Change is an inevitable part of our lives, but there are certain aspects of life that experience more drastic change than others. For me, the change from longing for a baby to the mother of two young children was enough to throw my mental self into a search for my identity. As responsible parents, my husband and I choose to ground ourselves with jobs, house and experience before we tried for a baby. Although you can never be fully prepared in any way for what adding children to your relationship will bring, we were more mentally grounded than many and prepared ourselves as much as possible for life with baby.

After 3 good years of trying and one devastating miscarriage, we finally received our right into parenthood! Less than two years later we were the owners of two beautiful little beings, but when my daughter was about 6 months old this mommy felt the tragedy of complete loss of who I used to be and the sadness of what I had been reduced to. I figured motherhood was a death sentence at times, and I say that with a sense of humor, but also in all seriousness. You see, it wouldn’t be revealed until 4 years later, that my son was autistic. He was violent to my daughter and myself and we suffered daily from his ‘demonic fits’ that left this mommy in horrified terror. My daughter (whom is the love of my life now and my mini me) was so clingy that she spent the first 18 months of her life attached to me on a backpack. My knees hurt, my back screamed for a break, I was up almost every hour of the night and each new day I got to look forward to a 2 year old boy who melted my heart with joy at one moment and was attacking me with fits of rage the next. At the end of the day I was one mentally and physically exhausted mother who felt like I was just a shell of what I had once been. I had been reduced to something I had never imagined and that time life was very, very dark.

I share this not for sympathy. Not in any way. I share this because I know there are moms and dads out there that are at loss with their newly acquired parenthood. Mom’s who have given their all and have no more to give and wonder how long this can last before they are done. I was at that point of devastation. Where day and night blended together into a huge lump of exhaustion and defeat. The good news is that those days are behind me and that through prayer and support I have embraced change and been able to raise above those very dark first few years of parenthood. Which leads to the red hair!

When my daughter was just over a year old, I decided I needed some sort of outlet from my stay-at-home day to day. I joined the local Curves and started getting out for some exercise in a social atmosphere. It was difficult to make a commitment with my needy littles. Just leaving my husband home with them for an hour seemed to him like a lifetime and gave me just enough time away to contemplate my get away plan 😉

Working out, eating right and losing weight is a difficult enough task when you’re able to dedicate yourself to it and nearly impossible when you have the constant demand of little people tugging at your pants and screaming in your ears all day long. I did eventually get into an effective grove and started to get back into a weight that I felt comfortable with and with that came an inward confidence. One that grew slowly and once it was established enough inside, it started to once again flow out of me.

And that’s when I got a little more daring with my hair. I had it cut short and added red highlights! I believe that the red highlights signify my inner me or my inner confidence. I refer to them as my ‘inner red’ and the bolder I became inside the more my true personality has come out and the redder the hair has gotten. You see, in September of 2013, I went all red and that truly does correlate with the inner confidence that has grown inside of me. It will come out more and more as I share with you what has built this confidence, but I will say that once I was able to embrace some of me and establish who I was inside, I was able to slowly shed that feeling of despair and replace it with that feeling of self worth. And I know now that the very children that tore me to bits and destroyed me in the beginning have been the very people that have poured into me a new level of confidence that has allowed me to love deeper, try harder and fight for what I believe fiercer than I have ever fought before.

I am a changed person. I feel like the start of parenthood was like being put into a fire, but God has used those early years to forge me into something beautiful, something powerful, something that has given me more meaning to life than ever before. And for that I am truly thankful. I encourage every mother who faces these struggles to find her ‘inner red’, embrace it and let it come out. Change is hard. Downright devastating. But it is more powerful than anything to use that change to find a stronger person on the other side.

~Tracy~