no paycheck, no side hustle, "just a mom"

within the comforts of my apartment i was safe, sure of myself, and deeply satisfied to spend entire days with my baby.

nearly a decade after my last nanny gig, it took some time for me to build up the mental toughness needed to spend days on end with my thoughts, but more or less i could handle these discomforts. i could work with them. i let myself fumble through postpartum short-term memory loss and difficulty recalling words. my friends saw me in sweats with a tit out for feeding. all of that i could handle. more or less.

but when i tried to bring this version of myself out into the world, i didn’t know how to introduce her. i didn’t know how to talk about the woman i was becoming because i wasn’t even sure who she was yet.

there were people who would, very kindly and well-intentioned, tell me that i would “find my thing.” as if the only way to make sense of me in the world was to put me in a job. as if ticking off the money-making box in a capitalistic society was the only way i fit in, and in such an expensive and career-driven city as new york, i felt out.

i didn’t meet moms who were doing what i was doing. i met moms who were building empires beyond their families. i met fascinating moms with occupations beyond what my postpartum mind could engage in meaningful conversation. and i met a lot of moms who spoke about wealth as if it were a toy they’d always played with.

i didn’t find my place in my first year of motherhood. i dropped trying to find new mom friends and focused on the village that i was building in my literal backyard. friends, family and friends of friends too. there were women who came out of the woodwork from all chapters of my life, suddenly and sweetly, after i joined them in the whole motherhood thing, and there are even a few who i met out in the wild.

but by in large, for as many rooms as i was putting myself in, i couldn’t seem to find my people. why was it so much harder to meet new moms in brooklyn than childfree friends? there are certainly plenty of us here. but part of me now knows that i wasn’t ready. there was so much i was grappling with internally, i wasn’t attracting the right people externally.

i had to strip down my preconceived notions of motherhood, including my childhood ideas of what being old enough looked like. and i had to come to grips with being a person who could afford not to work while recognizing that i never imagined we’d be here. oh and, by the way, the horrors of our country continue to get scarier and the inequalities more and more vast. how can the two possibly exist?

choosing to be a full time mom made our financial capacity known in a way that made me deeply uncomfortable. i didn’t fit in with the moms talking about all of their skincare treatments and designer clothes, but i also couldn’t go under the radar anymore. i was in limbo and overcompensating in every room i stepped into. i tried to chameleon my way through, but i’d lost my ability to ‘hang’ with any sort of ease. i kept finding myself out of place.

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there is so much unlearning that dan and i both needed to do when i got laid off at thirteen weeks pregnant and i chose to be a full time mom. the idea of becoming a single-income family was too much for dan to bear at first — the overwhelming sense of responsibility and brand new potential for failure. while dan struggled with that, i had to learn new ways to feel like a contributing member of society.

these days, if i introduce myself as a full time mom people fall over themselves to say how it’s the most meaningful job in the world, hardest job there is, etc. etc. and while that is a kind thing to say and sometimes true, even though i’ve had much harder jobs, i perceived it as diminutive. a conversation-ender, at times.

becoming Mom also came with a whole new slew of stereotypes i was suddenly fighting, but without the camaraderie that comes with bonding over the most common shared experience of early parenthood — lack of sleep. i’m not complaining of course, but i did actively try to avoid the subject because i was sure everyone would hate us if they knew our baby slept through the night. now that we have a toddler i try to offer a different perspective to new parents handling the anticipatory stress of the sleep regressions we’re warned about — my kid never had any, maybe you don’t need to ‘just wait’ on this one! but at the time i wasn’t sure what i should talk about with other moms, i just wanted some friends to hang with at the park on a picnic blanket sometimes.

beyond that, there was no ‘side hustle,’ nor any career i was lusting after. i had no capacity to read a book and i wasn’t writing, i wasn’t even journaling like i always had. it was really hard not to feel dumb. a dumb non-contributing member of society just out here trying to make new friends.

i mean, of course i wasn’t. there was too much rewiring happening all at once. too many personas overlapping and shifting and playing a tug of war inside of me. i couldn’t fit in because i didn’t know where i wanted to belong, so i kept stumbling into a lot of places i didn’t.

