I’ve been scarce around here lately, but I wanted to drop in and wish you a happy mother’s day and a year filled with self-love, whether you are dreaming of motherhood, trying to become a mother or a mother already.
Self-love begins with loving your journey: the road you have already traveled, the road you are on and your ever-changing vision of the future.
Pursuing personal growth begins with bringing to light all of the “skeletons in your closet,” as people say; with acknowledging the things we’d instinctively prefer hadn’t happened, the mistakes we made along the way, the words we wish we could take back.
For me, my greatest periods of personal exploration, reflection and growth occurred during the hardest times of my life. During my parents’ divorce and its aftermath; the 2 years after the accident at Carleton; and most recently during the pandemic. During those times I said and did things that often make me want to cringe when I look back, but the truth is, I did the best that I could with what I had at the time.
When you do not have all of the resources you need to deal with the problem at hand, you are forced into self-reliance and resourcefulness to survive. Those times are trying, but they teach us a LOT about ourselves in a very short and intense burst of self-discovery.
Alfred Tennyson wrote, “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I would modify it to, to have lived and lost is better than never to have lived at all.
If I had never turned rebelliously away from “the norm” during hard times in my life—because “the norm” just wasn’t cutting it for dealing with my problems—I never would have found blogging and the friends and perspectives it has given me over time.
I never would have healed from my eating disorder and discovered a passion for alternative health and wellness.
We wouldn’t have moved home to Minnesota when California wasn’t aligned with our personal goals.
We wouldn’t have saved ambitiously and bought a house.
We wouldn’t have married young.
I wouldn’t have decided to pursue my dream of building a family over following the high-achieving woman-in-STEM template that I’d set myself up to pursue.
I wouldn’t have three kids.
I wouldn’t have dived into motherhood and allowed it to break, refine and rebuild who I am from the ground up. Motherhood has inspired me, not prevented me, to pursue a greater purpose beyond raising children. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. When I used to look into the future—even immediately after graduating college—I saw nothing but a giant foggy question mark. That scared me. Three kids deep, I’m bursting with ideas for projects and books and articles to work on, things I’m passionate about and want to share.
Today I’m grateful for my past—the struggles, the good times and everything in between—because it led me to today. Which isn’t perfect but I love the road I am on and the future I see for our family and myself.
Happy Mother’s Day!
xx Claire