I know it’s been a little bit since my last post, and that’s partially because this semester of school is keeping me really busy.

I’m only taking 12 credits, which is about my average since I have kids at home, but for some reason this semester feels so much harder. I’ve been spending my days learning about the brain’s anatomy and function while simultaneously feeling like my own brain is falling apart.

So that’s going well.

A few days ago, I was driving down the street to a sweet little coffee shop here in Rexburg called June’s Place when a song came on Spotify.

First of all, June’s Place is chef’s kiss. If you haven’t been, please go. It’s this adorable little coffee shop with amazing drinks, a cozy atmosphere, and even a playroom for kids. It’s one of those places where you can walk in for the first time and somehow already feel comfortable.

If you stop by, make sure to tell them I sent you.

They will have absolutely no idea who I am, but that’s okay. >.<

Anyway.

The song that came on my Spotify was “She Used to Be Mine” by Sara Bareilles. If you have a few uninterrupted minutes, I highly recommend listening to it before you keep reading. If you don’t, that’s okay too. We’re going to spend plenty of time talking about it.

This song has been sitting on my Spotify playlist for years. I’ve heard it plenty of times. But for whatever reason, this time I actually heard it.

And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Bareilles wrote the song for the musical Waitress, which tells the story of Jenna, an incredibly talented pie-maker and waitress who is stuck in a small town, an abusive marriage, and an unexpected pregnancy.

Hopefully that exact situation doesn’t describe most of us.

But the more I thought about the song, the more I realized Jenna’s circumstances almost don’t matter.

Because underneath all of that, the song is about something much more universal.

It’s about grieving yourself.

There are a few lines in particular that I want to talk about, but before I do, I want you to slow down for a second.

Seriously.

Slow down your reading.

Take in the words instead of scrolling past them.

Because I think this is one of those songs that changes depending on who is listening.

For me, the line I keep coming back to is:

“She is gone, but she used to be mine.”

At first, that line confused me.

The entire chorus describes this woman in such intimate detail. She’s imperfect. She tries. She’s hard on herself. She’s broken. She’s kind. She’s lonely. She’s complicated.

And then suddenly:

She’s gone.

How can she be gone if you just described exactly who she is?

I think that contradiction is the entire point.

Jenna is describing herself almost as if she’s talking about someone she used to know.

She remembers that woman.

She knows her flaws. She remembers her tenderness, her fear, her mistakes and her goodness. She can picture her perfectly.

But she doesn’t recognize herself as that woman anymore.

She hasn’t literally disappeared.

She just feels unreachable.

And I think there are a million different ways a person can become unreachable to themselves.

Divorce.

Motherhood.

Grief.

Trauma.

Depression.

Growing older.

Relationships.

Illness.

Responsibility.

Sometimes there isn’t even one enormous thing that changes you.

Sometimes life just happens quietly until one day you look around and wonder:

When did I become this person?

I’ve been learning about emerging adulthood in my Adolescent Development class.

Emerging adulthood is roughly the period between adolescence and established adulthood when many young people begin living independently, exploring relationships, continuing their education, trying different jobs, developing their beliefs and figuring out what they actually want their adult lives to look like.

Identity exploration is a huge part of it.

And learning about it made me realize something.

I didn’t really get much of that.

I did the moving-out part.

Then I got married at 19.

I had my first baby at 21.

Twenty-one years old.

Where I live, in the Idaho and Utah area, getting married and having children young isn’t particularly unusual. With the large LDS population here, there can almost be an expected sequence to life:

Grow up.

Get married.

Have babies.

Raise them.

They grow up and have babies.

Circle of life complete.

So that’s what I did.

Except less than nine months after my baby was born, his dad and I were getting divorced.

And suddenly my life wasn’t about figuring out who I wanted to become.

My life was about protecting this tiny human and trying to give him something different.

Time kept moving.

I remarried.

We had another baby.

That baby somehow just turned THREE, which feels like a personal attack from the passage of time.

And somewhere inside all of that, I became Mom.

Through a motherhood lens, I think “she is gone, but she used to be mine” becomes especially painful because “she” doesn’t have to be a happier or better version of you.

She can simply be the woman who existed before so much of her identity became intertwined with being someone’s mother.

Before motherhood, you primarily belonged to yourself.

Your time was yours.

Your body was yours.

Your plans were yours.

Your dreams were yours.

You could make a decision without immediately calculating how it would affect tiny humans who depend on you.

