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Category: 🌸 MOTHERHOOD

  • The Song That Finally Said What I’ve Been Carrying

    The Song That Finally Said What I’ve Been Carrying

    I wrote a song this week that I didn’t expect to break me open. I thought I was just trying to capture a feeling — the weight of single motherhood, the exhaustion of holding my daughter’s emotions and my own at the same time. But when Suno generated the lyrics, something in me cracked. I listened once and cried. I listened again the next morning and cried harder.

    It wasn’t because the song was sad.
    It was because it was true.

    For years, I’ve carried this quiet ache: the pressure to be her safe place, the fear that I’m not doing it right, the guilt that hits me when I lose patience, the prayers I whisper after she falls asleep. I’ve never really said any of it out loud. I’ve never written it down in a way that felt honest. I’ve never let myself admit how heavy it all feels.

    But this song did.

    It put words to the moments I usually hide — the hallway tears, the tight chest, the way I replay every mistake in my head, the way I kneel beside her bed and ask God why motherhood feels so big and why I feel so small. It captured the part of me that tries so hard it hurts, the part that loves her fiercely and still doubts myself every single day.

    Listening to it in the morning, when the world expects me to be steady and functional, made the truth even louder. Morning tears aren’t about overwhelm. They’re about recognition. They’re about hearing something that finally matches the inside of your chest.

    This song didn’t make me cry because it was dramatic.
    It made me cry because it was accurate.

    🎧 Listen to the companion song: Weight I Carry

    It said the thing I’ve been carrying alone: that I’m trying, and I’m tired, and I love her more than anything, and some nights I don’t know if I’m enough.

    I don’t have a hopeful ending for this story yet. I’m still in the middle of it — still learning how to hold both her heart and mine, still figuring out how to breathe through the guilt, still praying for strength in the dark. But writing this song, and hearing it sung back to me, reminded me that telling the truth is its own kind of relief.

    Sometimes the weight gets lighter when you finally name it.

    And maybe that’s all this song needed to be.

    If any part of this met you where you are, I share more reflections by email.

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  • The Part I’m Allowed to Have

    The Part I’m Allowed to Have

    I used to wonder whether wanting things for myself meant I loved my daughter less. Tonight, sitting in the dark of her room while she fights sleep, I’m realizing I’ve stepped into a new layer of that question.

    The wanting isn’t the problem anymore. I’ve made peace with that part — the part of me that dreams, reaches, imagines a fuller version of myself. I don’t feel guilty for wanting things that exist outside motherhood. I don’t feel like it threatens the love I have for her. That piece has settled.

    Now I’m wrestling with something different: What am I actually allowed to have?

    And maybe allowed isn’t the right word. It’s not about permission. It’s about impact. Some of what I want — some of what I need — might require time away from her. It might, someday, mean changes to her world. Not dramatic ones, not harmful ones, maybe not even noticeable ones. But changes all the same.

    And I’m struggling with that. Struggling with the idea that my becoming might shift her landscape.

    I know I’m not the first parent to sit in the dark and ask these questions. How much of myself am I allowed to claim without taking too much from her? How much impact on her is too much? And how much impact on myself is too much when I deny what I need?

    Can I have it all — the things that make me feel whole — while still being the mother she deserves? Can I have it now, or do I wait until she’s older? Is there a right answer, or do we all just wing it and pray we’re doing right by our children and ourselves?

    Tonight, I’m trying to believe that my longing and my love can coexist without competing. That I can grow without fading, and she can grow while watching me become the kind of woman I hope she someday feels free to be — whole, present, and still her own.

    🎧 Listen to the companion song on Suno

  • The More I’m Becoming

    The More I’m Becoming

    For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a mom. It wasn’t a passing wish or a soft hope — it was the one thing I knew to be true about myself. I spent years feeling like I had to justify that desire, explain it, defend it, prove it. Maybe a trained professional could trace that longing back to pieces of my childhood, but whatever its origin, it lived in me with certainty.

    And when I finally became a mom to my daughter, the gratitude was so immense it felt like it lived in my bones. Some days it still rises up so strongly it brings me to tears. Loving her is one of the clearest, fiercest things in my life.

    But lately, something quieter has been happening underneath that love — a realization I didn’t expect.

    In the years I spent fighting to become a mom, I fought so hard for that one identity that I lost sight of the others. I poured everything into proving I was meant for motherhood, and somewhere along the way, I stopped noticing the parts of myself that wanted more, too.

    Now those parts are resurfacing. Now I’m remembering dreams I set aside. Now I’m wanting things I didn’t give myself permission to want before.

    And with that wanting comes a complicated sadness. A fear that maybe it means I cherish being a mom less than I used to, or less than I thought I would, or less than I’m supposed to. A fear that acknowledging my longing for more somehow betrays my daughter.

    I never want her to think I wanted anything more than being her mom. I never want her to feel like she wasn’t enough. I never want her to carry the weight of my becoming.

    But I also know — even if I’m still learning to believe it — that motherhood was never meant to be the whole of me. It was meant to be one of the truest parts, not the only one.

    There has to be room for both. Room to love her with a heart that feels like it could burst. And room to grow into the woman I’m still becoming.

    I struggle with the gray of that. With the unknown. With the quiet moments when longing shows up and asks me to look at the life I didn’t choose. But I’m trying to trust that wanting more doesn’t mean I love her less. It means I’m human. It means I’m expanding. It means I’m learning to hold both devotion and desire in the same hands.

    Maybe one day I’ll figure out how all the pieces fit. Until then, I pray I can be the best mom I can be — not by shrinking myself, but by showing her what a whole, well‑rounded woman looks like. A woman who never makes herself less so someone else can feel whole.

    A woman who teaches her daughter, simply by living, that love doesn’t require disappearing.

