mother’s love

Biopsy-Day Timeline Journal Entry

10:00 AM

I’ve avoided writing about Boop and what’s on her agenda this morning, instead scouring the internet for Gluggle Jugs to order and going on Christmas ornament hunts for everyone’s Thanksgiving boxes, but now, I’m going to bite the biopsy, as it were and talk about the Big Scary Bubble on the CT scan that floats in our collective peripheral vision.

It’s been a strange experience – and we aren’t done yet— though I pray we’re close to shutting the door on this stage 4 scare. I feel like it’s a Winnie-the-Pooh, “I’m just a little black rain cloud” scenario for us, threatening to ruin the honey sweetness of our lives,

And today, that threat needs tending to. Today, one of Caitlin’s most-trusted colleagues will go in and snag some samples to send to pathology. So, Winnie-the-Pooh and his fuzzy, destructive paw can go fuck himself.

…

11:34 AM

Caitlin just received word that the IR specialist, was able to pierce the tumor and withdraw a good sample to send up for rapid analysis in Miami’s on-site pathology lab. She says it’s a solid mass – which means the blip on the radar may be a legitimate threat — but there’s always a chance it’s benign. I pray the biopsy needle punctures this little black raincloud, removes its teeth and claws.

(About this ridiculous Pooh metaphor: You know how horror films use the most innocent, tinkling nursery rhymes and bright, colorful party scenes in blurry slo-mo just before introducing the killer? That’s the scene I keep imagining. I want the calliope music to stop. The hovering raincloud with ill-intent to vanish. For us to return to our enchanted place.)

…

2:17 PM

Results have come back with no malignant cells detected. A small victory, as the rapid results can give us an idea of what we’re dealing with, but far from an official answer. Still, there’s a possibility that the sample wasn’t actual tumor tissue, but lung tissue surrounding it. So, they collected seven more samples before waking Boop up to send to an off-site lab for official results. That’ll take five to ten days. So, the waiting game continues…

But we feel cautiously optimistic. Boop herself says she doesn’t want to think she’s in the clear yet — only to be crushed in another week — and I totally get it. So we wait on the experts to tell us the results.

Because, as Pooh so cleverly says:

“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” (A.A. Milne)

So we wait and we pray to God, the biggest expert of all, for “Un-Thingish” results from this Thing occupying our hearts and minds. And we would very much appreciate any and all of you who feel so led to please pray for the same.

PS: Pooh never means any harm and I believe this blip doesn’t, as well. That’s what I have to believe.

July 11, 2026 2

Terrifying Atypical Images on my Baby Girl’s CT Scan

I don’t know if I’m reacting the way a typical mother should. I don’t know what the “typical mother” should react like, feel like, process like. I’m not paralyzed in place. I’m not gnashing my teeth, nor wailing like a banshee. I’m not ready to rip heads off strangers, or the roses in my back yard… or God.

I mean, that would be pretty typical, right? Blasphemous, yes, but typical — to be angry at God, right? And everyone else out there walking around perfectly healthy in His perfect image?

Instead, I’m still going through the motions of my normal life… considering all the things I need to do for the day, the places and practices where the boys need to be, what I should make for dinner… even proceeding with this two-week trip to the UK. Surely that one is blasphemy, right? That’s definitely not how I should be acting is it? That’s not typical…

But then, what is typical anyway?

Because my daughter surely isn’t the typical patient for this disease. This clear cell renal carcinoma that appears to have spread to her liver. As in Stage 4.

That diagnosis is typical of an older person… and a male. Bethany is neither old nor a man. She is a thirty-five-years-young mother of three, who was 33 when she first learned she had a tumor on her right kidney. Thirty-three when she had her partial nephrectomy. If they’d taken her whole kidney, would it have made a difference? Is that typically what’s done?

No, none of this feels typical. So maybe my reactions don’t need to be either?

Besides, we still don’t know for sure that’s what we’re dealing with. Although our family’s margin for error is much slimmer than for most. A typical patient’s family would only know that an MRI has been recommended to supply additional detailed imaging at this stage. (This stage. The irony of that phrase is not lost on me.) But we have our own staff of surgical oncologists as kith and kin.

