I hinted at this in my last post, the one about the thrisis. What happens when you've spent your entire 20s becoming someone, and then life shifts and you don't recognize yourself anymore.
So here we are.
I want to start by going back, because I think context matters
My 20s were loud.
Not in a party way (okay, sometimes in a party way because we have nothing to hide here), but in a volume-of-effort way.
I was always doing something. Always working toward something. I had this hunger that I couldn't turn off, and honestly, I didn't want to.
I worked multiple jobs at the same time for years. I took unpaid internships because I thought that's what you did to get your foot in the door.
I freelanced as a content writer (getting paid $50 per blog post lol) while juggling being a full-time student because the idea of only doing one thing felt like standing still.
I was tired constantly, but I wore it like a badge. I think a lot of us did.
In 2015, I started a lifestyle/beauty blog. Partly because I loved writing, partly because I needed a portfolio that proved I could actually do the thing I was trying to get hired to do. That blog became the foundation for everything. It led to freelance clients, which led to marketing roles, which led to over a decade of climbing a ladder I genuinely wanted to climb.
I knew who I was. I was the girl who was building something. The one who would figure it out, whatever "it" was that week. I had direction. I had momentum. I had a very clear answer to the question "so, what do you do?" and I liked having that answer.
I want to be careful here because I don't want to romanticize burnout. A lot of that decade was hard in ways I didn't fully process at the time. But I also don't want to downplay how much of my identity was wrapped up in the work. Because it was. Almost all of it.
And then I had kids
I need to say something before I go any further, because I know how this reads. This is not a "motherhood ruined my ambition" essay. I love my kids. They are the best thing. I would make the same choice a hundred times over, and I'm not writing this from a place of regret.
I'm writing this from a place of disorientation.
Because here's what nobody really talks about: you can love your life and still not know who you are inside of it.
When my first was born, I remember thinking, okay, everything is different now, but I'll find my rhythm. And I did, eventually. I went back to work. I kept building. I kept my Etsy greeting card shop running (six years and counting, five figures, I'm proud of that). I kept moving.
But with my second, something cracked open. Not in a dramatic, crying-on-the-bathroom-floor way (although sure, that happened too). More in a slow, creeping, wait-who-am-I-actually way.
I'd spent over a decade becoming someone. A marketer. A writer. A builder. A person who always had a next step. And suddenly I was home on mat leave, covered in spit-up at 2pm on a Tuesday, and the question "what do you do?" made me want to leave the room.
Not because being a mom isn't enough. But because I didn't know how to be a person without the forward motion. Without the job title as my anchor. Without the hustle as my identity.
I didn't lose my ambition. I lost my sense of self.
The thing about building your identity around what you do is that it works really well. Until it doesn't.
For ten years, I had a clean story. I'm the one who started from nothing, worked three jobs, freelanced on the side, climbed the ladder, built the career. That story carried me. It gave me confidence. It gave me something to say at family dinners and something to hold onto when things got hard.
But stories like that have an expiration date, and nobody tells you when it's coming.
Because at some point, the chapter changes. And you're standing there with all this momentum and nowhere familiar to point it.
I think what surprised me most was how physical it felt. It wasn't just an abstract existential thing. It was waking up and feeling untethered. It was scrolling LinkedIn and feeling like a stranger looking in. It was someone asking me about my career goals and my brain going completely blank.
I spent my 20s knowing exactly who I was. And now, in my 30s, I'm not sure anymore. That's a strange sentence to write, but it's true.
The reality of things
Here's where I want to be honest about something, because I think there's a version of this essay that ends with "so I quit my job and followed my passion and everything is beautiful now." That's not this essay.
I'm going back to my 9 to 5 in the new year. That's the plan, and I'm at peace with it. I like my career. I've spent over a decade building skills I'm genuinely good at, and I'm not walking away from that. This isn't a "burn it all down" moment.
But I'd be lying if I said this mat leave hasn't changed me.
Because while I've been home, I've also been building. Differently than before, but building. I grew my Instagram from 80 followers to over 4,000 the past 2 months. I started this newsletter. I've been running my Etsy shop, creating content, learning to shoot on my Sony FX30 (just got it and I LOVE IT), and trying to figure out what my voice sounds like when it's not filtered through a corporate brand.
And I think that's the part that's both exciting and terrifying. I'm discovering that there are parts of me I never made room for. Not because they didn't exist, but because I was too busy being the other version of myself to notice them.
The girl who spent her 20s grinding didn't have time for this. She was too focused. Too hungry. Too convinced that the only way to matter was to keep climbing.
I'm grateful for her. She got me here. But I can't be only her anymore.
I don't have a clean ending for this. I don't have five steps to "rediscovering yourself after kids" or a tidy framework for navigating an identity crisis in your 30s. I'm writing this from the middle of it, which is uncomfortable and also kind of the whole point of this newsletter. At least for now because I do want to talk more about marketing and small business stuff.
I'm a mom, marketer, creator and writer. I’m also someone who sells greeting cards on the internet… and I’m still figuring out how all of those things fit together. Or if they even need to.
What I do know is that the version of yourself you spent your 20s building doesn't have to be the final version. And letting go of her doesn't mean she was wasted. It means you're growing, even when growing feels a lot like losing your footing.
I think there's something on the other side of this. I don't know what it looks like yet. But I'm going to keep writing about it while I figure it out.
Next time, I want to talk about what it actually looks like to build something on the side while you still have a full time career. The logistics, the energy management, the guilt, the math. Because I think a lot of us are doing it, and nobody's really talking about how messy it is.
Until then, thank you for being here. It means more than you know.
With love,
Sally