Journaling for Moms Who’ve Lost Their Pink (and Their Spark)
Hey Mama,
Welcome back to our journal prompt series, where I answer a question each week from the Burnout Recovery Workbook for Moms. If you’re new here and haven’t grabbed the free journal yet, now’s a good time.
This week’s prompt is in the Self-Reflection & Identity section of the journal, and seems simple until you sit with it long enough to realize... you might not know. Or you did once, and it got buried under diapers, logistics, and the mental overload.
In this article:
Who or what made me feel most like myself before motherhood?
What I Forgot I Knew About Myself
Losing Your Pink & Maybe Finding a New Shade
How Journaling Helps Moms Reconnect With Themselves
Who or what made me feel most like myself before motherhood?
I’ll be honest; this one stumped me for a little bit. The activities I could list aren’t things that sound like they belong on a mom blog. We’re not talking scented bubble baths and nature walks here. More like a blurry montage of sticky floors, sketchy decisions, and spontaneous solo trips.
I did things purely because they were fun and I wanted to. I made choices based on what felt good. Not what was practical or productive. For no other reason than joy.
Touching sand every day for the year I lived in Venice Beach.
Blogging about my nocturnal adventures.
Doing things alone, whether it was going to bars, building a business, or traveling.
Now, with some distance, I see it clearer: I didn’t actually know myself back then. At least now well enough to realize that I was chasing things to feel like someone— but not necessarily myself. I was just drifting from thing to thing, person to person, party to party, hoping something would stick.
What I Forgot I Knew About Myself
So, I dug through some old journals, trying to remember that girl. And I found something I’d written less than a year before I got pregnant—something I’d completely forgotten about. For context, this was after months of dealing with a brutal reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine that left me physically wrecked and emotionally hollowed out:
“The last few months illuminated that a great deal of what makes me “me” is my sexuality. It’s not a big surprise, as I’ve always been overly sexual, but I never thought about what would happen if I lost “it.”
My sexuality didn’t disappear one day. It died slowly. It bled out of my vagina, soaked countless tampons, leaked onto my panties, pants, sheets, and chairs. It didn’t go quietly into that good night. No, ma’am. It cried out a banshee scream, threw limbs in wild directions, and made vows to return seeking vengeance.”
How could I forget that sexuality was such a big part of my identity? I felt like myself when I was wanted. Desired. When I was connecting with someone—not always deeply, but intensely.
So, who made me feel most like myself before motherhood? The answer is my sexual partners. Or at least, I used them as a mirror, even if sometimes it was a funhouse one.
Losing Your Pink & Maybe Finding a New Shade
Admitting that my sexuality is central to who I am brings up some uncomfortable truths—especially about my marriage.
My husband doesn’t compliment, woo, or romance me the way he used to because the chase is over. He caught me.
I let it go too. I stopped expressing my sensuality because it doesn’t feel like anyone is looking for it anymore—including me. It’s not just a low libido after pregnancy, it’s a loss of my body feeling like my own (which started almost a year before getting pregnant).
Our toddler drains the life out of me by 8:00 p.m., so sex feels less like something I want and more like something I should do if we want to make another kid before I reach menopause. It’s not passion. It’s a project. And nothing kills desire like trying to schedule it.
Modern marriages are expected to be everything—romance, friendship, emotional safety net, co-parenting contract—when historically, love wasn’t even the point of marriage. Trying to funnel an entire ecosystem of desire, affirmation, mystery, and intimacy into one person isn’t reasonable.
And that’s the part that hits the hardest: if this piece of me—this sensual, magnetic, pleasure-seeking version of myself—has gone quiet, does that mean I’m gone too?
Or is it just that life has shifted so much—between the exhaustion, the hormone crashes, the relational friction—that this part of me can’t lead the way anymore? That there will be no “return seeking vengeance.”
If I’m not driven by desire the way I used to be… then what does make me “me” now?
It’s questions like that—the ones that ache a little when you ask them—that make journaling feel less like a hobby and more like a rescue rope. Because sometimes, even when you’re not sure what’s left of you, your own words find you.
Related: How to Survive the First Year of Marriage and a New Baby Without Getting a Divorce
How Journaling Helps Moms Reconnect With Themselves
Journaling can remind you that you’re still in there. That even if you’ve buried your wildness under the weight of routines and sleep regressions—you’re not gone. You’re just waiting to be remembered.
But journaling doesn’t just remind you of who’s still there—it can also show you who’s not. It can shine a light on the parts you’ve outgrown, or the versions of yourself you forgot you missed until you realize they’re no longer yours to reclaim.
And maybe that’s okay. Maybe you’re not meant to go back and resurrect every piece. Maybe some parts—like the woman who once centered her whole identity around being desired—deserve a proper goodbye. Not out of loss, but out of love. Because letting her go creates space to become someone else. Someone who still wants to feel alive—just in a different way now.
If you haven’t downloaded the journal yet, go grab it. Not because I want to give you more to do, but because this isn’t homework. It’s a lifeline.
We’re not just moms. We’re still women, too. Complicated, wild, tired, sexy, curious, gritty women. And we deserve to know ourselves—even if we have to dig a little to find her.