So while a typical patient’s family would have only been notified of the suspicious lesions on the CT scan, our patient’s surgical oncologist sister immediately asks for a cd of the scan, watches it remotely, knows what she sees, shows the images to her most-trusted radiologist and fellow oncology colleagues, along with every other physician friend she trusts and loves from all over the United States, (because it’s her sister, after all, and she really, really wants to have been wrong), and they all agree the lesions are characteristic of metastasis from renal cell… so much so that the sister-surgical-oncologist immediately has her sister’s treatment moved to the University of Miami where she practices and where her surg/onc partner is installed as caregiver, who then immediately orders a chest CT to make sure there are no additional mets in the lungs, along with a referral to an interventional radiologist for an immediate biopsy, as well as a timeline for immunotherapy and eventual (hopeful) liver resection.

No, a typical patient’s family doesn’t have all these experts and referrals and scans and biopsies and treatments fast-tracked to near hyper-speed. Most patients don’t have that privilege.

I understand how privileged we are. I am grateful. So grateful.

But I’m also here to say it doesn’t feel like privilege. It feels like awfully bad fortune. My daughter faces a terrifying fight. And while the storm howls all around us, I’m doing my best to focus on the tasks at hand. The rehearsals and practices, the dinners and laundry, flights and itineraries. Doing my best to move forward.

Because there is a slight, oh-so-slight chance, that the spots are perfusion abnormalities. That the contrast pooled. Or that they are solid, but not malignant: hepatic adenoma, hemangioma, or follicular nodular hyperplasia… all benign.

And even though 10 out of 10 experts believe that’s most likely not the case, we are praying for and believing in a miracle.

Most patients and their mothers would do the same. At least on that, I’m pretty certain we’re typical.

Miracles aren’t typical. That’s the nature of miracles. If they were, they wouldn’t be miracles. They would be ordinary occurences. As in, typical. But my daughter, her diagnosis, the whole situation, isn’t typical.

July 10, 2026 0

Making Spirits Bright

The house, cozy at dawn, and me in my bathrobe and soft Santa socks, Christmas lights glowing, playlist carols going… sipping my coffee and sorting my thoughts,

How lucky am I, I think — no, I know. How blessed to be snuggled beneath a warm velvet throw in the crook of a sectional with my laptop and nowhere to go while watching the sky shift to silver at dawn.

How simple, how sumptuous — an extravagance, bar none –that not everyone has. To have a sanguine soul in a world that exsanguinates souls. My gratitude is great. My cup overflows.

My sons are nestled all snug in their beds and my girls grown and glowing in orbits they threaded and hung on their own, weaving constellations that tell their tales, cast shimmering trails of goodness and grace.

While the boys, on the cusp of their own greatness, silver their way toward their own dawns, stars blooming bright on their baby cheeks and burgeoning lives, and the sky’s (no the universe) is their limit too, destinies unspooling just like their sisters’,, but entirely their own.

I celebrate all their stories, all their tangled strands of light unwound from my body, ever unwinding and widening, bright and brighter still, stringing their gifts like drops of Jupiter, like sun-wrangled, star-spangled miracle-bringers of goodwill and good trouble in this dark world.

There is no greater joy, no greater comfort for a mother’s heart than to see the babies she brought into this world out there in it, slaying and making spirits bright — hers most especially.

i carry her heart in my heart

I carry all their hearts in my heart. I’ve been doing it since they first turned lines on a stick pink, blew celebration bubbles in my blood test with their energy and light. So much energy. So much light. All four of them. They pop and sizzle like neon in my life. Beautiful and bold. They keep my heart beating with joy and pride.

And so when they suffer, I suffer. When they fizzle, things go dark in my core. In the root of the root and the bud of the bud. And so, when one of them was diagnosed with cancer, it took my breath away, I couldn’t speak, could barely function. Just clutched her tight inside my chest and searched for ways to navigate this new dark. Just fumbling through it all with no words.

I wanted to write about it. It’s how I process and find ways to proceed. But I couldn’t. There in my heart in the darkness, the letters I needed to construct words to make sense of it all were too slippery with tears and fears. When I tried to latch onto them, they disintegrated into mush.

