Know My Pain

May 17, 2020: A letter to Blake

When I got pregnant with Fiadh I lost my damn mind about it. I didn't want to be pregnant again. I had just started to find out who I was apart from a mother, and what if I slid back to the dark place that I was in right after you were born? What if I couldn't find my way forward again?
And then when I was five months pregnant with Fiadh, we were at the beginning of a global pandemic. The world locked itself down.
And it started this reassessment inside of me. Of what I thought was important in life. In what I really wanted. In who I really wanted to be.
I have said it a million times, but finding out how to raise children is largely going through your life and discarding ideologies that have been shoved in your face for 30 years and deciding that you don't want to pass that on to the next generation. It's a lot of self-reflection. A lot of self-healing.
Seven months into pregnancy with Fiadh I was sitting on the couch, crocheting the most ridiculous blanket, when I realized that I had never had anything to worry about. Being a mother is what helped me find myself in the first place. Being a mother would always help me find my way back to who I'm meant to be.

I hate cliches. I hate them. I hope that I say that for every year of your life so that you know without a doubt that I. Hate. Cliches. And why do I hate them? Because they're true.

So you will undoubtedly hear in your life that being a mother is the greatest gift that a woman has ever given herself.
And it's true. But here's the thing. When you hear that, you think, wow, I'm the greatest gift my mom ever gave herself. And it's not that THATS not true, but it's not the whole story.
The greatest gift of motherhood that I gave myself, was me.