When you finally get time alone and don’t know who you are anymore

Who are you when nobody needs anything from you?

I want to ask you something today, and I don’t want you to answer it quickly. Not the way we usually do when a question lands, and we immediately wrap it up with an answer so we can move on. Just sit with it for a second.

Who are you when nobody needs anything from you? Not your job, not your role in your family, not the version of you that holds everything together, remembers everything, anticipates everything. Just you. Who are you there?

I used to think I knew the answer to that. Or maybe I just never had enough stillness to notice I didn’t. And a few months ago, Denis took the girls to their grandparents for the weekend. And I had the house to myself. Which sounds like it should be a big moment, right? But it wasn’t like that. It just felt quiet. The kind of quiet that feels unfamiliar when you’ve been living inside a full life for a long time. Because even when nothing is happening, your body is still listening for what’s next.

And I remember standing in the kitchen and not really knowing what to do with myself. I had this hovering feeling, like I had walked into a room I used to know and couldn’t immediately find myself in there.

So I went outside. Denis and the girls have this cute thing they call stoop buddies. They sit on the stoop, watch people go by, talk to neighbors, comment on the street like it’s their own little world. It’s very Hoboken and it’s very them. So I stayed out there for a while. I talked to some neighbors, took in the air, read a book, went for a run, check, check, check.

And then I came back in and I started cleaning. Not because anything was dirty, although I have to admit, my girls do know how to mess up the house very fast. But I did have a compelling feeling to move things around and rearrange for the sake of rearranging. And to be honest, this was a kind of cleaning that isn’t really about the house at all. It’s about not knowing what to do when nothing is asking anything from you. Because when the space I had been asking for finally arrived, I didn’t know how to be inside it. And cleaning felt a lot safer than sitting with that discomfort. So I cleaned.

In the stillness of an empty apartment, that weekend asked me a question I wasn’t ready for, and now I want to share it with you. Who are you when there’s nobody to take care of?

Welcome back to Unscripted, a Momtoring podcast. The podcast for the ambitious working mother ready to hear her own voice again. I’m Andi Salcedo, coach, working mother, and founder of Momtoring, the coaching brand and community behind this show. This is our sixth episode, and today I want to talk about what happens when you finally get what you’ve been asking for. The quiet, the space, the time, and you discover that you’ve spent so long giving your attention to everyone else that you’ve genuinely forgotten what it feels like to give it to yourself.

That weekend stayed with me. Not because anything dramatic happened, but because of how ordinary it all was, how normal it felt to not know what to do with myself. I kept thinking about how often I had said things like, I just need space, or I just need a bit of time. Or once things calm down, I’ll get back to myself. And then I had it, even if only for a weekend. And I didn’t really recognize myself inside it.

There’s a phrase I love that says, where your attention goes, your energy goes. And for years my attention had gone almost entirely outward. To my family, to my job, to the logistics, the emotional climate, the schedules, the needs, and I did this wholeheartedly. But the attention had been so complete, so total, that there was almost nothing left pointing at me. I had organized my entire identity around other people, and I didn’t know how to be without them.

A lot of us do. It never feels like a decision when it’s happening. That’s the strange part. It feels like you are being responsible, reasonable, even loving, maybe too loving. You don’t wake up one day and decide to disappear from your own attention. It just happens in smaller ways. Maybe you start by skipping that thing that used to be yours because the week is already full. Then you stop protecting the time that isn’t urgent. Then you move yourself to the bottom of the list because everything else feels louder. And none of it feels wrong. That’s what makes it so hard to notice.

Until one day, there is me time available. Do you remember that? Me time! And instead of relief, there’s this strange question that shows up underneath everything else. So what now? You thought space would automatically return you to yourself. But it doesn’t. It reveals where you’ve been absent.

Before I had kids, I used to go on meditation retreats in the Argentinian Patagonia three times a year. My meditation retreats were like return trips to me. Ways of coming back into myself when life and work felt loud. A week at a time, sometimes even more. There was silence, coaching, psychology, energy work, the Andes, the lake. It was truly special. It was time that didn’t belong to anyone else but me.

And then motherhood arrived together with work, of course. And those retreats, along with a lot of other things that were mine, slowly disappeared. Not because anyone took them. They just stopped being part of the life I was actively maintaining. Because everything else felt more immediate. And over time, I think I started to assume that version of me was just no longer accessible or relevant. But that was not true.

And eventually, there was that trip to Panama. And I don’t mean that Panama fixed anything. I want to say that clearly because I think sometimes when we tell these stories backwards, it sounds like there was some magical turning point where suddenly everything clicked into place. No, no, no, no, no. That is Hollywood at its best. For me, it wasn’t like that.

So about two years ago, I traveled to Panama to plan a retreat with a good friend of mine in Bocas del Toro. Technically, I was there to work. We were thinking about programming and experiences and what we wanted women to walk away with. And somewhere, in the middle of planning a retreat, we kind of accidentally gave ourselves one. Not intentionally. It was only a few days, maybe three or four, I think. But there was something about being there that slowed life down enough for me to hear myself again.

Not because I was sitting meditating on a beach, having some profound spiritual breakthrough. No. It was more about the conversations that had space in them. Thinking about ideas without immediately being interrupted by logistics. Talking about things that weren’t schedules or forms, or who needed what’s next. I remember having moments where I could almost feel my brain working differently, like it had more room. Like thoughts could finish themselves. And I remember noticing something that felt strange at the time. I felt more like myself. But not my old self. And that distinction matters.

