Over the past few years, I’ve been thinking a lot about diet culture. Who am I related to diet culture? Am I a passionate exerciser who prioritizes eating right or a realistic parent that focuses on … eating? And am I eating a variety of both healthy and unhealthy foods intentionally to model a healthy relationship to nutrition? Or am I a baker at heart that eats a cookie whenever I can?
These thoughts really had me going because I was categorizing myself. I was questioning who I was in relationship to something else. And this happens all the time. Instead of just letting me be whoever I am, there is a drive to label who I am and sort it out. My son’s basketball practice is one of those times …
I never thought that I would be back in a life phase that requires trying to fit in or seeing cliques of parents that I felt I needed to impress. But here we are getting ready for basketball practice, and I’m considering what I should wear to fit in with the other moms. Are these the athleisure moms? Are they the just got off from work business casual mom? Are my everyday sweatpants cute enough? And here we go again, categorizing who I feel like I need to be based on others.
How do we define ourselves within the context of … ourselves? How do we get to know ourselves for who we are and not get directed by the category we have placed ourselves in? Or, even worse, the category that someone else placed us in? Spoiler alert: I don’t have an answer.
I like Green Day. I like cute dresses. I like messy hair. I like working out hard. I like baking and coloring and playing the flute and writing and rocking out in the car and social time and alone time. I like fitting in. I like the quiet. I like connection.
People, by nature, are complex, and it is unfair to narrow anyone down to one category. But I wonder if our brains require that sometimes. Instead of thinking about another mom’s challenges, it’s easier to think of her as one of the “cool moms” and feel we have to look or act a certain way to be accepted by her. So, we are drawn to think of ourselves that way too.
Or maybe it all doesn’t matter. Maybe I am actually the one putting too much thought into it all. Maybe I can just be me, even if it doesn’t make sense sometimes, and that is the end of the sentence. When do we shed the need to be approved and accepted by people we don’t even know or like? I think only then are we able to be the free birds that fly wherever they damn well please. And are probably so much happier for it.
As I said, there are so many different kinds of moms out there, and it’s hard to know where I belong. So maybe that’s it. Maybe it is all about belonging. If I am firmly in one mom camp, I know who I am. But that “who I am” is defined by others; it is defined by that category. And that is limiting. So keep pushing. Keep defining yourself and allowing yourself to splinter into the different pieces of wood that come together to make up the whole slab. Find comfort in being your true self. Prioritize inner peace as a priority over what the mom at basketball practice thinks of your sweatpants. At least allow yourself to take the journey of self-exploration, growth, learning, and self-love that really never ends.
