When Your Identity Was ‘Mom, Now What?

The Momentum Coach Podcast exists to remind every midlife woman that her life is not over, it is just beginning. 

We gather each week around the real conversations about identity, purpose, love, faith, money, health, and becoming because we believe that the woman who has spent decades showing up for everyone else deserves a space to finally show up for herself. 

Through honest conversations, hard-won wisdom, and the courage to live out loud, we are building a movement of women who refuse to stay small, refuse to play it safe, and refuse to believe that their best days are behind them. 

This is not a podcast about surviving midlife. This is a podcast about owning it. Because midlife is not a decline. It is the most powerful chapter of a woman's life. And every woman deserves someone in her corner telling her so.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome to the Momentum Coach Podcast. This podcast was born out of everything I have survived, and everything I believe that you deserve. It is for the woman who has spent decades showing up for everyone else and is finally ready to show up for herself. The woman who has been through it all, who is still standing, who knows deep down that there is so much more, so much more waiting for her on the other side. So every Wednesday morning, we gather here for real conversations about identity, about faith, about purpose, love, money, about health and becoming. Not the polished version. Not the version that makes everyone comfortable. The real version. Because you have been through too much and come too far for anything less than the truth. This is not a podcast about surviving midlife. This is a podcast about owning midlife. New episodes every Wednesday morning on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and at Elevation Life Coaching.com slash podcast. And while you are listening, download the Momentum 365 app at momentum365.today, your daily companion for building unstoppable momentum. Now let's get into today's episode. Let's move. I want to paint a picture for us today. It's a Tuesday morning. The house is quiet, not the temporary quiet of nap time or school hours, but the kind of quiet that you know ends in a few hours. This is a different quiet, a permanent one. The last child has left for college or moved into their first apartment or gotten married and started their own life. And you are standing in the kitchen, coffee in hand, looking around at a house that used to hum with noise, and you feel something that you didn't expect to feel. Not just pride, not just relief, something closer to, who am I now? Because for 20, maybe 25, 30 years, the answer to that question was simple. I am mom. It was your first identity in the morning and your last one at night. It organized your time, your decisions, your sacrifices, your love. It was the role you poured everything into. And now it's shifting. And nobody, not one person prepared you for what that actually feels like. I'm Dr. Narvis McDaniel, the Momentum Coach. And this is episode five of the Momentum Coach Podcast. When your identity was mom, and now what? Today we are talking about one of the most quietly profound identity crises a woman can experience. And we are going to walk through it together. All the way to the other side. Here is what I want to do first. I want to name what you are feeling. Because one of the loneliest parts of this experience is that it does not have a clean, outright name. It's not grief, not exactly. Your children are alive and well. It's not depression, though it can look like depression. It's not ingratitude, though you might feel guilty for not feeling purely happy. So what is it? What it is, is a profound identity disruption. For decades, motherhood gave you something that most of us don't fully appreciate until it shifts. Structure. Not just of your schedule, though that too, but structure of yourself. You knew who you were because you knew what you were needed for. You had a role, a clear, consuming, meaningful role. And roles, even exhausting, give us a sense of purpose and place in the world. When that role changes, when you are no longer needed in the same urgent, daily, all-consuming way, the structure shifts. And in that shift, a question rises up that can feel terrifying. If I am not primarily Ma, who in the world am I? I want to say something important right here. Feeling this does not mean you love your children any less. It does not mean that. It does not mean you regret the years you gave to motherhood. You're still a mother. It does not mean you are selfish or lost or broken. It means that you are human. And it means you are standing at one of the most significant crossroads of your adult life. The question is not who was I? Or who was I? Who was I? The question is who am I now? And who do I choose to become? Those are very different questions. And the second one is full of possibility. I want to talk about something I call the identity trap. And it is something I see midlife women fall into again and again with the best intentions. The identity trap looks like this. When the primary role of mom begins to shift, instead of sitting with the discomfort and asking the real questions, we immediately find another role to fill the space. Can you testify to that? We throw ourselves into our work. We become hyper-involved grandmothers before the grandchildren even arrive. We start managing our adult children's lives in ways that don't serve anyone. We volunteer for everything. We busy ourselves into exhaustion. Not because we love these things, but because hyper-busyness keeps us from having to answer the question, who am I without a role to fill? Now I want to be clear. Work is wonderful. Grandmothering is a gift. Volunteering is meaningful. The problem is not the activity. The problem is the motivation. If you are filling your days to avoid feeling the discomfort of this identity shift, you are not moving through it at all. You are running away from it. And what you run from doesn't disappear. It waits. It just simply waits. It shows up at 3 a.m. It shows up in the low grade sadness that you can't quite explain. It shows up in the restlessness that no amount of busyness seems to quiet. The only way through an identity shift is through it, which means slowing down enough to ask the questions you've been avoiding. Which means sitting in the uncertainty long enough to hear your own answers, which means being willing, maybe for the first time in decades, to put yourself at the center of your own life. Not your children, not your role, but you. And here is the beautiful, terrifying, magnificent truth about all of that. You are so much more than any role you have ever played. You always were. Motherhood didn't define you, it revealed you your capacity for love, for sacrifice, and for showing up even when you had nothing left. Those qualities don't belong to the role of mom. They belong to you. And they are going with you into everything that comes next. So how do you actually do this? How do you rediscover yourself after decades of being defined by your role? I want to give you four doorways back to yourself. Doorway number one, go back. Go back before. Think about the woman you were before you became a mother. What did she love? What lit her up? What did she dream about? What made her laugh? What