RELATED: Lord, Please Don’t Let Me Forget
One day you will miss brushing their teeth for them because now they can do it themselves.
RELATED: “Your Son Growing Up Will Feel Like the Slowest Breakup You’ve Ever Known” Aches in Every Mother’s Heart
A Gift for Mom! 🤍
Spending hours on end on a ballfield on Mother’s Day may not sound ideal to most, but the ones who get it know that it’s about so much more than watching young kids play ball. It’s about the instant bonds you make with families who end up becoming like your own family. It’s being surrounded by people who cheer for your kid louder than you do yourself. It’s about being lucky enough to have a pack of moms who will care for your child in your absence and send you pics and videos of what you are missing when you...
I thought the experts were going to fix my child. I didn’t say that out loud. But it was there…quiet, desperate, sitting underneath every question I asked. If I just found the right strategy… If I just understood ADHD well enough… If I just listened hard enough… Maybe the meltdowns would stop. Maybe the chaos would settle. Maybe I would finally feel like I knew what I was doing. So I started asking questions. Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to interview ADHD experts (clinicians, researchers, specialists) through my podcast. And I showed up to every conversation like...
Some moments in motherhood stay with you. First steps. Preschool graduation. A first dance recital. And then there are harder times. The ones that do not make it into photo albums. The moments when the world feels too big and your child feels painfully misunderstood. When you are parenting a child with a disability, those moments tend to find you more often. This day should have felt like a win. My son had just met a goal in therapy. We walked out of his OT’s office smiling, carrying a page full of lopsided circles that had never looked more perfect...
I don’t think people truly believe me when I say I came back from the depths of hell after having my son. Birth is often portrayed as pure bliss. The moment a mother holds her baby and instantly falls in love. Life quickly returns to normal. Even in real life, new moms can look like they’ve settled into motherhood with ease. But what no one talks about is the ugly, incredibly hard side of it. Not every mom experiences postpartum depression, anxiety, or OCD. For some, it really is bliss. But for many of us, it becomes a fight for...
There is a moment nobody warns you about. Not the sleepless nights. Not the feeding schedules. Not the endless cycle of laundry and worry that comes with keeping a tiny human alive. Those parts everyone mentions. The part nobody mentions is the moment you realize your child has started becoming his own person. And you are standing there watching it happen, equal parts proud and completely unprepared. My son is two years old. And lately he has been leaving the room. Not in a concerning way. In a he has somewhere to be kind of way. He will be in...
I remember the exact moment it hit me. I was talking to a young girl, the kind everyone praises. She was polite, well spoken, respectful. The kind of girl people point to and say, “She’s so confident.” So I asked her a question I knew would reveal more than her smile ever could: “What do you do when something doesn’t feel right?” She froze. Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet, almost invisible way. She looked down, shifted her weight, then looked back up at me, searching my face like the answer might be written there. Because she...
After the traumatic birth of my daughter, I searched for others who had experienced vasa previa, but most of what I found were support groups for stillbirth. It’s easy to understand why; vasa previa is one of the most preventable causes of stillbirth, and yet most people, including most pregnant women, have never heard of it. My daughter is almost three years old, and I still carry a complicated guilt about that: why did we get to be the lucky ones? I want to share my story—not to frighten you, but because awareness is the only thing that saves lives...
For most of my life, I believed becoming a stay-at-home mom wasn’t just a choice, it was the ultimate goal. The kind of life a “good” woman was meant to want. The kind of life that meant you were doing things right. I grew up surrounded by that message. In conservative spaces, in church circles, in subtle conversations about what a “real” mother looked like. Women who stayed home were praised. Women who didn’t were quietly questioned. I learned, without ever being directly told, that a mother’s highest purpose was to center her entire world around her children and her...
I was not prepared to be a mother of teenagers. Sure, I was warned by other parents about the difficult journey I was about to embark on, but I did not expect it to be this challenging. I remember these two sweet, innocent children who wanted to be with me all the time. Now they barely give me the time of day. How did we get here? Like many parents, we long to have that child who once, a long time ago, called us Mommy and Daddy and begged us to read them another story. Where are those kids I...
Praying for My Son Send a storm to stop him; Let his friends throw him out. May he drop to the deeps, But gently, please, Stubborn though he may be. If it could only take three days, How my mother’s heart would Rejoice in praise. From the hell you allow him, Let him cry to you. Is not Nineveh and mercy Exactly what he knows He needs— A mercy on enemies He fears You will concede? Please let all the shade wither If his is an angry soul; Humble him and help him follow Where you would have his purpose...