Six months after my son was born, I decided to leave the job that I’d held for almost six years to stay home and focus entirely on this new little man in my life. I remember about a week after I became officially unemployed, my mother sent a huge box of silk flowers as a housewarming gift. We had moved recently, and she thought that a few vases of flowers would warm up the place. It took me almost two weeks to make those floral arrangements.

I kept doing and undoing them until my husband finally said, “Aren’t you a creative person? You’re overthinking this.” He was right. The problem with my arrangements was that I was approaching the process in a very linear way .. the designs were perfectly symmetrical. I took my husband’s advice, relaxed a little, and let my creative juices flow. It felt great — and the arrangements looked more natural too.

Most women I know were in the work world for a decade or more before having their first child, and most of us reported to our desks until the day the baby arrived. We have had plenty of time to refine our job-place personalities  — whether we realize it or not.

When I decided to stay home with my son, I took the “me”  who had been successful at work and tried to relocate her … only this time my office was the entirety of my house.  I took this new domain and set of responsibilities very seriously. I was going to be the super Director of the Child and Home now. My baby boy was always thoroughly entertained, the house was spotless (whenever anyone came to visit), and I was always busying myself with something productive while my son napped. But I couldn’t for the life of me arrange a vase of flowers. 

It took awhile, but I finally came to understand that the “office-me” didn’t really fit in at home. Over the years in the career-world, I had changed to fit my job. Now that I was a mother, I didn’t need to play that role any longer — I had a new one. And this one involved getting back in touch with the more creative, less-linear me.

Whether or not new moms stay home or go back to work, motherhood changes us. And I think that this metamorphosis causes as much mental confusion as it does physical. It’s as if our brains and our lives have been simultaneously rewired. Letting ourselves think about and approach things differently than we did before kids is probably an important step to really enjoying this time in life. Parenthood begins that mental transformation for us — and we can either fight it or embrace it. 

For me, I finally just selected a few of my favorite silk buds, put them haphazardly in a vase, and had a nice laugh at myself.