Reclaim Your Identity - You are More Than Just a Mom

This is a topic that I feel like I might sort of ruffle some feathers. There are those of you who know exactly what I'm saying about reclaiming your identity through entrepreneurship. For the rest of you, you might be a little upset about this topic, but check yourself and see why this is triggering you. 

When we have kids, we give up a lot of things by choice. You give up a lot if you have chosen to be a stay at home mom.  We do it with a full heart, a happy heart, because we want to do that. For some women, all they dreamed about was becoming a mom, and they want nothing more than to spend time raising their little ones while staying at home.

That is not me and that may not be you either. Many of us gave up high level careers to stay home with our children.  I finished grad school myself and didn't think twice about giving up my career and income to stay home with my first child. For most of us, that was the best decision that we could have made, and we want to stick with it. We're still in the throes of it today too. 

Of the many sacrifices we have had to make, we have given up our bodies. We either have nursing children crawling all over us, or our bodies change shape, or we are no longer cool. It's hard to get dressed and feel like something other than a 40 year old frumpy looking mom. That has become our new identity. 

Those identities as wife and mom are important identities to have, but it's really easy to to have regrets about life if we don't feel like we get to sprinkle back in some of that glitter. When we can weave in some of our gifts and talents into our purpose in life, being a mom is probably one of the greatest purposes we have. It's just not the only purpose because at some point, those kiddos are going to move out of the home, and you have 20-30, maybe 40 years of life where your children aren't in your home.

So how do we reclaim our identity through entrepreneurship? Which was kind of an unexpected thing for me.

Find Your Identity Through Personal Growth 

Part of reclaiming our identity starts with personal growth. There is a lot of that required to create a business, especially one on social media. We are worried about a lot of comparison stuff that happens on social media. There are filters where you can completely wipe out your freckles, or your wrinkles, and you can look young forever on social media. That makes it kind of scary to get out there and try to be a regular person, a regular mom creating a business. You have to grow your self confidence first. That starts to help you realize your gifts and see how you are using them to serve others.

Finding Your Creativity Again

A lot of creativity goes into creating a business. It's fun to start out with something small like blogging or a YouTube channel. These are great creative outlets that allow us to express ourselves outside the boundaries of motherhood. In fact, you could be a mom and show up on a YouTube channel, and never talk about being a mom and have so much fun with it. 

Being an entrepreneur allows you to just show up and blog, podcast, film videos and more just for the purpose of creating content. No matter what your business is, you need to create content to market it or you may be creating the product or service itself. All of these models require you to be creative.

Time Freedom from Entrepreneurship

My "me time" looks a lot like working in my business, can you relate? Some of this has to do with absolutely loving what I do but some of it also comes from justifiable time alone. Whenever you want alone time it feels like you need to justify it, right?  How many of us have husbands who work 40-70 hours per week and when they come home they really don't want to give you any time alone? To some men, being a stay-at-home mom isn't like a "real job".  Sometimes we don't get that time freedom because our husbands aren't supportive but other times it is our own personal guilt. We don't feel right asking for time to ourselves unless it is to work in our successful businesses.  

Until your business venture becomes successful though, you still deserve that time to work in it because it is critical to reclaiming and maintaining your identity outside of "just a mom". Once your business does take off, then you will have created even more freedom -- time and financial freedom. Many of the mompreneurs I work with have ben able to give up their full time careers being an entrepreneur and even free their husband's from their careers. This is the type of freedom I myself have achieved. So I know firsthand how entrepreneurship helped me reclaim my identity.