Mother's Day 5/12/24
I always dreamed of being a mother. As a child I would clip pictures out of the JCPenney catalog of what I imagined my baby’s nursery would look like. When I graduated from college I remember my dad asking “what’re you going to do with that degree I just bought you?” And I replied “I think I’m going to be a mom.” At the time I had been married for 9 months and the day after I walked in my graduation ceremony I found out I was pregnant. I lost that pregnancy in my first trimester. For anyone who is dreaming of being a mother or suffering through pregnancy loss, I want to be honest about my experience - I have 4 beautiful children on this earth and we lost 5 throughout the journey. When I went through that, I learned that a lot of women I knew had experienced loss. It’s not as uncommon as you would think and you are not alone.
Motherhood has been the greatest journey of my life. My children have taught me as much, and shaped me as much, as I have them, if not more. I am so honored to have had the unique privilege of being the vessel through which they came into this world and the mother who cared for them as they discovered this wild and wonderful plane of existence. Was I perfect at it? No. Hard to stomach as a people-pleaser type who always had good grades. 😆
Motherhood rocked me to my core. Made me rethink everything I ever knew. Inspired me to look at everything through a new lens. Motivated me to change the way we ate, the way we lived, to get chickens, build a garden, bring miniature goats to our former suburban neighborhood so my kids could have raw milk, give birth at home, learn how to make traditional foods, buck the system and start homeschooling.
Everything our life is now, has developed organically from our desire to provide what we believe is the best possible life for our children. This is not to judge anyone else’s journey, but just to say that this has been ours, and that even though I’ve done a lot of different things with that art degree, the most important creative endeavor of my life has been nurturing these sweet souls that I get to call son and daughter.
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