Are you 100 percent Mommy?

I had a recent email convo with my good friend Katie in which we talked about "how mom we are" – i.e., how much do we define ourselves as moms versus not-moms? I know I feel much more "mom" than I did before having a kid (naturally), but I also don't feel like a completely different person than I did before. Just me... plus a little guy who loves to bite stuff.*

Am I primarily a mother? I don't know. It's all a little too new for me to completely change my world view. And maybe I never will — because I've always thought of myself first and foremost as a writer, and everything else came second. Now? I guess I'd have to say I'm a mom and a writer, but I don't think either one eclipses the other. Of course, I have to actually make time to write to still be a writer, which I do, at least on a good day. I can "write" even if I'm just thinking of a scene in my head while Leo wreaks havoc on a Kleenex box or a friend's carefully-curated holiday decorations.

Yet not all callings or passions or jobs or careers can be so seamlessly** integrated into parenthood. Jobs that take parents away on business trips or to the office at 6am can be a lot harder to weave into the fabric of being a mom or dad. And, on the flip side, stay-at-home moms and dads can face the opposite problem: who am I now that I'm not working outside the home? These shifts are complex and tricky and even a little bit scary, but there's not a parent out there who doesn't experience at least a little identity crisis when faced with the new paradigm of mom-ing or dad-ing.

Katie and I wondered why we feel we've shifted our view of ourselves, but our spouses haven't experienced as dramatic a change to "Mr. Dad." My guess is that our culture just doesn't drill "YOU'RE A DAD NOW AND THAT DEFINES YOU!" into guys' brains in the same way. And that's probably why many dads can wave bye-bye to their kids at the drop of a hat to go watch a game or head out on that business trip, without the same inner turmoil us moms often feel. Come to think of it, that may be a much healthier way to parent: without as much guilt and conflict, with more of that (supposed) French attitude of, "we're still the same people we were before we had kids. We've just added a couple of rugrats into the equation."

What do you think? Do you define yourself differently now that you're a parent? Have you mastered that tricky balance of "me time" versus "everyone else" time? I'd love to hear.

*I have a mom blog now. I am, for better or worse, a mom blogger, which I guess means that, for better or worse, I am a mom (that's probably not the right order, but order is for suckers).***

**Kind of.

***Ethan was reading Mommyproof last night and informed me that all of my footnotes make him tired.