Interestingly, I’ve had this conversation several times over the past week. It seems a lot of us are thinking about how to maintain our ideas of who we are (who we were) in the face of motherhood.

I’d like to extend it further, though, to all-encompassing life events. I’m sure people who are caring for ailing relatives or who are themselves going through treatments have the same struggle with keeping a hold on who they were before.

How do you keep a handle on who you were before, when your present is entirely consumed with something new? And with motherhood, something that has permanently transformed not only your priorities and emotions (no, thank you, hormones), but your physical body as well.

Do we try and hold onto this idea of who we were before? Do we assume this change in identity is temporary while our children are still little (or while the life event is happening)? Or do we accept the transformation and immerse ourselves in our new roles?

I feel like all mothers are trying to balance those three questions. But it has been interesting to find that all women I know have given them different weights.

One mother recently told me she wanted to get back into riding her motorcycle, after giving it up for a few years while she was pregnant and then after the birth of her child. Meanwhile, another mother I know never stopped riding her motorcycle, in fact made a point of going for a ride every night after her husband came home and took over childcare. The same mother looked pitying at me when I told her I hadn’t been away from Bean for more than a few hours her entire life. Until that point, it hadn’t occurred to me that my experience wasn’t universal.

For me, reading has always been an escape and a home. In law school, I could read hundreds of pages of legal text during the course of the day, but I knew at night, I’d have an hour to myself, to read whatever I wanted. Usually it’s The New Yorker, sometimes a book. When Bean was born, I kept up the ritual, even though that means an hour less sleep every night. I figured it was worth it to have some time when I wasn’t thinking about baby-raising, when the apartment was silent, when no one could interrupt me. I was just old me, reading about cancer mutations or old Presidents or whatever.

As you can tell, recently I’ve also been trying to return to pre-baby me through the camera lens. Since I got my first camera as a teenager, I’ve taken photos of everything, really to the annoyance of anyone around. The thing about taking pictures is that you have to see the photo before you take it.

While I was pregnant, I suddenly couldn’t see it. I kept going of course, but I was disappointed with everything coming out of my camera. I felt like I’d lost whatever knack I had for it. My eyes and mind were elsewhere. After Bean was born, it only got worse. I have thousands of photos of her, and nothing else. (There’s a metaphor here for how myopic my vision became after having a baby — the only thing in focus was my baby’s face, the rest of the world became noise. Obviously, I only shot in wide apertures, as if we needed to further the metaphor.)

I’ve picked up the camera again, and find that some of it is back. And, now, I have an audience too. Taking photos with a toddler around is surprisingly easy. Toddlers are slow and take in the world, every minute detail of it. So do photographers. Bean and I are now slow and thoughtful together. When we’re home and I drag out my tripod, Beans eyes well with intrigue. I can see her looking at me differently, her mental portrait of me gaining depth. I feel like I am slowly introducing myself to her, telling her, “Before you, there was a woman. She liked to take pictures.”

How have you held onto your identity through moments of great transformation?

[This topic is fascinating to me, and I’m particularly fascinated at how differently we all answer it. I’ll be collecting other women’s take on this question throughout the week and I’ll report back. Drop me an email if you’d like to be included!]