Parenting Myth #5: There’s No Room for Me Right Now
Or...the surest way to lose the plot is to cut ourselves out of it.
Some parenting myths don’t shout—they settle.
They sound like compromise. They feel like logic.
Put yourself down for now. You can return to who you are later.
We love our kids. We show up. We give more than most people ever see.
But that doesn’t mean we’re meant to disappear.
And wanting more doesn’t make us ungrateful.
It means the story we’ve been handed was never written with us in mind.
This is the final post in a summer series on the quiet myths that make parenting harder than it has to be. And this one might be the most quietly devastating.
Is it normal to feel like I’ve disappeared inside my own life?
It doesn’t show up as a demand. It shows up as a pattern—one small deferral at a time. Not now. Maybe later. After this phase. After things calm down.
But the truth is, the clean handoff never arrives.
We don’t get to pause who we are without consequence.
We can’t shelve our inner life like a book and come back to it a few chapters later, untouched.
The myth says parenting is a season. But identity isn’t seasonal.
And when we try to live like it is, we don’t just feel tired—we begin to fade.
We move through the days like outlines of ourselves: present, but disappearing.
This myth doesn’t just ask for sacrifice. It asks for erasure—and rewards it with silence, with invisibility. With the kind of vague praise that only shows up when we start to vanish:
“She does everything for her family.”
“He never complains.”
“They’re so selfless.”
But when identity becomes utility—when our value is tied solely to what we provide—we don’t just lose ourselves. We lose the expectation that we should even have a self.
We flinch at needs that aren’t practical or productive.
We downplay desire and shy away from anything that sounds like longing.
We shrink, slowly and politely, until there’s nothing left to return to.
And we do it under the illusion that we’re being noble.
That’s the damage of the myth that says there’s no room for us right now—it sells erosion as virtue. And we’re expected to smile while it’s happening.
At first, this mentality feels reasonable, obvious. Even loving. We think: This isn’t forever. This is just what they need right now. But the longer we play background character in our own story, the harder it is to re-enter the frame, not because we’re unmotivated, but because we start to forget how.
We lose fluency in what we hope for and crave.
We have no idea what we’d do with an hour alone, let alone a weekend.
We’re confused by the question What do you want?—because we haven’t heard it in so long, it feels foreign.
And when we do try to reclaim space for ourselves, it feels wrong.
Selfish. Jarring. Disorienting.
Because when our entire identity is compressed into service for others, any act of self-investment feels like defiance.
And this approach to parenting isn’t just personal—it’s cultural.
For mothers, the disappearance looks like absorption. We’re expected to fold ourselves into the needs of everyone else—without edges, without resistance. We become the container: for emotions, for logistics, for the invisible work of holding a family together.
Any effort to preserve a separate self can feel like disloyalty.
We’re taught that closeness means total availability and that needing space is a kind of betrayal.
So we disappear, not by stepping back, but by stretching thin.
This myth shows up differently for fathers.
They’re told to disappear into provision, into stoicism, into usefulness.
They’re allowed to keep their identity, but only the parts that provide strength, stability, and control.
Emotional depth, vulnerability, or a desire to nurture? Even in today’s world, are still suspect.
And when fathers stretch beyond those limits—when they show up tender or present, less consumed by work—they’re often met with doubt, or praise that feels more like surprise. Their selfhood isn't erased in the same way as mothers', but it’s still narrowed. They're rewarded for being needed, not known.
While gender often shapes how this myth lands, so does circumstance.
Sometimes, we don’t disappear alone—we disappear in partnership.
We take turns stepping aside, thinking we’re being fair.
“You go ahead. I’ll hold it together.”
But over time, we both go missing.
Because what we really need isn’t better trade-offs.
We need room for both of us to be ourselves at the same time.
And for some of us, that tension doesn’t come in turns.
It comes all at once.
We aren’t disappearing in shifts—we’re disappearing all on our own, every day.
There’s no one to step in while we step out.
No one to say, “I’ve got it—go.”
Parenting alone rarely allows for the protection of time or space. But we still need a life that remembers us—and a self we can recognize inside it.
Ultimately, the myth doesn’t care how we disappear—only that we do.
And it dares us to try not to.
So—how do we keep from going missing?
We stay in relationship with ourselves.
On purpose. In the middle of the mess.
Not when it’s quiet. Not when it’s convenient.
Now.
We protect one part of our day.
We nurture something no one else touches.
We tend to the spark that reminds us we’re still here.
It’s not about balance. It’s refusing to go silent in our own lives.
It’s a shift from protecting identity from parenting to letting identity exist within parenting.
We stop squeezing hobbies into naptime.
We stop monetizing our passion to justify it.
This is about keeping a thread to ourselves intact, on purpose.
Not a backup plan.
Not a future self waiting to be restored.
A present one.
We stay connected to our voice—through writing, movement, music, laughter.
We hold onto relationships that see us as more than someone’s parent.
We make decisions with our name in the equation.
And most of all, we protect our aliveness.
Not because it’s efficient.
Because it reminds us we’re still here.
This isn’t about “me time.”
It’s about me, still.
Because our children don’t just learn from our sacrifices—they learn from our wholeness.
They learn what adulthood looks like.
What becoming, identity, personhood, or partnership can hold.
They learn that care is not the same as disappearance.
And when they begin to build lives of their own, we want them to know:
I’m allowed to keep growing.
It’s essential I stay visible.
I belong to me, even while especially when I belong to others too.
We’ve always deserved space.
Let’s take it back like we never gave it away.
That’s not selfish parenting.
That’s self-respecting, identity-honoring parenting.
This is the last post in a series breaking down the myths that make parenting harder than it needs to be. More often than not, we’re less of the problem than the false narratives and misconceptions we carry. Let’s lay them down.
Other Parenting Myths:
These words, Erin! Thank you for finding the time (for yourself, and for us) to write them. I remember the season of drowning in needs for others and work, with very little time for myself while reading this. I do feel, after having lived this (with a subtle air of depression throughout), I have slowly learned what it means to put myself first so I can be there for others.
Great series, and this one deeply resonated. Especially the part about squeezing in everything. As a full-time working mom of two, the struggle of balancing everything is real. But I kept doing all the things that made me happy because I am such a better mom when I do!