Who Am I?

 Identity is something I focused on a lot during my college years. I was an American Studies major, which was essentially culture studies for various regions and subgroups, and I focused a lot of my efforts on the teenage years and especially young women's experiences. Identity is also something I encounter a lot in my work, as human resources is now building whole programs around diversity, identity, and inclusion. But one thing I still haven't been able to figure out is how suddenly and completely my identity shifted once I become a mom. I am really struggling lately with figuring out who I am and what I want to do with my life and what my existence even means if I take away the defining characteristic of MOM. 

I spent some time with a friend I've known for 25 years (holy cow, that makes me feel really old because I had to literally calculate it out to make sure I was doing the math correctly!) the other day, and she became a mom very young and also just had a baby earlier this year, so she's literally been struggling with the same question. Who am I if I'm not someone's mom? What do I even like? What do I want in life? 

I'm fairly certain I am having a mini mid-life crisis. I turned 41 a couple of weeks ago, I have two teenagers and two elementary-aged kids, but no more babies. I started working in HR almost 20 years ago because I got handed a job at the company I was at, and it was a new, exciting thing I could build and grow on my own without a lot of restrictions and with the opportunity to really learn about the field. I've found a job working in HR again (with some writing tasks thrown in there too) and just feel myself hating every second of it. Is this me having a mid-life crisis? Is this me going through one of my depressive episodes? Am I just not meant to be happy ever? 

I looked back at pictures this weekend of when Micah and Jaxon were really young. I see happiness on my face then. I was happy with being a mom and having my career be secondary when they were little. But something about this stage of parenting (the boys especially are tough for me right now) is just killing whatever drive I have to succeed in this career path and to choose joy in the everyday mundane things. I find myself thinking about other career options, and second guessing my decision not to pursue teaching, but then I know in my heart of hearts that it wasn't teaching that I wanted, it was to get away from the field I'm currently in. 

So I am chugging along in my new HR role, and grateful for the paycheck, but just feeling so empty otherwise. I know there's other things I could focus my attention on that would be so healthy and good for me - working out, reading, joining a book club or volunteering, but I feel so exhausted all the time and like my cup runs empty all the time. There's no energy or spark left to pour into something else, so I'm just existing right now. 

Have any of you struggled with this in recent years? What helped you?