I felt her fear and I felt my own. I felt her bravery struggling inside my own quaking soul. I felt her intense energy, hobbled and hidden, while pain pulsed in its place. And I was helpless in the midst of it all.

It’s been a month now, and she’s doing better and gaining her strength and my words are slowly sprouting, letter by letter, out of the storm drain where they collected during it all. But it’s taking me far longer to assemble them. It’s like that old game of pick-up-sticks (similar to jenga) – pluck out one to use without dislodging another, otherwise everything I want to say will crumble into yet another useless pile.

But I’ve managed to scrounge up enough to tell a cryptic version of what it was like and how she’s doing now – and she’s doing so very, very well. Her cancer was excised, the margins all clear. And while she’s got scores of seasonal scans headed her way this first year, her prognosis is solid – better than solid, it’s as bright as her neon spirit.

And I still can’t explain what that bright light returning does inside a mother’s heart. I wish I could. I can only say there’s no pain like heartache. And no heartache like a child’s ache. And no better feeling than when it all goes right, and your baby’s back to shining bright – her neon smile shining like a night in Nashville, spunky and spirited as ever.

Thank heavens for miracles and thank heavens for these four beautiful, brilliant, beating chambers of my heart.

November 3, 2024 0

When Our Hearts are in Deep… and At Risk

I’m a teacher. I pour my heart into my students. Every Day. From first bell to last, I show them love. I grant them access to my heart and mind and do my best to access theirs. It’s my calling and my job. And I love it.

There’s a movie I used to love called Freedom Writers. It’s the story of a teacher and her students — students society has shunned. Problem students. Rebellious students. Students most likely to be given up on. But this teacher doesn’t. She’s determined to help them see their potential, to find their voice, to show them the power of using it to better themselves and the world around them. What’s not to love, right? It’s what I try to do with my students. It is my number one goal.

So I was telling this fellow teacher how much I love this movie, and she floored me by saying she hated it. Really? She’s a literature and writing teacher too — and her personal story isn’t too far removed from the students’ in the film. She grew up rough, she spent her fair time in alternative schools. She didn’t trust herself, her abilities, or her voice. She was a rebel who found a cause in teaching. She dedicated her life to helping kids find themselves and their voice.

So I wondered, really wondered, why this teacher friend of mine hated this movie so much.

“Because that teacher gave too much of herself,” she said. “She destroyed her marriage, her mental health, her life outside of teaching. She gave TOO much.”

Dang.

My friend wasn’t lying.

And that made me think about our current situation — teaching in a pandemic. Giving and giving and giving to fit our students’ needs. Because need us, they do. They need to be in school. They need the socialization and they need the quality of an in-person classroom. We saw – and are still seeing – the fallout from not having classes and classmates in person the last year and a half.

And we teachers need to be in school, too. Their faces, their physical presence keeps the fire lit inside us. Its a symbiotic relationship. Physical connections fuel educational connections.

But what does that mean for us as teachers? For the teachers who care passionately and want to give our students our very best so they may have the very best education?

It means we risk destroying ourselves in the process. These days, our hearts are at risk. Literally and figuratively. But more on that in a minute…

While we teachers work, our own children attend school. Many of them are too young to be vaccinated. Still, we send them to school because we believe in the power of in-person education, despite the risks. Right now, the benefits outweigh the risks, so I believe they are where they need to be. But they are not as safe as they could be. The risks could be reduced for them, even without the ability to be vaccinated yet. Masks can help reduce their risk.

But in most places, there are no school mask mandates. And without mask mandates — or at least the autonomony in our classrooms to require them — the virus will spread like wildfire. The Delta variant is hitting kids as fast as adults. It is as contagious as measles.

Wearing a mask does less to help the person wearing it than it does to those around them. So when my children wear masks and no one else does, their masks do little for them. And if I, a vaccinated teacher who poses little to no risk to others, wear one, it does very little to help my students. But if we all wear masks, it does innumerable good. And if we all wear masks, it does zero harm.

Because I’m not saying put a needle in your arm and subject yourself to “poison” or “policing,” or whatever notions you firmly believe in. That’s your right. But I am saying put on a mask to help protect MY CHILDREN. And my immunocompromised friends. And my medical provider friends and family who are exhausting themselves – giving WAY TOO MUCH OF THEMSELVES – for people who don’t believe the virus is a big deal.

