Know Grief, Know Joy...
The truth is, I am grieving.
The truth is, I am grieving...
but I am grateful.
This grief doesn't feel sad. It feels like I'm sifting and stretching. It feels like I am being uprooted and repotted. It feels good to feel as deeply as I can feel today. I was numb for so long. I knew I was healing when I started to feel things.
I've been a mother since I was 18 years old. As an almost 36-year-old woman chosen by a power greater than myself to be the matriarch of healing for my lineage, I look back on that time in my life and my heartaches.
Slow throbbing aches for the kid having a kid. Deep tenderness for little Alex who thought the only way to be and feel love was to have a baby. There was so much wounded in me, so much hurt. Being on the other side of that is sacred.
My oldest will be 18 this year. Her existence shifted my entire life, obviously. She showed me that becoming who WE needed required me to pave a new path. It didn't happen overnight, but eventually, I understood that to become who I was made to be, I had to shed who I once was.
I've been a mother for most of my life at this point. I've been a home to humans. I've sacrificed myself, my body, and my everything to give these kids a mother who is of a healthy and sound mind. I am honored they chose me in this lifetime. Each of my daughters has taught me a divine lesson about self-trust and self-choosing. If mama is not well, they will know and feel that.
Even in the midst of all this stretching and all this shedding, I am learning that joy still lives here. This season proves that I am a vessel for witnessing all of myself, each of my children, and all of the tender and tough moments that come with being a person to people.
Gentle Reminder: Our happiness and sorrow are worthy of taking up space in our lives. It is through vulnerability that we become acquainted with joy and its blessings.
Even in the thick of motherhood shifts, I spot joy like breadcrumbs on the path back to myself. Proof that even as things change, even as we all grow up, grow apart, and grow deeper in love, joy remains.
This life and this practice are evidence that none of our healing work is in vain. The month of May is asking me to notice it all—the grief, the growth, the grace, and the joy—and to hold them tenderly together in both hands like a prayer. I think the grief seeping in is because we are all in a new season of growing up. Char is stepping into young adulthood, Ila is a full-on kid, and our baby girl, Maximus, is no longer a baby. Parenting is the most beautifully heartbreaking thing I have ever experienced in my life. Being a good, intentional, loving, and compassionate parent requires so much. In bell hook’s All About Love, she tells us that love and care are not the same thing. When I read her words: Remember, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving. I was stopped in my tracks. I don’t just want my kids to feel my love, I want them to feel that they’ve been cared for in mind, body, spirit.
I've been deliberately healing all these years so that my children can know and feel the love and care I wasn't accustomed to. Growing up, I didn’t think love knew me. I was “taken care of” but I never felt the warmth of love calling me by name. I hope my children look back on their lives, when I’ve returned to the dust of the Earth and they’re able to say—I know without a shadow of a doubt that my Mama loved me—that she liked me and cared for me—with her entire self.
That, to me, is the proof. That is the legacy work.
This journey has been deep and winding. It has been a lot—but I have welcomed it and will continue to. A woman on Threads said to me some weeks ago: "It's okay to let your family grow up," and I felt that. It's also okay that mama is growing up too, even at 35. I am not the same woman. I have broken open. I am blooming. I am no longer avoiding myself because I'm distracted by babies and nursing and tending. I feel grounded.
Every single day, I am becoming my own soft place to land. That feels scary, and it feels really really right.
As I approach my next Mother's Day, I want my children to know that I am more than their mama—and they are more than my children. There's grief, peace, and gratitude in that tender truth, but I am leaning in. We all are—and that is exciting. They belong solely to themselves. They are autonomous and whole and full, regardless. I want them to remember that they are more than the roles they play in other people's world. And that they get to take up big beautiful space in their own lives. It took me 18 years to trust that I am more than the positions I play.
I am not just a partner. I am not just a mother. I am not just a caretaker. My current awareness shows me that I cannot be anything to anyone if I am nothing to myself.
I am free and worthy because I choose to be. I pray my daughters grow to know that same truth. I pray they never mistake their worth for their usefulness. I pray they hold themselves tenderly when life stretches them beyond what they think they can bear. I pray they understand that growing pains don't mean they're damaged—it means they're alive, it means they're becoming.
There's a particular ache that comes with witnessing the people you love most find their own footing. It's the ache of stepping back, of trusting that what you've sewn into them will hold. It's the ache of unclenching your hands when every part of you wants to tighten your grip. I used to think motherhood was about molding. Now I know it's about evolving—a simultaneous blooming. Them into themselves. Me into myself. Together, yet separate, always.
Grief and joy have braided themselves into everything now. Some days, it feels unbearable. Other days, it feels like the sweetest gift life could offer: the chance to love so much that you feel it in your bones when things pivot. But I trust my reroutes. I trust my girls will always find their way back home to [their] center.
This chapter is asking me to mother myself, too.
To listen closely.
To sit in the silence.
To trust the woman I've become.
To welcome the women I will be before I die.
To allow joy to live alongside the letting go.
And so I sit here, heart cracked wide open, hands unclenched, whispering:
It's okay. It's okay to love without holding too tightly. It's okay to grieve what's ending and celebrate what's beginning. It's okay to be a beginner again and again and again. It's okay to let joy find you, even here. Even in the trenches. Even in the mud.
Joy is my lotus flower.
This is what it means to grow up, and I'm grateful to be wide awake for it.
Arms outstretched, ready to receive.
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This found me at the exact right moment and cracked me open so whole that as I’m typing my face is wet with big, hearty tears.
I’m not a mother — yet — but gosh do I know grief. And how it feels to sit and hold the conflicting realities of the mother you have and the one you wish you had. And to pray and trust in the process of life unfolding, uncontrollably all around us. Finding women like you gives me confidence to keep going, to keep trusting, and who knows, maybe someday, I’ll step into the great unknown of motherhood.
Beautiful. Truly. Thank you so much for sharing.
This is one of the most stunning, and heartfelt pieces I’ve read on mothering and motherhood. Authentic. Evocative. Raw. Love every word. 💜