However crazy it might seem, it's alarmingly easy to relegate yourself to second-class-citizen status after you become a mom. Your kids become the kings of your castle; you, their servant, court jester, driver, and cook. Without any conscious decision-making on your part, suddenly "Mom" is your defining role, and all those other things you used to be before kids — employee, voracious reader, lover of animals, long-distance runner — seem like distant memories.
But they don't have to be, and moreover, they shouldn't be. Self-care is just as important for moms as it is for anyone else on the planet, but it can be so much harder to achieve when you've placed the happiness and comfort of the tiny humans in your house above your own.
Here are some ways to rediscover your own premotherhood self-identity and take time for the self-love and -caring you so deserve.