For Mother’s Day

It begins with your organs, as they make way for a new roommate. Muscles spread, the stomach shimmies up, all so that a life might have space to grow. Next it hits your brain, where a small explosion occurs when the words I’m pregnant first barrel in. Then the spot reserved for celebrity gossip steps aside for a catalogue of what you can and cannot eat, and you become more well versed on Top Ten Baby Names than the hot spots in town. Next, it hits your heart, where wounds get buried and love climbs ladders to infinite heights, spills over edges and settles into every nook and cranny of your being. Love, love, love. And with that love comes a tether to endless worries, responsibilites and hopes and dreams in such abundance, they populate the intention behind every move you make.

This is the sometimes subtle, occasionally jarring and almost always extraodinary shift of motherhood. One where you, your life, your needs find a comfortable seat in the back until you learn to weave them into the spotlight ever shining on your children. Motherhood is joy, it is pain, it is sacrafice, it is work, it is bliss, is it fear, it is every emotion sometimes all at once, but every one of them is fueled by love. Love, love, love. It is the way you gaze at dozing babies after cursing their inability to sleep. It is the way you mindlessly wipe snot, pee and spit- up from your hands and how you rearrange your days and nights and entire life to accommodate a being that is so much smaller and yet so much bigger than you.

It is the hardest thing I have ever done and it still breaks me on an almost daily basis. But it is the greatest journey, moment, destination of my life and I will never stop thanking God, the universe, my children, my husband for letting me be a mother or feeling gratitude for family and friends who love my babies like they love me and keep me steady when balance all but disappears.

You never understand what it takes to mother until you become one. There are no words to adequately prepare those who are expecting and none needed among those who are veterans, because solidarity comes easily.

To every mother-in-the-making and the ones who’ve been mothering for decades, I wish you the very happiest of Mother’s Days. Hold in your heart the knowledge of all that you give and all that do and never forget why you’re doing it. And then lock yourself in the bathroom so you can get 5 minutes of peace and quiet. And bring wine. And also a trashy magazine so you can get back some of the celebrity gossip your brain tossed aside.

• ← Dear Crosby, Though you were not with me, my boobs reminded me of you every 3 hours
• Excited and proud, but also crapping my pants →