#mje

of everything.

it is both the most joyful thing i’ve ever encountered and it is also lonely. watching the world change around me is strange and a multifaceted experience. i am on high alert while i drive for others who are distracted while they drive. people come up to us all the time to look at and say hi to my daughter - their eyes and voices softening as they approach. i get angry when i see influencers using their children as props or failing to protect their privacy and childhood. i long for connection with other women for myself and for my daughter, so that she (we) can witness women in communion with one another. i miss friendship. i miss who i was before motherhood, but i don’t wish to be her anymore - i love who i am more now. i could stare into my daughter’s eyes for hours (and sometimes do) as she watches the world around her. seeing my husband hold his daughter cracks my heart open more and more each time it happens. i feel more connected to my own mother since becoming one.

mothers and children feel mostly forgotten. or maybe taken for granted. i wish i knew this for the mothers i knew before becoming a mother myself. i feel angry for not checking in on them more. i want to apologize to all of them, to cry for the loneliness they maybe felt, to hear how they feel in their bodies after they’ve been split open, to look them in the eye and do my best to really see them.