I got pregnant and became a mother to Taylor unexpectedly when I was just twenty years old in 2002. I loved her with a ferocity and depth that sometimes unnerved me. And I threw myself into motherhood with reckless and wild abandon. Perhaps it was partially out of necessity, as I made the gut-wrenching decision to separate from her dad and enter single motherhood when she was just fifteen months old.  

I went back to school, I worked, I single motherhood’ed—I entered survival mode on autopilot. I had a LOT of help from a large and incredible village of people who continuously pushed me and lifted me up and celebrated life with us along the way. And one day at a time, one foot in front of the other, my sweet Taylor and I built a life together—a good life with a lot of happy memories and some truly epic adventures.

I stayed extremely busy being a mom. And as she got older, I began to worry that a great deal of my identity was wrapped up in being her mother. This did not improve when she was eleven and I married her stepdad Jamin. I felt like my life and my heart expanded, and then a great deal of my identity was wrapped up in being a wife and a mother. I dove headlong into being Jamin’s wife a lot like I dove headlong into being Taylor’s mom. This is an issue I have had for the duration of my whole life. I love hard. And I get lost. Meghan had left the building, and the wife and mother who had replaced her didn’t have a clue who she was anymore.

There was other mounting evidence that this was an issue. Increasingly over the last couple of years, Taylor had been complaining that I was smothering her, constantly nagging. My husband was making comments about my need for hobbies, and had on more than one occasion, deeply offended me and confused me by saying he missed me and sometimes felt like he didn’t know me anymore, that he felt like he couldn’t FIND me. I was so frustrated. I was right THERE…but was I? If I got really honest with myself, did I recognize this woman? I knew wife. I knew mom. I knew teacher. I knew daughter, sister, friend. But…where was Meghan?

This was a nagging sensation as spring 2020 began warming up, and our family made plans to rent a house in Florida for the summer. Taylor was scheduled to start school at the University of North Florida in August, so heading south to spend some time at the ocean while we acclimated Taylor to her new city seemed like a great idea. Then, a week before we were scheduled to leave, my husband’s work-from-home job changed their COVID policies, and he was no longer allowed to leave the state of Indiana. This threw a wrench in our plans, but he encouraged us to go, to take the dogs, and spend two months in our little rental house in Saint Augustine, Florida. Though disappointed, I embraced this opportunity, and I decided to see it as great quality time that Taylor and I would have together, just the two of us, in the couple of months leading up to sending her to college.

This seemed like a solid plan, and for the first week or so, it was great. We went to the beach, took the dogs for walks, visited with my sister and her family, went swimming, lay in the sun, and then…well, frankly, Taylor got sick of me. You see, as it turns out, eighteen-year-olds kind of want to spend the summer before they go to college hanging out with other teenagers, specifically their friends, and not so much their moms. Or more accurately, not ONLY with their moms, in the middle of a global pandemic, where it’s especially difficult to get away from the house and meet people your own age and have any semblance of a life outside of the house. As a result, I found myself with a lot of alone time. A WHOLE lot of alone time.

I went to the ocean alone with a lawn chair and a book. I took long walks. I read great books. I went for swims out past the breakers. I watched sunsets. I collected shark teeth in the sand. And at first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I was feeling. I felt a little lost, a little anxious—like I was constantly forgetting to DO something I needed to do. Then one day I took a notebook and a pen to the beach, and something happened. All of a sudden, there I was. ME. So much me. Totally me. And I wrote. I wrote a lot. Nothing noteworthy. Nothing specific. Just writing, for the sake of writing. And I felt myself opening up, layers peeling away, like a great primal morning stretch of the soul.

I began feverishly enjoying myself. Taylor joined me for these adventures here and there, but I began checking out all of the different beaches up and down the shore, taking walks through state parks, meditating at the beach, swimming alone, going kayaking on Guana Lake, walking the Usina Bridge at sunset, snapping photographs, and taking foot tours of the Vilano Beach fishing docks at night. And that was how I found my new hobby. And it isn’t writing…or kayaking or swimming or photography or any of the other myriad activities I remembered I enjoy.

My new hobby is being radically, unapologetically, and recognizably me.

There I was, for the first time in ages. Right there. It was like the ocean was bringing me back to life and showing me myself again. I could almost feel it energizing the cells in my body, restoring the cellular memory, saying, “Hey, that’s right. Here you are. See? You’ve been here all along. You just had to remember. Now you remember.” I was awake.

It hadn’t occurred to me that I was still clinging to survival mode, to the mode I lived in when Taylor was little. So much of my energy was going towards being Mom and being Wife, so much distraction, that while I was doing this, my people had started missing me and wondering where I was or when they would see me again. And I know I often felt like these roles were being demanded of me, but they were admittedly of my own making. No one had these expectations of me except me. And even if they had, other people’s expectations of me are really none of my business, unless I have committed to them.

All my people wanted from me was for me to just…be me. To show up with them, as me. And I’m so grateful to have a husband and a daughter who are willing to say hard things to me and to hold up the proverbial mirror to make me look at it. I hear their voices, “Honey, you need a hobby; I’m worried about you,” and “Mom, I love you, but you’re just really being a LOT right now.” And now I understand. And I am grateful that today I have the grace to listen to them, to pause, to deny that gut instinct I still have, the fiery temper, the indignant “Fuck you” gear that switches on from years of survival mode. Today I can feel that and let it pass without action…so that I can listen and hear my people when they say things I need to hear, whether I want to hear them or not.

I think it’s easy for women to lose themselves, to lose their identities like this in families. Mothers have been martyrs for their families for as long as families have existed. And I believe that there was probably a time in history and society when this was necessary for survival of the species. The trouble is that this has morphed over time into a weird belief that martyrdom is a sign of loving a lot. But I think martyrdom is a one-way ticket to losing oneself. And I think a lot of times, men take the blame for this, unfairly. And I’m sure this will upset my fellow feminists, but I am here to tell you that the duty I felt towards my family and the ease with which I handed over my identity to these roles were entirely of my own making. No one asked me to do it.

All my husband wants is for me to show up in our marriage and be me, the woman he fell in love with, his partner, his person, the one who will always have his back, to be my half of Team Jamin and Meghan. And all Taylor wants is for me to be me, too, especially now that she has grown into an adult woman. She needs me to set an example of a woman who loves herself enough to do the hard work of being authentically herself with all of the love and grace and vulnerability she can muster. My family doesn’t need a martyr. They need a Meghan, and here I am.