When you become a mom, people tell you everything changes. What they don’t tell you is how you change and sometimes, how you disappear.
The first time you hold your baby, your heart expands in ways you didn’t know were possible. But somewhere between diaper changes and late-night feedings, the woman you used to be slips quietly into the background.
Many new mothers describe a strange sense of invisibility after childbirth—one minute, everyone is checking in on you, and the next, all attention shifts to feeding schedules, sleep logs, and developmental milestones. What used to define your career, friendships, and creativity shrinks beneath the gravitational pull of care. The body isn’t the only thing that changes postpartum; the brain rewires itself, too.
It’s not selfish to ask, “Where did I go?” It’s biological. Your brain literally reorganizes itself to prioritize protection, empathy, and vigilance—a process called matrescence. Neuroscientists have mapped it: after childbirth, certain regions of gray matter shift to help mothers attune to their babies. It’s nature’s genius—but it can feel like amnesia for your old identity.
“Motherhood doesn’t erase you—it rewires you. The work is learning how to live inside the new design.”
Why No One Warns You About Losing Yourself
Studies using fMRI imaging (Hoekzema et al., 2017) show measurable changes in gray-matter volume in areas tied to empathy, emotion regulation, and vigilance. These changes sharpen a mother’s ability to sense her baby’s needs—but they can also blur her ability to sense her own.
The same circuits that help you anticipate a cry can over-activate, leaving you hyper-vigilant, guilt-prone, and exhausted. In other words, your biology tilts your focus outward—and if left unchecked, that tilt becomes a full identity collapse.
The body doesn’t just birth a child; it births an entirely new nervous-system orientation.
When Motherhood Becomes a Mirror Instead of a Map
Culturally, we reward the mom who disappears into motherhood. “Supermom” becomes shorthand for self-erasure disguised as devotion. But over-identifying with any single role, especially one as consuming as motherhood, creates a nervous-system pattern of constant threat: If I’m not doing everything, I’m failing.
Psychologically, this is called fusion; the self merges with the role, and differentiation disappears. Over time, that fusion shows up as irritability, resentment, or a haunting emptiness that no milestone can fix.
Motherhood, then, becomes a mirror showing us where we lose ourselves in the service of love.
“Regulation always precedes reinvention. You can’t find yourself again until your body feels safe enough to look.”
Regulate to Rise: The First Step Back to Yourself
You can’t rediscover identity until your nervous system feels safe enough to explore it because regulation always precedes reinvention.
When you’re constantly running on adrenaline, your brain lives in survival mode. The prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for creativity, focus, and self-reflection, essentially goes offline. The goal isn’t to push through; it’s to teach your body safety again, so your mind can reopen to curiosity.
Try this: inhale through your nose for four counts, exhale for six, and repeat ten times. You’ve just told your brain: We’re safe.
That small physiological cue begins the process of integration. Micro-practices move you from reaction to reflection, restoring access to self-awareness, empathy, and choice.
Calm is not the opposite of ambition; it’s the foundation of clarity.
How to Re-Meet Yourself (Without the Mom Guilt)
- Name your non-mom parts. Write down three identities that existed before parenthood—artist, friend, scientist, dancer—and keep them alive in micro-moments each week. Identity continuity calms the brain by reminding it that I exist beyond service.
- Regulate before you reinvent. A dysregulated nervous system can’t create. Pair emotional check-ins with physical resets: breathing, stretching, or simply pausing before responding. Lowering cortisol reopens access to your reflective brain and allows perspective.
- Let motherhood expand you, not replace you. Integration, not separation, is the goal. You don’t “go back” to who you were; you integrate who you are now. The self you’re rebuilding holds both the woman who dreams and the mother who shows up at 3 a.m.
- Seek community, not comparison. Connection activates oxytocin, a neurochemical buffer against stress. Instead of scrolling, share real stories with other moms. When empathy replaces performance, the nervous system relaxes and identity widens.
What the Brain Teaches Us About Balance
You can’t think your way into balance; you have to feel your way there.
Neuroscience tells us that emotional regulation happens not through willpower but through body awareness. When you slow your breath, feel your feet, or allow yourself to cry, you’re completing the stress cycle your body started hours or days earlier.
These micro-practices may sound small, but they’re powerful: they rewire your nervous system’s sense of safety. When the body believes you’re safe, your mind becomes curious again—and curiosity is the birthplace of identity.
The Real Glow-Up: Remembering Who You Are
Motherhood isn’t a loss of identity—it’s an expansion that begins with disorientation. You’re not broken; your brain is reorganizing around love. The task isn’t to fight the change but to meet it with curiosity: Who am I becoming now?
Because the truth is, the mother who learns to stay connected to herself raises a child who knows how to do the same.
“You don’t have to go back to who you were, you just have to integrate your new self with the old.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Shahrzad Jalali, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist, author of The Fire That Makes Us, and founder of Align Remedy and Regulate to Rise, a neuroscience-based framework for nervous system repair and emotional resilience. Her work bridges psychology, depth theory, and the science of regulation to help people rise from stress to strength. Follow her at @alignremedy on Instagram and on YouTube: Align Remedy. Learn more at drshahrzadjalali.com.
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Cover photo by Elizaveta Dushechkina
