Growing up, I, like so many others, was part of a traditional, nuclear family. I had three younger siblings, two cats, and we lived in a moderately sized house in the suburbs. My father worked full time in computers, for a company that produced software that healthcare providers used.

My mom worked part-time as an under-the-table housekeeper, cleaning the houses of one or two families for a couple hours a week. For the most part, though, she was a stay-at-home mom, responsible for keeping our home tidy, entertaining the kids, and getting a home-cooked dinner on the table.

Sometimes, she’d have friends over. They’d bring their kids so we could play together in the backyard, while the moms sat in the kitchen sipping wine and talking about the shared experience of raising children. They’d discuss their financial stressors, spousal conflict, and family-friendly dinner ideas.

When she didn’t have friends over, my mom was usually cleaning, pretty obsessively. She had undiagnosed OCD, and keeping the house in perfect condition was an achievement she near-constantly chased but could rarely succeed at with four kids running around.

Flash forward to now. My mom is forty-nine years old. Two of her four kids are grown adults, with budding families of their own. The younger two are close to graduating from high school and need little entertainment or direct supervision.

My mother is lost. Without little kids to look after, she struggles to fill her time. She still sees the same friends that would come around to share a glass of wine during a playdate, and they are all in the same boat. Now that their responsibility for running a bustling household is coming to a close, they lose a piece of their personality. For some moms, this responsibility is all they do, day in and day out, with little time for self-exploration in the mix.

Watching my own mom struggle to find her identity later in life has been a catalyst for me to intentionally work on it now, as a new mom. I think that being a young mom is a recipe for mid-life crisis in the making, and here is why:

When someone waits until they are in, say, their late thirties to start growing their family, they are usually well-established. They might have a career, an education, and might be financially-sound. They may have spent their twenties finding a partner, nurturing friendships, traveling, and exploring hobbies. They’ve experienced life outside of the home.

When someone instead has children at a young age, like myself or my mom, the experience is a little skewed. We spent our twenties going through pregnancy, learning to cook for a family, cleaning, nursing sick kids and playing hide-and-seek. With so much to do and so much energy going into raising someone else, it’s easy to forget to live our own lives.

By the time people like this have reached middle age, their kids are grown and they find themselves in a similar situation that most twenty-two year-olds are in: They have mild responsibility, but free time and resources. But because these people never discovered themselves in early adulthood, they have some work to do in their forties and fifties instead.

Knowing and talking about the existence of this phenomenon is important to combating its effects. Since I can acknowledge the likely possibility that this could happen with me, I’m intentionally putting time and effort towards developing my identity now. This will also help me to be a better mother and spouse (though it may seem contradictory) because it is so important to maintain a sense of identity that separates you from the relationships you have with others. My goal is to shower my son with memories of me having a personality, interests and life outside of just “mom,” which will inform him of how to carry himself as he navigates adulthood (and maybe starting his own family) someday.

Like many things in parenting, this is way easier said than done.

When our son was still wrinkly and pink, maybe just a month or so old, my husband and I made a pact that we’d give each other time to go off and pursue hobbies alone. From there on out, he’s taken the liberty of going out alone every couple of weekends, to play tabletop games with friends at a hobby store. As part of his gaming, he learned how to paint miniature figures and has a space in our house dedicated to his craft.

When my husband is painting figurines, he’s in his happy place. It’s a calming hobby that lets him take his focus off being a dad for a little while. It’s a mental break that keeps him sane, and afterwards, he’s ready to jump back in, feeling refreshed. On weekends when he goes out to play his game, he typically gets a good four-hour chunk of consecutive time to socialize, without even having to think about parenting or what’s for dinner or how clean the house is.

Having a hobby like this is crucial for him, and often makes him a better husband and father. When my husband is able to take these breaks, he comes back even stronger. He’s also maintained a sense of self outside of “Dad,” which is widely important for his own happiness.

Well, I don’t know if moms are just wired a little differently, but I’ve had a vastly different experience than my husband, and have found it near impossible to tear myself away from the duties of motherhood, even after making our pact.

I know my spouse is supportive, and if I asked to go out and have some alone time he would drop everything to watch our son and ensure that I get my space. The problem isn’t with him, though, it’s with me.

I mean, what the hell would I even do if I had the opportunity to go out? If I had time to myself, where would I go?

For a long time I just wallowed in self-pity, reluctantly accepting the fact that I have no hobbies or interests, and that I just need to focus my attention on managing our household. Through a conversation with my therapist though, it became apparent to me that it is so, so important to have a “third space” to escape to.

The third space is the social concept that in communal living, humans require an additional place to retreat to outside of their normal day-to-day quarters. For most, the first space is the home; your primary residence. This is the predominant space for a lot of moms.

The second space is typically one’s job. For those that work outside of the house, this may be an office or worksite. Since I work from home most days, this is usually my home office (which is actually just a corner of our bedroom).

Note that for many traditional stay-at-home moms, they don’t even have a second space-- Never mind a third! This was true for my mother, and I think contributes to her identity crisis later in her life.

