The day I said 'I do' (2024)

On this day a year ago, I was in a changing room in Bloomingdales having a minor meltdown.

You see, I was about to elope to a man I’d met on holiday. In New York. 3400 miles from home, 3 months pregnant (although no-one knew yet) and not a thing to wear. I was in that early stage of pregnancy where the bump isn’t cute yet; my body just felt sludgy and heavy, like I’d had a big lunch. Each outfit made me despair more. I FaceTimed my mum for hours, in floods of tears, a huge pile of sequin dresses at my feet.

Eventually, I found the one; a chic white tux dress from French Connection which cost less than $100, and would be the dress I stood in front of the man I love, a man I’d met 6 months prior, and commit to a lifetime together.

The dress has hung in my wardrobe for a year now; there wasn’t much use for it in the past year. As my body swelled with the life growing inside me, it was a year of TV dinners and elastic waistbands. Tomorrow night I will dust it off and wear it again for the first time.

When I reflect on who I’ve become in the year since I stood on the steps of City Hall and became someone’s wife, I feel… so. tired. So much happened in that year; I packed up my flat in London, I took 12 flights across the Atlantic, we moved apartments, had our daughter, had three-months of parental leave together, spent a month in Europe. I started to build the foundations of a new life in a new continent; I made a best friend, who became my daughter’s godmother.

And yet, somehow, nothing has changed.

Everyone told me that having a child turns your whole life upside down; that you’ll struggle to find your identity again, that you’ll lose yourself in it. I found the opposite was true; I realised I didn’t really know who I was until I had a child.

Becoming her mother, loving her, caring for her, there’s an essential rightness and deep sense of knowing that comes with it. It feels like I’ve always been her mother, she was just waiting for the right time to meet me. I’ve never felt more connected to anything - I don’t feel like I’ve lost my identity, I feel like I’ve found myself at last.

Sometimes I feel bad about work. I’m working and earning less. I have moments where I long for more professional success, but they are fleeting. I care less about success right now; I care more tiny socks and nap schedules than I ever thought I would, but I don’t resent it. I think there’s a season for everything; a season for hustle, and a season for staying inside and playing peekaboo.

I tell you this to give you permission to embrace your own seasons. Society values productivity and economic advancement more than anything; but life in the slow lane is rewarding, too. We’re not always meant to be in summer; it would make it less special if it was warm year-round. As the weather gets colder now, I’m embracing the change in seasons – I see the value in the cold, the way it sharpens the senses and shocks you, the way it makes you treasure being inside, warm and cosy with the ones you love.

Motherhood is my winter – it many ways it woke me up, to a life I was sleepwalking through before, it made me reprioritise and lean into slowness, in a way I was never able to access before.

Life has a different pace these days. It’s the small things I love. The cup of tea to start the day. The warmth of a family. The light pouring into our apartment. The value of creating a safe, loving home. My husband laughs at me that every night before bed, I lay out our daughter’s two play mats on the floor ready for the morning. I think it gives her the predictability that will set her up for life; he thinks I’m ridiculous.

But what I do know, is that my focus is no longer on me. And I’m OK with that. I feel rewarded in giving. I don’t want my life to be all about me. My time to wear a suit and step on stage will come again, but for now, I sing nursery rhymes, kiss tiny toes and soothe tears, and that is enough. That is everything.