Blog / Life

Shapeshifting

It has taken me until now to realize I’m not the same person I was before I had my daughter. While I understood this truth intellectually, it has taken me a while to “get it”—this feeling of disorientation in pretty much every aspect of my life. I’ve changed. And while a lot of my life looks the same, becoming a mother has shifted my relationship to it all.

One Year of Motherhood: What I’ve Learned

Chloé is turning one in a few weeks and I have to ask: HOW is that possible? One year of motherhood? It’s unbelievable to me. Understand—I’ve wanted to be a mother my entire life. I waited for Chloé for as long as I can remember. I named her when I was twelve. I had so many dreams, ideas, and expectations around motherhood and I can honestly say that my experience is beyond anything and everything I could’ve imagined.

And it has been HARD. This kind of love is hard. It’s painful. I love her so much it hurts. Every day I think I can’t possibly love her more and somehow my heart rips apart and I love her infinitely more. To feel that much love means I also feel that much pain. I feel more sorrow, more stress, more rage and more joy, more contentment, and more patience. This year has taught me so much, but the most impactful lesson is the reality I live everyday: two (or more) very different things can be true at the same time. Anxiety and ease; awkwardness and grace; sadness and bliss; feeling lost and feeling found. I suddenly understand everything and also I have no clue about anything. To be perfectly honest, it’s disorienting, overwhelming, and exhausting to feel constantly pulled in every direction, but the more I cling to some definitive, the more I collapse under the weight of it all. To look for the answer or to look for myself in any one thing is the fastest road to suffering. Motherhood is all about expansion, fluidity, and surrender—because there’s no other choice. I have to make room for it all.

The Fourth Trimester

If I look happy in this picture, it’s because I am. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to finally be feeling better. The fourth trimester was beautiful, but also brutal—mostly brutal with some beautiful moments I was either too exhausted, anxious, or hormonal to appreciate. I was prepared for it to be hard, but after years of loss and longing, I expected to find joy in it all.

The Work I Love

We spent Labor Day up at my parents’ house in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. It was a significant weekend for me, because it marked the end of my maternity leave. I’ve been feeling anxious about returning to work. I’m excited, but also overwhelmed. It has brought up some big questions. How will I balance my career and motherhood? How will I do it all? How will I be it all—for my students, my work, my beloved, my daughter . . . myself? I’m blessed to ask these questions. Deep down, I trust the bigger picture. I know it will all come together—it always does, even if rarely in the ways I expect or appreciate until long after the dust has settled. But right now, my faith is of little comfort to me. And so, vacation.

Mindfulness Is The Worst

Mindfulness is the worst. I’m serious. It has single-handedly forced me to face reality and accept that so much of my suffering is of my own making. I can’t sit around pointing fingers anymore. I can’t wait around for other people to change or fulfill me. I can’t hit the easy button and pretend that my unproductive habits will fix (read: ignore, numb, avoid) my pain. I can’t just implode and wallow in my own misery without also witnessing myself imploding and wallowing in my own misery.

Fran Hauser

This is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing a dear friend. Being a new experience, I took a decidedly different approach. I typically curate my questions around a specific theme, but instead I crafted a list of questions for my friend, Fran Hauser, based on the qualities I love most about her—her faith in the process, her devotion to family and ritual, her emotional intelligence, her decisiveness, and her generosity. Our conversation revealed not only a deeper understanding of my friend, but also of the core principles she has nurtured on her path to success.

Feel It All

I was pregnant when this photo was taken two years ago. It was my third pregnancy. I remember feeling alive and hopeful. I remember thinking, “This is it. This is when my story will change—when I can finally move past this pain and exhale. At last, my life can begin.”

Palm Springs

Billy and I escaped the cold and jetted to California for a little baby moon. I’ve always wanted to go on a baby moon, only because the only thing I’ve ever wanted was a baby. This trip was an opportunity to relax, yes, but more importantly it gave me a chance to celebrate and enjoy my pregnancy. The first trimester was a practice in faith—getting through all the testing, facing my very real fear of losing yet another baby, and trying not to wait for the other shoe to drop. I don’t think I fully accepted this miracle until I could feel her moving inside of me. Each kick was a reminder—she’s real.

Be Here, Now

Life is impermanent. This truth has been both a source of pain and a source of hope for me over the past five years as I struggled through a heartbreaking journey to become a mother. Living with the darkness of grief and summoning the courage to cultivate hope became my main practice. It broke me over and over again, and in doing so, it also broke my heart wide open. The depth it excavated within me now holds the love for the very thing I’ve always wanted. It is with so much joy that I share the news that my beloved and I are expecting a baby in June!