made her lose track of time? Some of those things will still fit, some won't, but they are clues. They are breadcrumbs back to a self that existed before the role. A self that never went away. She just got very, very quiet. Start listening for her again. Doorway number two. Follow the envy. This one might surprise you. But envy when we're honest about it is one of the most accurate compasses we can have. Or that we do have. When you feel a flicker of envy towards someone, don't shame yourself for it. Get curious about it. What specifically do I envy about her life? Is it her freedom, her creative work? Is it her travel? Is it her confidence? Is it her business? Her relationships? Whatever you envy in someone else is almost always something you want for yourself. Envy is not an ugly emotion. It is a map. Follow it and change it. Doorway number three. Try things without needing them to be your purpose. One of the pressures that midlife women put on themselves during this season is enormous. I need to figure out my purpose. I need to find my passion. I need to know what the rest of my life is for. And that pressure, that need for everything to be immediately meaningful and directional paralyzes us. It paralyzes us before we even begin. So give yourself permission to just try things. Take that class that interests you. Join the group that intrigues you. Start that project with no plan for where it leads. Say yes to the invitation that scares you a little. Not because every one of these things will become your purpose, but because exploration is how identity is rebuilt. You don't think your way to a new sense of self. You live your way there. And then doorway number four, redefine what it means to be needed. Here is something worth sitting with. Part of what made motherhood so identity-forming is that it gave us the profound experience of being deeply needed. And being needed, genuinely needed, is one of the most meaningful human experiences there is. So the question is not how do I stop needing to be needed. The question is where do I now choose to direct that extraordinary capacity for showing up for others? Maybe it's the women you mentor. Maybe it's the community that you serve. Maybe it's the podcast you launch, the one that reaches women who need exactly what you have to give. Your need to matter, to contribute, to make a difference in someone's life. That doesn't retire when your children leave home. It evolves. And it becomes, if you let it, the engine of the most purposeful season of your entire life. Before I give you your momentum move for today, I want to do something a little different. I want to read you something. It's a letter to the woman standing in that quiet kitchen, coffee in hand, wondering who she is now. Dear friends, I know this quiet feels strange. I know you're expected to feel more relieved, more free, maybe even more joyful. And some days you do, but some days the quiet feels like loss. And I need you to know both of these things are true at the same time. And both of them are allowed. You gave so much, more than anyone will ever fully know. The invisible labor, the midnight worries, the dreams you quietly set aside, the version of yourself you put on hold. That was not wasted. That was love made visible. But listen to me now. The chapter that is beginning, the one that is just for you, is not a consolation prize. It's not what's left over after the real stuff is done. It is its own magnificent thing, full of potential that you haven't discovered yet. Full of a woman you haven't fully met yet. She has been waiting patiently and faithfully, knowing that you would find your way back to her. Come back to her. She has so much left to do with love. Dr. Novice McDaniel. So now your moment your momentum move for this week is what I call the before list. I want you to go somewhere quiet, somewhere that feels like yours. And I want you to write down every single thing you loved before you became a mother. Write down the hobbies, the interests, your dreams, things you were good at, things you always wanted to try. Don't filter it. Don't decide what's realistic. Just remember and then circle three things on that list. Three things that still spark something in you when you read them. And this week I want you to do one small thing connect it to one of those three. Buy the book. Sign up for the class. Call the friend who shares that interest. Spend one afternoon doing the thing you used to love. Not because it has to become your life's purpose, but because you deserve to remember who you were before the world told you who you were. She's still there. She never left. She's just been waiting for you to come back. Thank you so much for being here today. This episode took courage to listen to because sitting with these questions, really sitting with them, is not comfortable. But it is necessary. And the women who are willing to do the uncomfortable work of rediscovering themselves, they are the ones who step into the most extraordinary seasons of their lives. You are one of those women. You are. You are one of those women. And I know it. Next week we're going to talk about something you have been told your whole life is a negative. Setting boundaries and saying no. Choosing yourself without guilt. Episode six is going to give you the language and the permission to finally hold the line in every area of your life. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. And before I let you go today, I need you to do just a few things for me. I need you to, first of all, if this episode moved something in you, I want you to share it. Tag a woman in your life who needs to hear this message. Send it to her directly. Post it on your page. Do whatever you need to do to get this into her hands. Because somewhere right now, there is a woman who needs exactly what we just heard. Then, secondly, leave us a review on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen to your podcast. It takes 60 seconds and it helps other women find the show. Every review is a woman who gets reached. Please take 60 seconds and leave one today. Number three, subscribe. Subscribe and listen to new episodes every Wednesday, every Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. Find us on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen to podcasts. Or go directly to our website at Elevation Life Coaching.com slash podcast. Everything is waiting for you there. And then number four, download the Momentum 365 app at Momentum365.today. It is your daily companion for building unstoppable momentum between episodes. It's free to access and is built just for you. It is available right now at momentum365.today. And then fifth, number five, grab your copy of my new book, Momentum365, 31 Days of Prophetic Alignment, AI activation, and digital wealth. Available on Amazon. It's also available at Elevation Life Coaching.com. 31 days, one decision a day, a completely transformed life. And then finally, if you or someone you know would like to support this podcast, we are actively seeking sponsors and partners who believe in the power of midlife women. Reach out to us directly at hello at elevationlife coaching.com or visit our website again, elevationlife coaching.com slash podcast for our full media kit. We would love to have you in our corner. And now I'm Dr. Novice McDaniel, your momentum coach. Now let's move.