About Missing In Action

A Book For You

flower

I have yet to meet a mother who cannot relate to the concept of "missing in action." It seems our lives are full of laundry, cooking, cleaning, shopping, changing diapers, doing homework, carpooling, negotiating, arbitrating, and disciplining (along with all the other tasks related to childcare). With all this activity, it's no wonder that mothers can sometimes feel as though they are missing from their own lives; hence, my play on words.

However, as I looked deeper into this phenomenon, I discovered that many mothers experience a sense of loss as their sense of self deteriorates; this sense of loss generates grief. And why shouldn't it? Grieving is the natural response to losing something of value. And so, I coined a new term, Maternal Intrapersonal Anxiety (MIA), to more aptly reflect this grief response, and I wrote Missing In Action: How Mothers Lose, Grieve, and Retrieve Their Sense of Self to help women understand and process their experience more fully.

In a nutshell, Missing In Action highlights the changes women usually experience when they become mothers, how they perceive those changes (often unconsciously), and how they respond to change when it's perceived as loss (i.e., how grief functions in their lives). I also define MIA in depth, explain the need for, and creation of, personal boundaries, and suggest ten goals that function to reclaim a sense of self gone astray.

Ten Goals That Work

flower These ten goals are intended to help women process the multitude of feelings and thoughts that often emerge as they devote themselves entirely to motherhood. The goals focus on the issues most central in the feelings of loss associated with change.

  1. Identify your values
  2. Create boundaries to secure your values
  3. Acknowledge change/loss associated with motherhood
  4. Express emotions related to your experience of motherhood and feelings of loss
  5. Modify relationships into what's realistic
  6. Identify and recover what is still viable from your former self and lifestyle
  7. Regain capacities impaired by stress
  8. Recognize the dissonance that exists between life before and after children
  9. Relearn the world
  10. Relearn your self; reestablish your sense of self

Millions of mothers experience MIA and struggle for years to find their sense of self. I truly hope Missing In Action helps you achieve this goal faster. See Chapters 6, 7, and 8 to explore these goals in more depth.