How Baby

I had the unique experience of being a +1 at a wedding where I knew basically no one, and all they knew about me was ‘Kev’s wife; mother of their child.’ Which, you know, for someone who’s made an effort not to have those things consume my identity, is just… great! Super great!

This exchange happened a few times over the course of the night: someone would want to be friendly, ask me about literally the only thing they knew about me – not even her name, just that I am her mother – and then as I’d start to answer, you could actually see their attention drain away like water in a bathtub, having performed the requisite small talk and realizing they didn’t actually care about my answer – because of the script that mothers are boring.

It brought up, all over again, how hard I wrestled with the idea that becoming a mother was this massive identity shift that would block out the light of all my other accomplishments. I find it hard to talk about things I’m not interested in as well, so I could empathetically feel them disengage (and, ironically, just as we started talking about something I could literally talk about for… 459 strips and counting!)

It also reminded me how much of a struggle it is sometimes to connect with people who aren’t actively involved in raising kids. It’s like walking along and suddenly feeling the sensation of missing a step down, like, oh, no, I don’t know about that bit of news, or that new TV show, or any hobbies that require significant investments of time or money!! Huh! I’ve been pretty actively working on reversing that recently, at least.

It was a really isolating experience! And one that I haven’t had in a while, considering my sphere has really shrunk in the last few months to basically only home and parenting-adjacent places, so I haven’t really been around anyone who isn’t also struggling with this…