A phrase I love is, “Wherever you go, there you are.” I initially resonated with this phrase because it served as a reminder that no matter what changes I make to my life, I cannot outrun the person that I am. No matter my status, location, income or career, I will always be there with my various human failings muddying the idealised view my imagination originally put forward.

As I move through various stages of my life, this phrase starts to take a different form; shaped by my expectations of who I thought I’d be at each point. I expected I’d feel a lot more grown up as a married woman, for example. But I feel largely the same. I am quite different to who I was twenty years ago, certainly, but I don’t feel particularly different. In this brand new chapter, here I am again.

But what about pregnancy? That is surely the biggest change of them all. My body, my priorities and my life have all changed so suddenly. Surely all these changes mean I will feel the most changed. I will be a mother. I will embody all that I have understood to be motherhood.

And yet I feel unchanged. I see and feel the changes. I greet the changes willingly and am excited for what else is in store but, yet again, wherever I go, there I am. There I always am.

They say that change is the only constant but I’m starting to disagree. There is an essential me-ness that follows me around, for better or for worse, who I have come to understand and appreciate. Throughout the changes, she remains, and there is a comfort in that. It’s like every corner I turn she is there to greet me.

“You again”, I would angrily mutter to myself just fifteen years ago, disappointed that I had failed to escape her.

“You again”, I now say with a smile, thankful for her company.

Carmen x