I sat in confused stupor but with gratitude and validation that my words were indeed being received well. I pondered the fact that a form of bravado had formed and was required through my words even if it was unintentional.

I saw the girl looking back at me in the photo on Facebook memories, “On this day 12 years ago” it said. Her hair was straight, her body slender, her eyes squinted as if she had a taste of lemon, but her smile while gorgeous was sad. Her eyes that squinted showed. This is how I remembered my twenties. Smiling through grueling times.

I want for deep meaningful relationships, to share life with, to be part of their lives too. I wanted more than the like on a social media post, but I wasn’t getting there with my fear of bipolar. I needed to come at this with the dynamism that is required when dealt with an ever changing plane. I’m realizing that this familiarity I have with so many is a gift, a fulfillment of the innate need to belong.

Acceptance. Acceptance for trespasses of the past and for what I cannot change had allowed me room to believe in the possibility of being me. Living in the past stole the present from me time and time again. I saw it, and I recognized it, I was at peace with it all. I am healing, past the festering wound, I’m on the path promised in healing, peace. The sights here are nothing of my memories, excitement boils over inside me.

Writing this and recalling all the things written here and not, all that we have just adapted to has me exhausted. I’m reminded of the learning curves we’ve had to take to get here. I wonder what it would look like if I compared my life and our quirks with other families. Different I’m sure, but aren’t all of us different anyway? All of us living life, loving each other and doing the best we can by each other. I think of the years to come, as my children get older, as my marriage ages and evolves, what our life will look like.

The cost to the emigrant, some would say. I was absent in all the pockets of life I would have been much needed support. I walked away to find my life, a life for myself, of myself. What I had not imagined was the hole I would leave behind in the wake of my departure. I couldn’t be there for my parents all these years and so my brother jumped headfirst into figuring out the new life he had to forge to include caring for my parents. He was out of choices because I had chosen to leave. Guilt ate at me with every passing day.

I live armed for the worst because the worst lurks in the lurches. Also with hope that pineapple days await me. This hope and expectation greases my gears on the regular. It makes the tough days bearable knowing pineapple days are coming.

This is a day we celebrate mothers’ sacrifices but I immerse myself in thoughts that this is a day I rejoice in the tears and snot that I have wiped, bedtime conversations to mend aching hearts, food that fills them with a taste only from their momma and all the little and big moments to come. Today I celebrate the being of a mother.

“Mommy, are you not feeling good?” Asked my seven-year-old noticing me slump in my seat.

“Yeah, just a little hiccup. I’ll be fine. Thank you for asking, darling,” I assured her.

“Is it anxiety?” She asked.

“Yes. I’m working through it, baby.”

“Sometimes my belly feels weird and my heart goes fast and that’s how anxiety grows in me,”she so eloquently put it.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020 and turned our world inside out, the first wave of emotion I felt was panic and increased anxiety. So many people were dying, and my empathy and sympathy ran so deep I whirled into a mixed episode of uncontrollable anxiety over the safety of my family, those around me, and the world at large. I was inconsolable at first, feeling like a wrecking ball hit our world. Everything around us was changing and I found myself in a rollercoaster of moods trying to adjust.

After that night, I not only lost my voice, I couldn’t sing anymore. There was no unbridled joy left in me. I was choking from within. I was confused, scared, and overwhelmed with shame and guilt. Shame and guilt that led me to bury what had happened to me. I wouldn’t tell anyone in my family, and eventually enough time passed that I didn’t interact with anyone who’d been there that night. Gone was the air of jest and joy I used to bring into a room. Now I brought gloom and refused to sit with my family for longer than a few minutes. I was uncomfortable in my own skin. I’d lost the person I’d been. The voice in my head now told me I was worthless. It told me I was being punished for something I had done. Something I had asked for. It told me I deserved what had happened.

My mind wanders back in time. A time when support was lacking and I kept company with enablers and naysayers and partners in vices. I took a long drag of my cigarette that afternoon almost ten years ago.

All the uncertainties in my life to date I had handled. I had grown and I had been thriving in my own light all this while. I was told I shouldn’t have children and I was afraid for failing them and here I was with two beautiful children winning at life. I am no longer that scared little girl backing down in the shadows of pain and grief and persecution, I am a woman now. Life has thrown me some shitty curveballs, but I have overcome. I saddled up and got back on that horse.

He’s got my back, he watches for pitfalls ahead, but he always walks beside me, my hand in his strong clasp. He is my protector, my savior, my love but more than that, he cheers me on and cherishes my moments of every endeavor. He bolsters my falls and gives me faith in new possibilities. He sees me and all I am and all I can be even when most times I can’t. Our marriage is what I could never have dreamed of, it is a fantasy I could never have imagined and I am thankful it is with the love of my life, Daniel. Happy Anniversary the love of my life, Daniel Zachry. Here’s to our infinite future of adventures together.

The more she grows into her person, the more fearful I am about having to teach her all the lessons. Will I be able to teach her ALL the lessons?What if I run out of time? What if she learns them without me? What if that isn’t the plan after all?

I haven’t deciphered if it comes from my weary of content or my craft. I am of the mind it is of that damned recognition as a writer. Where does the weary come from? Am I good enough has been the thread of my days. Will I believe it when my husband says it, when my mother in law does, when a handful of friends do? What if I become an award winning, best selling author? Will it be different then? My husband once said to me,”you will only believe it when someone says your work is shit.” And that is holy gospel, it is the truth. Why is it so hard to receive support? Why is it that the shitty comments are what i shove into the gaping void?

 I struggle with the guilt and shame for being an invalid in my episodes, I struggle with the notion of weighing everyone around me down with my troubles, I struggle with finding the right words to say although it has been practiced and practiced over the many episodes I have been in the years past. Reaching out seems a simple enough concept, though it proves to be gut wrenching and humiliating every time I feel the need to.

A mother is born, a mother is taught, a mother is imprinted upon with the rights and responsibilities for her offspring with no bounds. I was gifted more than one of these women that bore the rights and responsibilities of shaping me and growing me and loving me like no other. This is a story of my three mothers.

Now how do we define motherhood? A state of being a mother? What in the world does that mean? For now it’s a race against time, love fueled, persistence, perseverance and tolerance and acceptance of my inferiority to them on so many counts I secretly admit. But that is exactly what I want in this toil. I want them to be smarter than me, stronger than me, braver than me. I am a mother, that means I will observe them, stand by them and believe them and stand up for them no matter what. This is Motherdom.

I see a whole bunch of people loving the fuck out of our children. We are parents, you and I, conforming, reforming, reliving, just living. Someday the little ones aren’t so little anymore and perhaps then our modeling comes to mean for something. I pray with all our efforts, we can be a little less pessimistic and a little more hopeful the world is safer, the world is kinder, the world is just. And our children, our angels, our little guys, our little shits, our little Bubs can be free to be the perfect humans that they are.