And speaking of giving too much of yourself. Let me get back to how we are all — every last one of us — putting our hearts literally at risk. Let me tell you about my baby sister.

She’s 50 years old and she contracted a light case of covid last year. Sniffles, sore throat, fever, body aches, loss of taste and smell. She had zero comorbidities and was presumably fine afterward, but six months later she discovered the long-term effects. The virus had desiccated her heart. Her previously healthy, Peleton-bike-riding, yoga-loving heart.

She thought she’d developed exercise-induced asthma. She began coughing with exertion. Having trouble breathing during exercise. Things went from bad to worse. She nearly collapsed climbing a flight of stairs.

An x-ray revealed major issues. A cardiologist was consulted. The diagnosis: myocarditis due to Covid. A heart function of 12%. She’s been on medication and a life vest for two months and showing little improvement. So in the next week, she’ll go into the OR for a defibrillator/pacemaker combo and then again later for a valve replacement. If these measures don’t work, she’ll be put on a heart transplant list.

My previously healthy, vibrant, mask-wearing baby sister, 50 years old.

And the same thing is now happening to 20-40 somethings at high, high rates. They are coding in ERs every night. They are filling up hospital floors and ICUs faster than they were last January. And the morgues are getting there. And the cardiologists, they’re busier than they’ve ever been.

Can we ALL please just wear our masks?

And I know while I’m writing this that I won’t change anybody’s minds. That those who hate masks and rage against vaccines won’t read what I write. Or if they do, it’ll be to lash out at me. Or troll me. Or laugh behind my back. I know that. I’m not writing it for them.

I’m writing to the people who will read my words because they believe, because their hearts are in this and they know we’re in deep. They believe if we don’t do something, the outcomes will be tragic. They believe in the power of prevention. They believe in protecting our loved ones, keeping our kids in school, and our economy afloat.

I’m begging friends like these to please pick up their masks and pick up their phones and to use their voices and help change the world.

Help us keep from sacrificing way too much: our children, our medical professionals, and our economy. Please.

(And if you have similar personal stories or concerns and want to reach out, please feel free to send me an email at hhester05@gmail.com.)

August 14, 2021 1

Where Did I Go?

Where did the mama go who laughed and sang and read stories and played with her children?

Where did the mama go who had patience and a smile and the ability to let all the demands of the world melt away and focus only on her precious pint-size people?

Where did the mama go who could create one-of-a-kind birthday parties and scavenger hunts and toilet-paper-cardboard-exoskeletons-with-pipe-cleaner-antennas?

Where did the mama go who volunteered as room mom and decorated cupcakes like coral reefs and had seventeen girls sleepover in the living room in a snowstorm?

Somewhere along the way, she got more than a little bit lost. She’s a quarter century older than she was with her girls. And her patience and reserves aren’t what they used to be.

She’s vanished, and I really need to find her again. I miss her.

Not only do I miss her readiness to drop it all and be present in the moment… I miss the fact that there aren’t so many moments left for her to squander. And squandering precious moments is one of my biggest worries. I have no time to waste. There’s so much that has to be done…

… between parenting and teaching and grading and gifted cert classes and football and laundry and trying to find time to write because it’s the only bit of something I actually do for myself…. it leaves very little time for fun and games. And I don’t like that about myself. I’m way too serious these days.

The Joker would not approve. And I don’t think my boys do either.

But all the things are pulling at all my moments. And the only common denominator besides parenting between when my girls were little and now my boys are little is the laundry. Everything else didn’t exist.

And neither did the Me who is Mama now.

I am the new version. And new versions aren’t always what people want. It’s not what I want.

Take the new and improved Butterfingers candy bar. Nobody wants them. Everybody loves the classic. Supposedly there’ll be more cocoa and milk and no more hydrogenated oils. It’s all about quality. But nobody is happy about it.

My new and not-so-improved motherhood — nobody wants t it either. There’s definitely more worry lines and deadlines and no more happy-go-lucky moods. It’s all about quantity. And nobody is happy about it.

I scramble to make everything fit. I cram and pack the moments full. Too full. Till everything bursts from the pressure. Me. The boys. Mike. All of us.

