Dear Daniella Moyles: ‘I miss so much about my old life before motherhood’

Q: I became a mother three years ago, and I love my child with all my heart, but I desperately miss so much about my old life. I feel ashamed admitting that, but I didn’t know all that I would be giving up to motherhood. Why don’t we talk more honestly about this?

First of all, please let me say this clearly: missing your old life does not mean you love your child any less, and you do not need to feel ashamed for desperately missing your old life.

In her luminous book Matrescence, which I highly recommend, Lucy Jones writes about maternal ambivalence, the simultaneous experience of devotion and grief. She describes motherhood not as a single transformation, but as an ongoing metamorphosis. Like adolescence, it rewires the brain, reshapes the body, reorganises social hierarchies and slowly (or sometimes very abruptly) dismantles the self you once knew. And yet, unlike adolescence, we expect women to do it smiling and without too many complicated feelings.

We don’t talk honestly about what is lost because culturally we still cling to the myth of maternal bliss. The ‘good mother’ is fulfilled, grateful, instinctively certain, and maybe for some, that’s true some of the time. But there’s little room in that narrative for other feelings, like boredom, intellectual hunger, loss of the erotic self, or the simple ache of remembering a former you who could leave the house without snacks and existential negotiation.

Psychologically, what you’re describing is grief. Not regret! Grief. You can love your child so much it hurts, and mourn your spontaneity. You can feel cosmic awe at their existence and miss your autonomy with a ferocity that surprises you. The nervous system struggles when two things are true at the same time, so we’re often forced to silence one of them. Usually the one that is socially frowned upon.

When the role of ‘mother’ becomes the dominant (or only) lens through which you’re seen, other aspects of you can atrophy from lack of use. This is called identity foreclosure, and it can feel especially acute when you watch others around you, often partners, retain more of their former selves. This hurts because, as humans, we need multiplicity. We are not built for singularity.

Why don’t we talk about all of this? Because ambivalence in mothers still makes people really uncomfortable. It challenges romantic patriarchal narratives and exposes how structurally unsupported many women are. It’s easier to individualise the distress (“What’s wrong with me?”) than interrogate the whole broken system.

Your work now is to legitimise these feelings. To validate on repeat: of course you miss your old life! That life contained parts of you that you loved and crafted with care over decades. Parts which may now feel subject to erasure. But the invitation of matrescence is integration. Who were you before? What elements of her can be realistically reintroduced? Maybe it’s reclaiming one evening a week for that book club you abandoned, or returning to the creative work that once fed you, even in smaller doses. Maybe it’s simply being called by your name instead of ‘Mum’ for a few hours a week.

What’s also vital to recognise is that motherhood doesn’t just take, it also births the most beautiful parts of us. The fiercest love, yes, but also perhaps an unrecognisable patience, an unexpected resilience, a lost playfulness. These new parts can feel unfamiliar, even uncomfortable, because they don’t fit the shape of who we used to be. But what integration actually means is honouring both the woman you were and the woman you’re becoming, on your terms, without one eclipsing the other.

You are a whole, complex woman in transition, and your emotional response to that is healthy and normal. Thank you for sharing this question. I’m absolutely certain you’re far from alone with these feelings, and you’ve made another mother feel seen, understood, and less alone today, too.

If you have a question for Daniella Moyles, send it in to info@image.ie with the subject “Dear Daniella”, or DM @image.ie.