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i didn’t want to find ‘my thing,’ i wanted to find myself. i wanted to learn who i am without a title, without a salary, without a box to check. without any of the normal descriptors to hide behind, and with all of my needs met, who was i?

at first i tried to go back to teaching yoga for a few months, but that didn’t feel right. the beloved career that allowed me to pay my own bills and work for myself was no longer where i was needed. the role that had given me so much hope, stability, community, and friends in my first decade in the city was no longer a fit.

i felt myself itching to figure it out, clawing to move beyond this particular stage of becoming and arrive at my destination already. i just had no idea where i was going. one of my wisest friends urged me to stay exactly where i was and to focus on my child, myself, my family, and all of the tasks at hand and to enjoy them in of themselves.

of course she was right, but i had to get really quiet with myself to get there. i had to stop trying to prove my worth to some past version of myself and i had to practice introducing myself as a full time mom, full stop.

to be honest, introducing myself will always a practice for me, something that shifts with how i’m feeling about myself, just like anything else. but when i passed the marker of one year in my new role as Mom, i felt confident enough to stop saying that i was trying out full time motherhood, and began introducing myself as a full time mom. just a few months after that, i was learning how to introduce a whole new side of myself as a writer.

i didn’t fall into my thing, i just started and i couldn’t stop, haven’t stopped, since. of course writing isn’t new for me, i just began to own it in a different way. and again, what once felt hard, just feels like part of me, just like anything else.

no income, no side hustle, just a mom following what lights me up. it is a huge privilege and opportunity that i don’t take lightly, and also one that i refuse to let slip by. unlocking a passion that keeps me company while the rest of world sleeps is deeply enlivening. treating my work with respect and integrity beyond a paycheck has rewired my brain beyond the structures i’ve always known.

and i’m finally attracting the new mom friends i’ve been looking for — ones who have no idea who i am or what i do — simply because of how i’m able to move through the world now. this past month in rhode island i dedicated my time to putting myself out there, a lot. i went to dinner with complete strangers, signed up for a local mom group and went on a stroller walk, took some conversations past “we should hang out sometime” to “what does your schedule look like this week?,” and fought past my flushed face as i told stories to groups of people at parties.

i softened, i opened up and i listened intently. i tried to push past my thoughts of “maybe they just feel like they need to be nice to me” and let myself consider that maybe they want to be friends too. i sat on a new friend’s floor with two toddlers running around, one infant in arms, and i let myself say, “my god, i’m jealous” as i watched one mom happily breastfeed her baby.

i let myself be delighted as the dad of the house paused his work and swept into the room to scoop up our two toddlers and a baby so that three moms could hang out unencumbered. new goals have been unlocked for when our friends in brooklyn start procreating. but it was nice, it was so so nice to simply accept that maybe i’m not so new after all. maybe it’s okay to have less plans on my calendar and more space to connect, and maybe these budding friendships will have time to germinate between winter break and the next time we’re back. i trust that they will.

but i don’t think it’s happenstance that i keep ending up in the right rooms these days, i think it started when i was ready to be seen exactly as i am. and all of that kicked off after spending months getting to know one mom on substack and taking our budding friendship offline. within a week i found myself finally meeting moms on the playground and out in the world. it wasn’t an accident, it just took some time.

two years and three months later, i am still just a mom and a writer, and i am finally beginning to find my people.

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CONNECT: thank you so much for being here! i hope you enjoyed reading mother curious today. i’d love to hear from you! say hi to me on instagram, watch me try to figure out tiktok, or leave a comment on substack. the best part about substack is the conversations and connections we build together and i look forward to getting to know you too.

FIND WHAT YOU NEED TODAY: mother curious table of contents is live! use this link to navigate between chapters of my book based on what you’re looking for. topics include building a village / adult friendship, pep talks!, maternal mental health, pregnancy / ttc journey, marriage / partnership, and raising kids.

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