.
I could instead have called this collection: ‘everything has changed but I am still the same’ or ‘I am entirely different but the world around me is normal’, though neither would be quite correct.