The Version of Me Before Liam

Young Jen would probably be surprised how I turned out. I’d say the 42-year-old version of me — married for almost nine years, raising a four-year-old — has found her joy.

Jen BC came from the IDGAF era, but with a lot of teen anguish mixed in. A lot of that came from childhood and trying to figure out who I was while carrying things I didn’t fully understand yet.

As an adult, I never really learned how to resolve my issues. Running away was easier. Avoidance felt like a solution, even when it kept putting me in situations that forced me to stop and take a hard look at my life.

Before Liam was even an idea, I was anti-kid. I was completely content with the life Matt and I had — traveling, sleeping in, eating out, staying up late. We only had to worry about each other.

Then Matt brought up having a kid.

My life didn’t flip upside down, but it definitely paused. I remember feeling like everything was spinning around me while I just stood there trying to process it. I might’ve blacked out a little — I don’t remember much after that.

I had to really ask myself why I didn’t want kids.

That question led me deeper into therapy. And therapy meant opening things I had kept closed for a long time. It wasn’t easy. It was exhausting. But it was necessary.

The one thing that stayed with me was my fear of becoming like my dad.

Angry.

He didn’t have much patience. He yelled a lot. Sometimes it crossed a line.

I was scared of him.

My dad could feel like two different people. We learned to read the room before anything even happened.

You could feel it in your body before anything actually happened.

When he came home from work, everything shifted.

I never really grew up from that. I was still a child in an adult body, trying to figure out how to feel safe.

At some point, it clicked — I didn’t just not want kids. I was scared of what kind of parent I might be.

I didn’t want to lose patience.

I didn’t want my child to feel like they had to watch me — to figure out what kind of version of me they were getting that day.

I didn’t want to pass down something I hadn’t worked through yet.

Saying that out loud in therapy was a turning point.

It made everything real.

But it also gave me a place to start.

Eventually, Matt and I started working on how we communicated. We were also searching for a church to call home, and my outlook slowly began to shift — from feeling like life was happening to me, to realizing I had a say in how I moved through it.

Before we knew it, we were trying for a kiddo.

Looking back, the version of me before Liam had to exist. As painful as that time was, it forced me to understand myself — my identity, my depression, my past — and actually face it.

That’s what made room for something different.

That’s what made room for me to become Liam’s mom.

And to be the kind of parent I needed growing up.