All posts tagged: featured

The First Year

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I want to be the kind of person my son admires. Lately, this has become even clearer to me than ever before. I want to carry myself in all areas of my life with integrity, with positivity, and with love. I want the road to my future successes, whether they be personal or professional, to be littered with the remains of my angst, my anger, my unkindnesses, my disbelief, my negativity, and my sarcasm, not the people I climbed over to get wherever I’m going. The year of my 30th birthday, 2012, was the hardest in my life. It was a year of loss, my twin miscarriage, my beloved maternal grandmother, and in many ways, the dream of the woman I wanted to become. Of course, of those experiences was born a new woman with new dreams. I became more responsible, more confident, and more discerning. In many other ways, though, I let fear and disappointment stew and seep their toxins slowly but surely into the life I was rebuilding. In this way, I didn’t …

Nobody, but Nobody

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Now if you listen closely I’ll tell you what I know Storm clouds are gathering The wind is gonna blow The race of man is suffering And I can hear the moan, ‘Cause nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone. — Maya Angelou, “Alone” 07.26.2007 I wrote my way out of my childhood, discovering who I was in the spaces between words. There were times in my life that defied my ability to write about them, and for those, I found solace in the words of others. 2007 was one of those times. It was the year that my first marriage quietly came to its final, legal end, taking with it the relationship I’d carefully erected my whole life around. It was also the year that I met the man who made that life implode. That man… God, falling in love with that man was the most fun I’ve ever known in my life. It was a beautiful, exquisite torture. And, on July 26, 2007, I was preparing to leave him. At one …

The Permission to Hope

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Recently, a friend of mine wrote me to ask a simple question with a not so simple answer. How did you get through the first trimester of your pregnancy? What she meant, of course, is how did I avoid losing my mind from fear and anxiety after the loss of my twin pregnancy. I told her the truth: I wasn’t calm. I had nightmares almost every night for the first eight weeks. I spent my days battling a sense of hopelessness. I would wake and dread walking into the bathroom. I just knew that today would be the day I’d see that swipe of red, that spot, the sign that meant that this dream, too, would come crashing down around me. Being pregnant with a “rainbow baby” is an altogether different experience from simply being pregnant. My friend was struggling with this, as did I. So much of my anxiety was spent grieving the pregnancy before and the innocence I’d lost because of it. No longer did I simply expect things to go right. No …

Mama Life: 13 Weeks

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Thirteen weeks. Simultaneously, these weeks have crept along and passed at the speed of light. Living on Planet Mom, I guess that makes sense? The BEST part, of course, is watching Elliott learn about the world and himself. Lately, he’s done a lot of learning. Family has visited, developmental leaps have happened, and daddy and mama have slowly figured out some semblance of a new normal. That new normal, of course, involves a lot of chaos, a lot of getting into a routine and then catching the almost immediate curve balls that fly our way. These 13 weeks have been filled with more laughter, joy, insecurity, fear, and love than I experienced in all of the 33 years prior to them. I’ve become the mom I wanted to be and also the mom I said I wouldn’t be. I’ve made choices I judged others for in my pre-mom life, spoken words in anger and exhaustion in a manner I wish didn’t exist within me, ate a shocking amount of trashy food in the interest of …

Dear Elliott

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I think this is a love letter. Sigh… Someday you’ll understand how much your mama hates being cliche… How many mamas have written these cheesy letters? But, then, that’s love, I guess. It changes everything. I should know. I’m sitting in Starbucks. I’ve slipped away to work, to write articles about adwords… a profile of a fabulous woman entrepreneur… and a short story about a magic iPhone… All things I’ve said I’ll do. I tend to over-commit. And, yet. I’m here thinking of you. Thoughts of the way you smile or your sweet gurgle sounds are bouncing around my head, climbing stair steps on the words of the conversation at the next table. I can’t remember when I’ve been this consumed by someone. Wait, yes, of course I can. Your dad. Whatever that something is that he has… it’s hereditary. You both take my breath away. As the days turn into weeks and now months, I find myself rehearsing the memories I want never to forget. I turn them over and over in my mind, …