the right to hold you
In 2015, our family welcomed our third child to the chaos through the emotional and complex reality of adoption. Our son was almost three when he became part of our family, and I blogged about the experience for a little over a year. This section of my website contains the archives of that blog, which I called “the right to hold you.” If I wrote about adoption today, my words probably wouldn’t mirror what I wrote in 2014/15, but I’ve left them as originally authored for authenticity. Our little guy has been with us for over 6 years, and if I write about him today, it’s likely to be in the context of parenting a child with disabilities.
Fake it 'til you make it...
I’m a processor – I have a deep need to understand WHY I feel how I do, where it comes from, and what I can do to make it better. And as I struggled through the trials of being a first-time mama, I often asked myself, “Did I secretly think this was going to be easy?” But guys, the answer is no. The answer is worse. I didn’t think it would be easy, I thought I would be better at it.
Accepted, not asked.
It’s hard to prepare for something you know will be hard, but aren’t exactly sure what that hard will feel like. It’s like giving birth the first time. Or becoming a mother for the first time. Or, you know, #life, in general. You don’t even know what you don’t know yet. And yet, you do it anyway. You weigh the cost and you make a choice to embrace (or at least tolerate) the pain. Why? Because of all the beauty that follows. And when a mother cries out in the pain of childbirth, we don’t smugly look in her panic-filled eyes and say, “Well, you asked for this.”