Then you become someone’s mother.

And gradually:

“Who am I?” gets buried underneath “Who needs me?”

That’s why the descriptions in the chorus hit me differently through motherhood.

“She is broken and won’t ask for help.”

Mothers can become extraordinarily good at functioning while they’re falling apart.

There’s breakfast to make. Someone needs dressed. Someone can’t find their shoes. There’s an appointment you’re already late for. Someone is crying. Someone needs medicine. Someone needs comfort.

The laundry has somehow reproduced overnight.

So you keep moving.

Eventually you can become the person who takes care of everybody else while having absolutely no idea how to say:

I need someone to take care of me for a minute.

Then there’s:

“She is lonely most of the time.”

Motherhood can be incredibly full and incredibly lonely at the exact same time.

You can spend the entire day surrounded by people.

You can have someone touching you approximately 97% of your waking hours.

You can answer 400 questions, wipe faces, find snacks, give hugs, break up arguments and listen to a detailed explanation of something that makes absolutely no sense.

And still feel lonely.

Because sometimes you don’t necessarily miss having people around you.

You miss being around people who know you as you.

Not Mom.

Not someone’s wife.

Not the keeper of the appointments.

Not the finder of the missing shoes.

You.

And then:

“She is all of this mixed up…”

Motherhood doesn’t erase the woman you were.

It adds another enormous identity on top of her.

You’re still someone’s friend.

You’re still a partner.

You’re still intellectual, creative, ridiculous, ambitious, scared, funny, angry and curious.

You still have interests that have absolutely nothing to do with children.

But sometimes all those identities get compressed into one enormous word:

Mom.

And Mom can take up so much space that the other parts of you become difficult to hear.

Which brings me back to:

“She is gone, but she used to be mine.”

I don’t think interpreting that through motherhood means:

I wish I had never become a mother.

And it certainly doesn’t mean:

My children ruined who I was.

It’s so much more complicated than that.

It means:

I love the people my life gave me, and sometimes I still miss the person I was before everyone needed something from me.

Those feelings are allowed to coexist.

You can adore your children and miss sleeping until noon.

You can be grateful to be their mother and miss spontaneity.

You can love the family you created while grieving pieces of your body, freedom, career, friendships, interests or identity that changed along the way.

Grief does not automatically mean regret.

Maybe that’s why the word mine matters so much to me.

She doesn’t say, “She used to be me.”

She says she used to be mine.

There was once a version of me who belonged entirely to herself.

Her time belonged to her.

Her body belonged to her.

Her plans belonged to her.

Her emotional bandwidth belonged to her.

Her dreams didn’t have to be negotiated around childcare, finances, school schedules, doctor appointments, illnesses, bedtime or what somebody else needed.

Then motherhood happens.

Your calendar becomes everybody’s calendar.

Your brain becomes the household’s external hard drive.

And your heart suddenly spends an unreasonable amount of time walking around outside your body.

But I don’t think I actually want that girl’s life back.

I think I want to find her again.

There’s a difference.

I don’t want to ask:

How do I get the old me back?

I want to ask:

How do I make room for me again?

Maybe she isn’t gone.

Maybe she just changed.

Then there’s mental health.

This is where the song punched me in an entirely different place.

Because through a mental-health lens, “She Used to Be Mine” can sound like mourning the person you remember being before your own mind became such a difficult place to live.

It doesn’t have to refer to one diagnosis.

Depression.

Anxiety.

Trauma.

Burnout.

Chronic stress.

Years of simply trying to hold yourself together.

The opening of the song essentially says something I think is incredibly difficult to explain:

I don’t recognize myself anymore.

From the outside, you’re technically the same person.

Same name.

Same memories.

Same face.

Same family.

But internally, something feels different.

And sometimes there isn’t a clear before and after.

You can’t circle a date on the calendar and say, There. That’s when I stopped being me.

You just remember a time when being yourself wasn’t this hard.

That doesn’t mean the old version of you had a perfect life.

She struggled.

She screwed things up.

She was insecure.

She made mistakes.

But you recognized her.

Mental illness can make things that once naturally came from inside you suddenly require effort.

Excitement.

Motivation.

Affection.

Curiosity.

Humor.

Hope.

You remember having access to those things.

So when you can’t reach them anymore, you start wondering:

Where did she go?

And sometimes the strangest part is looking around and realizing your life isn’t objectively terrible.

You have people you love.

