On ziplining, identity, and feeling like a kid again
A few related anecdotes:
This summer, I finally got a bike and after confirming I could *still* ride after alllllllll these years, I had the most fun riding around with my kids. I realized that I hadn't felt that little-kid-freedom in so long.
Over winter break, my mom gifted my boys a trip to a ropes course when we visited her in Florida. My eight year old said, "Thanks but no thanks" (actually it was bro-speak "hard pass") but the 5 year old was all about it. I didn't really consider an alternative to heading up there with him, and as I was ziplining a good 20 feet up in the air I had an out-of-body-moment realizing: holy shit, one rope is separating me (and my child) from CERTAIN DEATH. I've never done anything like that before—I've never been been a risk-taker. But again, I had so much fun and was so proud of myself for getting up there.
One of my boys is learning to ice skate and when he wanted some extra practice outside of his lessons I was like, well okay, guess I'm going ice skating then--I'm not sending him out into the free skate rink alone after one lesson. Turns out I could still skate, enough not to totally bite it, anyway, and I'm already excited to skate with him again. Once my lower back stops randomly seizing, that is. Skating uses weird muscles.
My point is this.
When your kids are babies you'll be forced to reckon with big questions about identity and how much changes when you first become a parent.
Are you the *you* you've known for likely 30-something years? What happened to that girl who loves brunch and yoga classes at 7pm and watching Virgin River uninterrupted? Where did she go?
And then, I think, as we move out of those long but beautiful early days, we settle into parenthood and the sacrifices feel less like sacrifices and just become the life you're living. Brunch Laura isn't forgotten, exactly, I just find my own ways to sneak in the things that bring me joy around my kids—but honestly, a lot of the time, that is my kids. I don't feel like I'm missing much. That realization has been such a gift as my children grow older.
But I think there's another gift here, which might be even better: rediscovering our childhood selves that got buried under all of that growing up in our teens and 20's.
To our kids, EVERYTHING is new. Until it isn't, of course. But they experience so much more new-ness than we as adults do. I keep finding myself attempting to avoid new things, in fact—I signed up for platform tennis lessons and found myself searching for an excuse before the first one to not show up. Thankfully, I went and loved it.
Trying new things or being brave enough to do the things again that I used to do as a child makes me FEEL like a kid again—free and easy, without a care in the world. That's obviously not true anymore; as an adult in 2025, I have many, many cares in the world. But who wouldn't take a few moments of escape, if only for a few minutes at a time?
I think motherhood can reunite us with the earliest versions of ourselves that we didn't even know we were missing all along. And maybe, this time around, those bike rides or ziplines are even better. The gift of childhood, the gift of adulthood, the gift of aging—this year has shown us already how precious and fragile it all really is. I'm so grateful for it all.
Cheers to trying something old or something new, friends.