Because I think for a long time, I was thinking about this all wrong. Like I needed to get back to who I had been before. Pre-kids, pre-responsibility, pre all of this. But standing here now, after this two years’ journey, I don’t think that’s the work. I’ve been living my life. I’ve made choices. I’ve learned things. And I became this version. And this version, tired sometimes, stretched other times, wiser in ways I’ve never expected to become, deserves to be known too.

Panama didn’t give me answers. It just started asking better questions. Questions I honestly think I had avoided for a while. What gives me energy now? What doesn’t fit anymore? What parts of me are still here that I stopped making room for? What parts have changed? What parts needed to change?

And then life kept happening. Because that’s the thing. You don’t have some realization and then suddenly become a different person. The girls still needed things. I was still a wife to my husband. Work still needed things. Life still moved at life speed. But I think after Panama, I started paying attention differently. I started making space in smaller ways. Meditation again. Of course, not retreat meditation, real life meditation. Five minutes, if that’s what fits. Walks, conversations that felt nourishing. Protecting small pieces of myself before waiting for some perfect future version of life where suddenly there would be more time.

And then, a few months ago, I facilitated a workshop. And this one surprised me so much. Because somewhere along the way, I had quietly decided that maybe that part of me that facilitated workshops wasn’t really mine anymore. Or maybe I had outgrown it. Or maybe, I don’t know, life had changed enough that it wouldn’t feel the same. So I went into it thinking I might feel a bit removed from it. You know, a bit out of practice. Like I was borrowing an older version of myself for a day.

But then I got into that room. And what happened was completely different. I felt alive in it. Not like I had gone backwards, not like I had returned to something. More like something in me that had been silent for a while suddenly had air again. Flow, ease, presence. And within minutes, I felt completely there. And it caught me off guard. Because I realized I had quietly written that part of me out of the present tense of my life, as if she belonged to someone I used to be. Not old me, not younger me, not pre-kids me. Me, just me. Maybe more me than I had felt in a while.

Delivering a workshop on mental load. That’s definitely a topic the old me would not have talked about. And I remember walking back home afterwards thinking, oh, that’s still here. Not exactly the same, but here. And honestly, I think that’s what this whole process has been about. You don’t go through a life after motherhood unchanged. You’re not supposed to. So the question shifts. It’s not how do I get back? It’s who is this now? And what does she need? What does she actually want? Not in theory, not in some ideal future version of life. Now, because I can still access parts of me that feel familiar. I can still enjoy things I used to love. And sometimes I thought I had lost them only to try them again and realize they were still there, just sitting under everything else. And other parts, they are new, shaped by experience, by fatigue, by depth, by all the things I didn’t choose, but still became part of me.

So it’s not return. And it’s not reinvention either. It’s something more layered than that. It’s reconnection and creation. Learning how to be in a relationship with the woman who exists now. Recognizing the parts that stayed, rediscovering the parts that got silent, and meeting the parts that are completely new. And letting all of them belong.

When I look back at these first six episodes, it’s kind of interesting how each one felt like it was about something different. We talked about burnout, resentment, perfectionism, the mental load, identity, boundary setting. Different entry points, though same underlying thread. There was always one question sitting underneath everything else. Where did you go? Where did you go in the middle of everything that needed you more urgently than you needed yourself?

And I think that’s the part we miss when we talk about working motherhood. It’s not one big collapse. It’s not a moment where everything falls apart and you suddenly realize something is wrong. It’s quieter than that. It’s a slow redistribution of attention. Little by little, your focus moves outward towards what needs doing, what needs fixing, what needs holding, what needs remembering, what needs you right now. Until one day you notice you’ve become incredibly good at holding everything together and slightly unfamiliar to yourself inside the life you’ve built.

You were never just the roles, you were always also you. The working mother who carries everything is real. She’s not an illusion. And underneath her, also real, is the woman who was there before all of this. And the woman who has been shaped by all of this. She’s the one with desires that may have changed shape, with practices that may look different now. With joy that might surprise you if you let it back in. With a voice that’s still there, even if it’s been quieter for a while.

There is something beautiful in that, even if it feels messy to name. In the fact that you didn’t disappear. You changed. Life shaped you, motherhood shaped you. Some parts got quieter, other parts got stronger. And maybe this whole journey, whether it started months ago or years ago, is not about getting back to anything. It’s about actually meeting yourself where you are now. Because the work, the real work, the unscripting, isn’t going back to who you were before. It’s learning how to be in relationship with who you are now, which includes everything you’ve been through. And also includes you.

So I want to leave you with something simple. Not an overhaul, not a plan, not even a version of do more self-care. Just one question that hopefully leads to a small, meaningful action. What is one thing that used to belong to you before everything else needed you so much? Not something big, something small. Something you could touch in your real life this week. Can be a walk, a book, a real deep conversation with a good friend, a silence that is yours. Ten minutes where your attention comes back to you.

Because this doesn’t start with reinvention. But it’s not remembrance either. It starts with reconnection. And then, slowly, creation. Not becoming something new, not becoming someone old again, but learning how to meet the woman who is already here and hasn’t really been met in a while.

Thank you so much for being here for the first six episodes of Unscripted. It has meant more than words can say. And if something in these six episodes landed for you, share it with another working mother who needs to hear it. That is the most powerful thing you can do. And find me at momtoring.com or on Instagram at @andi.momtoring. I want to hear what your one small thing is.

I’m Andi Salcedo, this is Unscripted, and I’ll see you next week.