The struggle to find my mommy identity

Being a mom is no joke, and trying to find my mommy identity is an ongoing process that for me, even after 11 years of parenting, I still haven't completely figured out. Is it really possible to establish your personal mommy identity?

So what do I mean by mommy identity? Well I'm not talking about the person I am aside from my children, I'm literally just talking about the type of mother I want to be for my children. Not the whole Jaime person, just the mommy part of who I am. Do I want to be a fun mom? A serious mom? A mom with lots of rules or totally lax about stuff? Do I over-involve them in activities or do I tell them to get out of my house and find their own stuff to do using that fancy thing called imagination? I don't know.

I guess I have continually struggled to find my mommy identity because putting it into one box is impossible. It is a combination of all of those things. I can't just be one type of mother because my kids keep changing. My situation keeps changing. I keep changing. So why do I feel this pressure to identify myself in a certain way? Is that pressure coming from society or from myself?

Obviously mothers unintentionally pressure each other sometimes to choose the type of mother we are through conversation about choices, reactions, etc. But the real pressure doesn't come from those other mothers...it comes from me. I want so badly to be able to say that I am a certain type of mother because in a strange way, that label validates the choices I have made relating to my children. If I identify myself as an organized, rule oriented mother than it is ok when I am totally inflexible and strict because that is what I have decided is best for my children. Or not...

I guess when it's all said and done I want to believe that I have a parenting strategy, not an identity. To me the difference is flexibility. Now no one would ever describe me as flexible but that's all the more reason to think of it this way. If I label myself as something I'm stuck. If I think of my parenting as an overall strategy then I can have goals but still allow myself to flex as my children grow and change.

Understanding who I am as a mother is an ongoing process that I may truly never grasp. But I'd rather my kids grow up and have lots of words to describe me (even bad words) rather than just the couple I chose to identify with.