Being a mom really takes you on a eat, pray, love type of journey. Dealing with your own baggage, childhood stuff – everyone's got something – forces you to figure yourself out.
I can pinpoint a few moments that felt like starting a new chapter in my life, like hitting the reset button. Graduating college and landing my first real job was a game-changer. It was a moment I'd been waiting for my whole life up to that point. Then finding my husband and getting engaged – that was another reboot. It felt like discovering my person and diving into a new life together. Being a mom, though, was the third time, and it felt like I'd been waiting my whole life for that moment. Everything I'd experienced up to that point seemed like preparation for becoming a mother.
People often talk about losing themselves as moms, missing their old lives. There's some truth to that, but for me, the real struggle was finding my new identity, not holding onto the old one. Friends with babies the same age as mine claimed they felt back to their old selves after 6 months, a year, and so on. My baby was 18 months old, and I still didn't feel like my old self. I was questioning what "myself" even meant anymore. I didn't want to revert to my old self; I wasn't her anymore and didn't want to be. I was more now. I was a mother, which, in my opinion, is the single most important thing you can be in life. So, I set out to find my new identity, to discover the old parts of myself that fit into the new puzzle of being a mom.
I needed something to fill those gaps – maybe a hobby. I read about Soul Cycle in a book and remembered taking those classes pre-pregnancy. Something in me said, "Sign up again." I dropped $25 for a class on a Sunday morning because it included a mimosa afterward. My husband encouraged me to enjoy it, not worry about the baby, and maybe do something for myself afterward.
I drove 20 minutes to the studio, realized I was early, and ran through a car wash because why not. I signed in on an iPad, chose whether I wanted my name on the leaderboard, decided to go for it. They didn't have shoes my size, so I went a size up. I remembered how to adjust my bike, hopped on, started warming up while everyone else filed in. I looked around and saw about 30 other college-aged girls in matching lululemon gear, custom cycle shoes, and stylish Stanley water cups. Immediately, I felt like an imposter. Sure, I wore lululemon leggings, but they were stretched out, pilled aligns with formula stains paired with a regular tee and a mom bod with that post-baby pooch that just won't go away. I pushed that feeling down and reminded myself I'd get a mimosa after this.
Then the class started. The lights dimmed, strobe lights on, and off we went. The instructor said things I needed to hear, like "you can do hard things," "you came here today for something to change," and "you are searching for something, go find it." How did she know? Was I that obvious? Did I spill my feelings to the girl at the front desk and forget? As we climbed our last hill on resistance 10, with dimly lit candles as our only light and the instructor speaking to my soul, I started to cry. Not an ugly cry, thank God. Just some tears falling silently in the dark. I looked around, and my bike neighbors were crying too. Were we all new moms searching for ourselves? Probably not. But in that moment, I found what I needed – some human connection, a sense that I wasn't alone in struggling.
After our sweaty mimosa party in the lobby, we checked our stats, conveniently emailed the moment the class ended. One girl in matching lululemons got second place out of 45 people. I looked at mine and realized I came in dead last. At first, my heart sank. How does someone come in dead last? But then my heart rose back up to it's place, and I was proud of myself for going, for not walking out, for cycling 10 miles, and finding something that connected and released me. It's like therapy, but cheaper and with a mimosa at the end.
Looking at those college girls in their matching lulus, sipping their mimosas, I remembered what it was like to be 22 without a fully formed frontal cortex. That's the time in your life when you're the most delusional, in the best possible way. You believe the world is your oyster and that you can do anything. I think I lost a bit of that in my first 18 months of motherhood. I decided to channel those girls, take a bit of their delusion home with me. I strolled over to the lululemon next door (of course, there's a lululemon next to CycleBar) and bought myself a green high-neck cropped tank top (hello, mom boobs). Every time I go to a cycle class, I'm going to buy another piece of the uniform. Today a bra, next week the matching leggings, and the week after, a matching sweatshirt. Even though I'm striving to dress like the 22-year-old second-place winner at CycleBar, I've got big girl money with a big girl job.
They say dress for the job you want. On Sunday morning Cycle Classes with post-workout mimosas, the job I want is a 22-year-old, optimistically delusional girl, drenched in sweat, in second place at CycleBar.