    If any part of this met you where you are, I share more reflections by email.

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  • Thinking of Her at 18

    Thinking of Her at 18

    She turns 18 today. My former foster daughter—my girl for a year that changed me in ways I’m still discovering. She came to me right before Christmas at 14, and what was supposed to be temporary became something real. She walked into my home and somehow into my heart at the same time.

    Life didn’t unfold the way I wish it had. Letting her go is the regret that still sits with me, quietly but constantly. I think about her every day, but today the weight of it feels different.

    I hope she’s safe. I hope she’s loved. I hope she’s becoming exactly who she wants to be. And I hope, someday, I hear how she’s doing—or maybe even hear from her.

    If she ever sees these words: I’m sorry. I love you. You mattered then, and you matter now.

    If any part of this met you where you are, I share more reflections by email.

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  • The Breaking Point – Part 2: The Decision

    The Breaking Point – Part 2: The Decision

    By the time this moment arrived, the pattern had already worn me down. I had spent years hoping for change, years trying to make sense of the volatility, years believing that if I just held everything together tightly enough, things might finally settle.

    But the moment everything changed didn’t look dramatic from the outside.

    We were at home with our child. He got angry again — the familiar tightening in his voice, the beginning of the escalation I knew too well. I asked him calmly to walk away and cool off so we wouldn’t have the argument in front of her.

    That simple boundary set him off.

    The yelling, the berating, the rage came rushing back, loud and sharp in the space where she played.

    And something in me snapped into clarity.

    In that single moment, I knew I couldn’t let her grow up believing this was normal. I couldn’t let her think this was what love looked like. I couldn’t let her learn to brace herself the way I had learned to brace myself.

    So I told him we were done.
    I told him to move out.

    That wasn’t the end of it.

    He refused.
    He insisted that we should leave instead — even though I was the one supporting us, even though I was the one holding everything together.

    Eventually, others convinced him to go. But even then, he didn’t really leave. He came back almost daily, lingering under the guise of “helping” with things around the property, staying just long enough to keep a presence in the house.

    I agreed to continue counseling, still in the fog, still wondering if maybe I was overreacting.

    But the truth was already rooted.
    It had taken hold the moment I saw her face while he raged.
    The moment my body stepped between her and the chaos.
    The moment I realized I could tolerate pain directed at me, but I could not — would not — let it touch her.

    I didn’t leave because I finally loved myself enough.
    I left because I loved her more than I feared the consequences.

    And learning how to extend that same fierce protection inward — learning how to choose myself with the same clarity — has been one of the deepest parts of my becoming.

    It’s not a part I’ve mastered.
    It’s not a part that comes easily.

    This is the work I’m still inside — the part I’m fighting for every single day. Some days I move toward it with confidence; other days I have to drag myself toward it inch by inch.

    But I’m learning.
    I’m trying.

    And that trying — that daily, deliberate choosing — is its own kind of becoming too. It’s the quiet work that began after the breaking, the work that carried me into the next chapter.

    Part III lives there — in the slow, steady practice of rebuilding a life I’m finally allowed to belong to.

    If any part of this met you where you are, I share more reflections by email.

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  • The Question I Could Never Answer

    The Question I Could Never Answer

    Any time the subject of motherhood came up, he would ask me, “Aren’t I enough? Why can’t I just be enough?”

    It was a question designed to trap me.

    Everyone knew how much I wanted to be a mother. It was one of the deepest, most hopeful parts of me. But whenever I tried to talk about starting a family, he made it about him.

    He said he wanted kids, but his actions said the opposite.

    He complained he didn’t get enough intimacy, but when I finally said I was ready to try for a baby, he refused. He said he didn’t want anything “on a schedule.” He turned my dream into an argument. He turned my hope into pressure. He turned my longing into guilt.

    And every time he asked, “Aren’t I enough?” I swallowed the truth.

    I could never say, “No, you aren’t.”

    But the truth is he wasn’t.

    Not because I was ungrateful.
    Not because I was demanding.
    Not because I needed too much.

    He wasn’t enough because he didn’t support me.
    He didn’t show up for me.
    He didn’t share the load.
    He didn’t nurture my dreams.
    He didn’t want me to have joy outside of him.

    Wanting to be a mother wasn’t the problem.

    The problem was that I was trying to build a family with someone who didn’t want me to have anything that made me feel whole.

    I didn’t see it then.
    But I see it now.
    And naming it is part of my becoming.

    If any part of this met you where you are, I share more reflections by email.

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  • The Motherhood He Held Over Me

    The Motherhood He Held Over Me

    Everyone knew how much I wanted to be a mother. It was one of the clearest, most hopeful parts of me.

    But wanting to become a mother with him became one of the most painful parts of our relationship.

    He complained constantly that he didn’t get enough intimacy.
    But when I finally said I was ready to try for a baby, he refused.

    He said he didn’t want anything “on a schedule.”
    He said he wanted kids, but his actions said the opposite.

    Every time I tried to talk about it, it turned into an argument.
    Every time I expressed hope, he shut it down.
    Every time I reached for the future, he pulled away.

    My journey to becoming a mother was long and painful — not because my body failed me, but because the person I was with used my deepest desire as a way to control me.

    I didn’t see it then. I thought we were just struggling to get on the same page. I thought he was stressed, or scared, or not ready.

    Now I can see the truth:

    He knew how much I wanted to be a mother.
    And he used that against me.

    He dangled the idea of children like a promise he could revoke whenever he wanted power.

    It wasn’t that he didn’t want kids.
    It was that he didn’t want me to have something that brought me joy, purpose, or independence.

    And that is a kind of heartbreak I’m still learning to name.

    If any part of this met you where you are, I share more reflections by email.

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