Happy new year! Hope the year has started on a good note for you.
I’m happy to share with you this 4th Muse-Letter. I had sent out the last one 4 years ago. 4 years! As I pick up the virtual pen once more, perhaps a good place to start is- What’s been happening in these 4 years?
At the time of the last Muse-Letter sent out in March 2022, I was 4 months pregnant and gradually winding down on client work. My precious daughter arrived in August that year, and I spent the next 2 years staring at her little face day in and day out. As any parent knows, of course, that the staring is accompanied by a whole lot of other activities. I am grateful that I was in a position to make that lifestyle choice. A choice that felt important to me and which I had planned for years to make possible.
It is hard to talk about the experience of motherhood comprehensively. There are so many threads, and so many complex phenomena and emotions. But one thread perhaps which I might touch upon today is identity.
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Someone recently asked me how I’ve been experiencing motherhood. “It’s stabilizing,” I heard myself answer. She waited curiously, for further explanation. I peered equally quizzically at both of our faces on the virtual call, wondering where on earth that word had arrived from. Because I can promise you that I have not become a more stable person. Far from it. But perhaps that pop-up word was on to something..
One of the privileges of an intense experience like motherhood is that your hold on identity really shakes loose. And you must look at, grip, or at least sense, something else which is beyond identity. Beyond your idea of who you think you are. Something more stable, more enduring than that.
You see, identity shifts, morphs, and can actually fall by the wayside so quickly, so unpredictably. If you fixate your gaze on that shaky thing, you are bound to get dizzy and disoriented.
I’ll start with the most trivial of examples. Right before pregnancy, someone trying to know me better had asked me, “What are your comfort foods?” I had confidently replied, “Chicken. And noodles. In any form, at any time.” A few months later, while pregnant, I would not be able to stand the sight of either.
While in the thick of early motherhood, I struggled with feeling energy towards coaching- something I never thought could happen. I wondered if I’ll ever feel the same pull again towards what I believed was my calling (Spoiler alert- I did feel the pull again, and how! But in that moment I didn’t know. It felt up in the air).
On a physicality level, when I passed by a mirror, sometimes it would take me a second to realise that the person I had caught sight of, was me- many mothers might relate to this. Not even from a place of judgment- I simply did not have the same mental image of myself as what appeared in the mirror.
And then, at some point my already short hair started to fall out. Apparently post-partum hair-fall is a common thing which many women only seem to discover when they’re going through it. Most are alarmed and don’t know if the hair is going to come back. It does- but you don’t know it then.
You have a lot of ideas at any given point of time to the effect of, “I will always….” Or “I will never…” You can fill in the blanks with your own version of principles and beliefs. About how you think you’ll want to manage life, or work, or childcare. And at some point, that may simply stop being true. Maybe you will once again want what you said you’ll never want again. Or you will decide not to do anymore what you said you’re always going to do, no matter what.
Perhaps because life shifts. Gets intense. Or your hormones fluctuate. Or your sleep deprivation hits a limit. Or you discover a whole new palette of moods. You start to see that the very specific constellation of properties that you thought of as “you” appears to exist in very delicate balance under very specific circumstances- a set of environmental conditions, chemical combinations, biological imperatives, and so on. It is humbling. More than that, it can be enlightening.
Because you realize you’ve been looking at images on a curtain. Slight wind and the curtain moves. And now you’re getting glimpses behind the curtain. You can be unrecognizable (physically, mentally, emotionally) from the person you know as “you”, and yet… “you” are still there. So what is it that’s still there?
This is one of the unexpected internal experiences I most value especially from early motherhood experiences – a peek behind the curtain of identity.
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Once my daughter turned 2, we started the process of sharing her care and experience with the external world- starting with 2 days of day-care, gradually moving up to 5 days a week. My work started to pick up alongside.
My dream gig appeared unexpectedly just as I was dipping my toes back into work- as a Mental Health Coach. It also disappeared equally unexpectedly but not without giving me huge experience, clarity and confidence in this niche which I continue to carry into my private practice. Another curtain. Another peek into something behind it.
I do not believe in niches (in this moment, as I’ve learnt to add). That’s probably not business-smart of me. But I see the underlying coaching process as always being about understanding what goes on in a person’s internal environment, and how they want to show up in the external world in a way that feels true and aligned with them. It’s a function of paying attention, and attuning for alignment. It is the same whether the topic that day is performance, relationship or mental well-being.
I am realizing that I have become a stronger coach in this time. The trainings, credentials and coaching hours I have worked on in this time, are an important part of it which I’m very proud of, but it is one part- I gained my Professional Certified Coach credential with International Coaching Federation with 700+ coaching hours among 150+ clients, completed numerous trainings related to mental health related topics, Internal Family Systems etc., coached on topics as diverse as career choices, intimate relationships, and grief. The other significant part is that I have had to attend to my own internal environment in all kinds of weather conditions, and had to listen keenly for alignment. As they say, you can only go so far with someone else as you’ve gone within yourself.
As 2026 begins, I am eager and geared to keep going further- within myself and with those I’m privileged to accompany in their journeys.
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