Why, look. There may still be a person under here...

Today my daughter turns 3. We held a small BBQ on Saturday and limited it to our immediate bubble/quaran-team. Easy, good food. Low expectations. Dragged it out for the whole day so the group size stayed small and less overwhelming. She played endlessly with her best friend, got snuggles and gifts from grandparents and aunties and didn't go to bed until midnight. For a 3yo, it was perfect. For an exhausted mommy it was manageable, dispite being so out of practice after more than a year of isolation and distancing. This milestone brought with it a lot of joy and healing and... existential dread. 

I've been a stay at home mom (sahm) since she was born. It's not like I left some amazing high-powered career path to do it, I was simply a nanny. An awesome damn good Nanny, but still, not a huge change in my job discription besides the fact that there's never an 'end' to the day, it just sort of rolls over into morning and you go again.

In my hubris I assumed that more than a decade's experience of teaching and nannying and studying child development would be a leg up in the motherhood racket, but no. While I do benefit from a sizable village of wisdom and empathetic commiseration among my piers, the good lord blessed me with a child that resists all known theory of behavior management. Every minute of her short existence is spent trying to ensure her survival dispite her best efforts. Every tip and trick I ever used as a teacher that earned me a reputation as a 'baby whisperer' is met with active resistance. She is a force of nature and sunlight rainstorms. My wild little rainbow baby.

So, with my darling fierce woodland creature looking so suddenly grown, finding independence, and preschool looming over our heads... I'm hit with the terrifying realization of it all. What happens to *me*? What am I going to do? Who the hell am I after 3 years of watching my identity floating away downstream? 

It's that moment of limbo. Life stage transition. My only marketable skills are for the job I desperately need space from. There's *so* much trauma to be sorted. So much doubt. So much anxiety over not knowing if I'll ever feel valued. So I suppose I'll write about it and send those thoughts into the void of the internet, and hope that fixes things.