Finding Myself Again in Motherhood

This 2016 trend has me right in my feels.

It was the year I got married.

A year full of ease, adventure, and time with friends.

A year when my days felt expansive.

I traveled freely.

I fell in love with trail running.

I snowboarded most weekends.

I backpacked, hiked, rockclimbed, and camped—often on a whim.

All of it required time.

Time I had then.

Time that quietly disappeared when I became a mother.

Many of those hobbies faded away. And honestly, in the thick of postpartum, I don’t know how much I even noticed at first. Survival has a way of narrowing your focus. But eventually, I felt it—the ache of missing parts of myself I once knew so well.

I wouldn’t change my life for anything. And still, I had to grieve.

Grieve the loss of freedom.

Grieve the version of me who could say yes so easily.

Grieve the parts of myself that felt shelved for a season.

Grieve having to build my body back up again - twice - to do the activities I love.

Now my youngest is almost three, and I’m starting to see glimmers of myself again.

As my children become more independent, I feel a little more space—physically, emotionally—to return to the things that once made me feel alive.

This past weekend, I snowboarded for the first time in eight years.

(The last time was right before I got pregnant with my oldest.)

It felt like oxygen.

Like warmth moving back into my bones.

And the most meaningful part? I got to share it with my girls, who are learning to ski themselves.

Soon, we’ll hike more. Camp more. Backpack more. All the things.

My hobbies have always filled me up—but nothing prepared me for the immense joy of experiencing them again through my children’s eyes.

And to the mothers reading this—if you’re in the season where everything feels paused, lost, or out of reach: it isn’t gone. It’s waiting. Some parts of you rest while you raise tiny humans… and then, gently, they return—often in ways more meaningful than you ever imagined.