“It caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting to hear that news at the ultrasound. It reminded me of the loss of my husband, with his loss came blessings."
"You are so unbelievably excited that your child is born…and in the next moment you believe you’ll have to say farewell to your wife forever. It was like being numbed."
"What I’m about to share with you, is a coveted family secret...Your child ever wake up screaming in pain of an ear infection? This is the handiest trick you will ever learn."
He would eagerly run over to take my hand when it was time to move on to a new part of the aquarium, and he soon began wrapping my arm around his neck and forcing me to pull him closer... Soon he also told me, "I love you." "I love you, too, Jason." I said.
It is there, and it creeps up like a silent killer. Maybe it is the wet underwear that you found floating in the hallway bathroom or the cat food that has been flung out on the floor like tiny marbles waiting to trip up a passerby or the loud thumping and yelling and tantruming as if we live in some sort of primal age where roaring and beating your chest are the only ways to get someone's attention.
"The kids are happy but the house is a disaster. We take time for ourselves but the house suffers and the kids aren’t happy. It’s a struggle that doesn’t seem to have an answer. The scenario may vary a little but we are all in the weeds. We are all trying to drive clutch without a manual and the start-stop of motherhood can be difficult to navigate."
"'I’m a homebody,' my son declared with confidence and surety. I blinked. First of all, where did he (then four) hear that expression? And second, how did I not know this?"
"I see you running your child to therapy when your friends are running their kids to Little League. I see you slipping out the of conversation when your friends are all chiming in about milestones and test grades."
"Something you adore so much, something you’d give your life for, it is the very thing that saps your energy, makes you feel like an utter failure, and it ends up making the gift of motherhood exhausting..."