Maybe you have things you once desperately wanted.

Maybe you’re accomplishing something you’re proud of.

And your brain goes:

Cool. Still miserable.

Then comes the guilt.

Why can’t I just be happy?

Other people have it worse.

I should be grateful.

But mental health doesn’t operate according to a spreadsheet where enough good things eventually produce Happiness™.

So now you’re struggling and judging yourself for struggling.

And that’s why I love the way the woman in this song is described.

She isn’t reduced to what is wrong with her.

She isn’t simply depressed.

Anxious.

Traumatized.

Broken.

She’s messy.

She’s kind.

She’s lonely.

She’s scared.

She tries.

She’s imperfect.

She is still a whole person underneath everything happening inside her mind.

And then there’s the loneliness.

Mental illness can make you lonely while surrounded by people who genuinely love you.

Sometimes you withdraw.

Sometimes you don’t have the energy to maintain relationships.

Sometimes you’re physically present while internally somewhere else.

Sometimes people desperately want to understand you, but they simply don’t know what it feels like to live inside your head.

You don’t necessarily lack people.

You lack connection.

And after you’ve struggled long enough, something even stranger can happen:

Your mental health and your identity start getting tangled together.

Where does my mental health end and I begin?

Am I naturally introverted, or am I withdrawing?

Am I pessimistic, or am I depressed?

Do I genuinely not enjoy this anymore, or have I lost interest in everything?

Am I lazy, or am I exhausted?

Am I overly sensitive, or am I overwhelmed?

Would I have made that decision if I had been doing better?

Who would I be without this?

I think that brings us right back to the most important line:

“She is gone, but she used to be mine.”

Through mental health, “gone” becomes:

I remember a version of myself I can no longer access.

Not dead.

Not erased.

Just unreachable.

You remember what made her excited.

You remember what she wanted.

You remember how she thought.

You remember when ordinary things didn’t require negotiations with your own brain.

And because you remember her so vividly, she almost starts feeling like another person.

She used to be me.

Except, again, that isn’t what the song says.

She used to be mine.

And through this interpretation, maybe that means:

My mind used to feel like it belonged to me.

My thoughts felt like mine.

My emotions didn’t control everything.

I trusted myself.

I recognized the person inside my head.

I belonged to myself.

And I don’t know where she went.

But What If She Isn’t Gone?

This is where I think I’ve landed after spending days thinking about this song.

Maybe “she is gone” isn’t actually true.

Think about it.

The woman singing can describe that girl in incredible detail.

She knows her kindness.

Her loneliness.

Her fear.

Her strength.

Her imperfections.

Her goodness.

She knows exactly who she was.

So how gone can she really be?

Maybe depression says:

She’s gone.

Maybe motherhood says:

There isn’t room for her anymore.

Maybe grief says:

You can never be that person again.

Maybe trauma says:

That person existed before everything happened.

Maybe adulthood says:

You grew up. Move on.

But somewhere underneath all of that:

She’s still here.

Changed?

Absolutely.

Some pieces of her may genuinely be gone. Some dreams changed. Some priorities disappeared. Some parts of her grew into something she never expected.

But other pieces evolved.

Maybe her kindness became the way she comforts her children.

Maybe her stubbornness became advocacy.

Maybe her anxiety sometimes became vigilance.

Maybe her silliness became ridiculous voices while playing dinosaurs.

Maybe her ambition didn’t disappear.

Maybe it just went quiet for a while.

Maybe that’s why, at 27 years old, I’m sitting in coffee shops doing homework.

Maybe the 19-year-old who didn’t get much time to figure out who she wanted to be is finally getting some of that time now.

I don’t think I want to go backward and become her again.

She didn’t know the people I know now.

She hadn’t loved the people I love now.

She hadn’t survived what I’ve survived.

And becoming her again would mean giving up every version of myself I’ve met since.

I don’t want that.

I think I want something harder.

I want to figure out who all of those women became.

The teenager.

The 19-year-old bride.

The 21-year-old new mom.

The woman going through a divorce with a baby.

The woman who fell in love again.

The mother of two.

The student.

The woman whose brain hasn’t always been particularly kind to her.

And me.

Maybe they’re not different women at all.

Maybe they’re all still in here.

So perhaps I’ve been asking the wrong question.

Maybe it isn’t:

Where did she go?

Maybe it’s:

Who is she becoming?

I don’t know the answer yet.

But for the first time in a while, I think I’d really like to find out.