Then and now

Who you were, who you’re becoming

Becoming a parent changes a whole life at once: body, time, friendships, how you see yourself. The anthropologist Dana Raphael called this passage matrescence, and compared it to adolescence. Like adolescence, it can feel awkward and unfinished for a while.

Here you’ll sort some parts of your life under four moons. Some you’re keeping, some are changing, some you’re letting go of, and some you miss. All four are part of it, for every kind of parent.

• Keeping. Still mine, and I want to hold on to it.
• Changing. Shifting shape. Not gone, not the same.
• Letting go. Loosening my grip, for now or for good.
• Missing. Gone for now, and I feel its absence.