The third space is anywhere that isn’t already part of the first or second spaces. Often, this is college, coffee shops, libraries, bars-- social and non-social settings that bring a person out of their home or work. According to this social theory, having a third space increases a person’s well-being, sense of self, and community.

My husband’s hobby time is his third space, and the benefits of having this show in the way that he is less likely to become overstimulated with our son, is confident in his skills as a painter, and has an ability to grow his social circle and make friends with similar interests.

Basically what I’m trying to say is this is important.

With this realization, I recently began a quest to find my own hobby, a mental or physical third space to retreat to when I need to reconnect with myself.

I started by going back to my roots and racking my brain to remember what things I liked to do as a child and teenager, before taking on the responsibility of being a wife and mother.

My first finding was that a constant interest I’ve had surrounds frogs. Since the moment I could identify and differentiate between the types of animals I encountered, I’ve had an affinity for frogs.

Maybe this was because I grew up in a rural part of Rhode Island where toads and frogs were in abundance right in my backyard, and childhood curiosity overtook me and these small creatures were easy for me to catch and examine.

Nearly every summer day I could be found slinking around the yard in search of frogs and toads, and if I was busy in the yard with friends or family, my eyes would still drift down to the dirt, subconsciously scouting for a hop or a leap.

There was one pond down the street from my house, where I would circle the edge over and over. If my step was not light enough, dozens of baby froglets would leap from their divets in the bank, right into the water. Sometimes they were lightning-fast and I couldn’t see them, but I knew they were there because of the sounds they would make.

Quickly, I became familiar with those sounds-- the calls of various native species-- and used that knowledge to my advantage.

I’d be lying if I said the thrill of catching frogs stopped once I reached adulthood, but instead I’ve found myself with a new resource that expanded the scope of frogs within my reach: money. With the funds and the freedom I once lacked as a child, the power to purchase exotic frogs from all over the globe became a reality that seemed too good to be true for so much of my life.

Just thinking about and recounting my love and interest for frogs as a kid was enough to spark some desire to turn it into an adult-friendly hobby. I got to planning for a project that would allow me to keep some really cool exotic frogs as pets. To my surprise, even just planning and thinking about doing something frog-related gave me a thrill.

My captive-bred Phyllobates terribilis frogs.

I also went back to memories of my teenage self, an academically-inclined girl who enjoyed writing both fictional and non-fictional works. During my senior year of high school, I enrolled in a Creative Writing course as my main elective.

The teacher was marvelous and engaging, and helped me to hone my writing skills that I’d been developing for years. By the end of the school year, I had produced my first (and last) full-length novel, an accomplishment I beamed with pride over. Upon graduation, though, I lost some of that spark when waves of insecurity about my talent (or lack thereof) washed over me. These fears prevented me from producing fictional work ever again.

In motherhood, I’ve found myself bursting with things to talk (and write) about, and just recently turned to journaling as a second hobby. Whenever I’ve been overwhelmed with thoughts, I bust out my laptop and have found it easy to crank out lengthy journal entries, which brought me to the world of blogging.

How very meta of me! Yes, this blog itself is a product of my search for viable hobbies, an attempt to establish my sense of self post-baby.

Lastly, I have leaned into my natural inclination towards homemaking, and have created a third hobby of it. Instead of merely cooking and cleaning, I’ve also taken things a step further to improve the quality of my family’s life through home renovation.

I have always enjoyed working with my hands, and bettering one’s home is a true labor of love. In the first year of my son’s life, I’ve accomplished so much (and we’ve only been homeowners for a year and a half!)

During this time I learned to tile my own kitchen backsplash, I’ve painted almost every room in the house, I refaced my own custom cabinets and painted them, and ripped up my wall-to-wall carpets.

In-progress look into my kitchen backsplash project.

In my down time, I frequently watch and read content related to interior design principles, and apply them to my home with decorating and space planning concepts. I’m by no means an expert in design or DIY home projects, but I do think I’ve significantly improved my house and refined my personal skills. It’s also a major confidence boost to know that I am capable of this type of work.

Establishing these hobbies has made a world of difference to me as I navigate the early stages of motherhood. I still take on a fairly traditional motherly role, cooking all of our meals, tidying the house, and entertaining our toddler.

I also do so much more than that.

Yes, I’m a mom first. It’s the most important job in the world and it is my favorite, most cherished piece of my identity.

I am also an educated HR professional, an exotic frog collector, a DIY home-renovator, an interior design enthusiast, and a writer. I know that one day in the future when my child is grown and my responsibilities as a caregiver wane, I will have no shortage of things to occupy my time.

I encourage everyone who is reading to reflect on their own interests. Looking back at childhood experience is an excellent starting point to really remembering the core of who you are; it’s a time through which many of us felt free to pursue our interests with little responsibility or fear of scrutiny holding us back.

This exercise really did aid me in finding ways to devote my free time, pulling me out of my first and second spaces and into a third mental space, which is invaluable for our experience as humans. Developing my hobbies has made me feel more confident and capable, and I believe will guide me on my journey through and beyond motherhood. They make me, “me.”

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