Before motherhood, we’re warned about the sleepless nights, the physical changes, and the realities of labour. What nobody talks about quite as much is the quieter fear lurking beneath it all: that becoming a mother might mean losing the woman you were before. Of all the fears pregnancy has brought to the surface, this is the one that has stayed with me most.
After years of imagining myself as a mother and longing for that positive test, I felt both overjoyed and deeply grateful to be pregnant. Yet I also felt guilty admitting that some days it was one of the most challenging experiences of my life – physically, mentally, and emotionally. A juxtaposition that was difficult to reconcile. I had never felt more certain about wanting to become a mother, yet I found myself grieving parts of the woman I was, before motherhood had even begun. How could I feel so deeply grateful for something I had longed for, while simultaneously feeling unsettled by everything it was asking me to become?
Throughout much of my pregnancy, I’ve watched online as society endlessly dissects the physical transformation women experience through motherhood, while rarely acknowledging the psychological impact. That growing a human is not for the faint of heart. Life will understandably look and feel different for a while, but it is not over, even though I’d be a millionaire for every time someone has said this to me during my pregnancy journey thus far. That it’s completely normal to have moments where you question everything. One moment, you’re blissfully planning the nursery and talking to your unborn baby; the next, you’re crying alone in your car because raging hormones have left you overwhelmed, indecisive, and emotionally unravelled.
Like many women, I assumed I’d feel more established in my career before having children. I imagined entering motherhood with a stronger sense of professional certainty and identity than I have today.
After speaking to four creative women who have been through motherhood firsthand, I realised the fear rarely showed up in the same way for everyone. Every woman represented a different answer to the same question: What happens to your sense of self when motherhood changes everything?
Four Women Share Their Stories
Sally Tabart, writer, producer, co-founder of To-do Studios and mother to her 18-month-old daughter, gave voice to a fear that had quietly accompanied much of my pregnancy.
“I was terrified of losing myself in motherhood,” she admits.
It was a concern I knew well. The fear that motherhood might eclipse every other identity that existed before it; the woman, the creative, the individual.
Yet Sally’s experience wasn’t one of disappearance. Instead, she describes motherhood as a journey of self-discovery, one that challenged her while revealing new parts of herself along the way.
For Lucinda McKimm, writer, producer, co-host of the motherhood and careers podcast Ready or Not, and mother to a two-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, the fear wasn’t necessarily about losing herself, but what motherhood might mean for the life and career she had worked hard to build.
“I was deeply concerned about how motherhood would impact my career,” she says.
What struck me most was her honesty. In a culture that often frames motherhood as selfless and instinctive, Lucinda spoke openly about ambition. She described motherhood as “a reckoning with my ego” and reflected on the experience of “being at the mercy of motherhood”, a period where control becomes elusive, and survival often takes precedence over ambition, all while trying to keep both yourself and your baby alive.
Yet despite those challenges, motherhood ultimately strengthened her sense of self.
“Who I am has never been more sturdy,” she reflects.
For Andie Towner, founder of The Bridal Journey and mother to a five-year-old and a two-year-old, the fear had little to do with career or ambition.
Instead, she worried about losing the quieter parts of herself.
“The friend, the wife, the woman who has her own opinions and interests and a life outside of being someone’s mum”, she said.
It was a perspective that broadened my understanding of what identity loss can look like. Not every woman fears losing her career; sometimes the fear is far more personal. The identities we hold within our relationships, friendships and everyday lives can feel just as vulnerable when motherhood arrives.
Like many women, Andie described the early stages of motherhood as all-consuming. “Your world shrinks down to feeding schedules and survival mode,” she says.
Yet what she found on the other side wasn’t a diminished version of herself, but an expanded one.
“It propelled me. It didn’t shrink me.”
Unlike the other women I spoke with, Lisa De Sanctis, a creative influencer and mother of a three-year and four-year-old, didn’t spend much time worrying about losing herself before becoming a mother.
In fact, she never expected it to happen at all.
“I wasn’t worried about losing who I was when I became a mum,” she tells me. “So when it did happen, it was quite a shock.”
Her experience reminded me that not every woman enters motherhood carrying the same fears. Sometimes the transformation arrives unexpectedly, revealing parts of ourselves we never anticipated having to rediscover.
But like the others, Lisa’s story wasn’t ultimately one of loss.
“I’m just a different version of me now. And this version is so much better.”
Motherhood Doesn’t Erase You; It Rebuilds You
Before these conversations, I assumed motherhood was simply a life-altering milestone, a moment where a woman’s role changes indefinitely. But what these women made me realise is that the real shift is far harder to articulate until you’re living it yourself.
Despite their vastly different experiences, there was a common thread running through every conversation; no one moved through motherhood untouched. The transformation wasn’t always dramatic or immediate, but it changed each of them in ways they couldn’t have anticipated beforehand.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. I’m hopeful that the journey I’m soon to embark on will feel like an expansion of myself, one of the greatest gifts and challenges of my life yet. That I won’t lose my ambition for my writing or career, it might just show up differently.
Every woman I spoke to ultimately arrived at a similar conclusion – Motherhood doesn’t erase who you are, but reshapes you into a different version of yourself.
Perhaps that’s the contradiction at the heart of motherhood. The transformation can be both beautiful and destabilising all at once. You can grieve parts of the person you once were while still deeply loving who you are becoming.
And maybe the fear was never really about losing yourself entirely, but about stepping into a version of yourself you couldn’t yet recognise.
Feature Image created using AI