How can I fix this? How can I do better? Explode less, love more? Dear Lord, I wish I knew. I’m at a loss. I’m losing daily.

With the girls, I was a stay-at-home mama with time on my side. Neither is true now. What is still true is I love my kids — grown and growing — with all my heart, and I love being a mom, and I want to be a good one.

So how can I pack more into each moment without packing more into each moment? I’ve got to figure it out. How to do what I’ve been doing without doing what I’ve been doing. It is a paradox so simple and so hard. And I don’t have the answers.

Motherhood is my most important thing. Right now and always. Especially right now. The boys have hit a tough age. Somebody said the other day they love the five-year-old boy year, and I almost choked on my incredulity.

This Five-Year-Old Boy Year has been flipping HARD. A lot of it has to do with how there’s TWO of them and all. And there’s kindergarten. And homework. And they’re playing flag football. On weeknights. So they’re getting to bed late. Plus, they’re growing like gangbusters and burning through all their fuel and they’re HANGRY as H-E-double-hockey-sticks.

Have mercy! — which is what I need.

And what they need. And I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but they deserve it. So I’m going to find the solution to the paradox. I’m going to pack more moments full of my boys’ big brown eyes and wide open smiles and kind, generous hearts. Even if it means squandering the moments of all the other things.

Because motherhood demands sacrifice. And motherhood is my most important thing. Right now and always.

Nothing is more important than my children’s emotional and physical well-being. All four of them.

November 2, 2019 0

Depression Doesn’t Care: Success & Suicide, One Year Later

One year ago this week, there were two prominent suicides in the headlines – prominent because the names attached to them were celebrities. The word prominent means important, so the phrase is problematic to me. Because, it’s their lives that were truly important. Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain — and all the other lives that were lost this year, this lifetime to suicide —they have all been truly important. And as a society, we have failed them all.

I have never had a Kate Spade bag – indeed, I’ve never spent more than several dozen dollars on my purses. I’m a schoolteacher. I can’t afford that kind of luxury. I’ve been in one of her shops – an outlet shop at that – precisely one time. I really didn’t know that much about her… just about her bags. (Even in an outlet, those bags were way out of my league.)

Anthony Bourdain, on the other hand… I knew him well. Well enough to call him Tony… when I saw him… on TV. Which means, I guess I really didn’t know him at all, despite being a devoted follower. I adored his irreverence, his passion for the “F” word, his bawdy, unshaven charisma. He made me laugh; he made me want to try bone marrow (I will. It will still happen.); and he never made me feel out of his league.

Both these celebrities left young daughters behind. And that fact hit me really hard. Because while they are not as young as the Spade and Bourdain girls, I too have daughters And I love them so incredibly much. So much so that I would face demons and slay dragons if I had to in order to protect them.

But Spade and Bourdain faced dragons they couldn’t slay. They could no longer face their demons. And that tells me the darkness they felt was way beyond anything I could ever possibly comprehend. And that terrifies me.

Because one of my beautiful daughters struggles with demons of her own.

She struggles with depression. She struggles valiantly. She struggles openly. Nevertheless, she struggles. And despite the national and international dialogue that has recently opened with regard to mental health, a stigma still exists. And so she struggles with stigma, too.

My oldest daughter is a surgical resident in one of the most competitive, prestigious surgery programs in the nation. She has just finished interviewing for a fellowship in the most prestigious, competitive programs in the nation. Indeed in the world.

She is beautiful. She is bold. She is successful.

She is smart. She is kind. She is important.

And despite all of these things, she struggles… with feelings of inadequacy, of worthlessness, of hopelessness. She feels incapable and unlovable in this harsh, often unforgiving world. Not all the time. But often. And all alone.

And even though I her see brilliance and worth – even though I know how far she is from inadequate and hopeless and incapable and unlovable, I can’t help her see it. Because when she is inside that darkness, when those demons are commanding her mind, she sees nothing else. And that terrifies me.

Being a surgical resident can be isolating and debilitating. These young doctors work themselves to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. The schedules, the expectations, the demands that are put upon them are unforgiving

And the stakes are so high. Life and death rest in their hands – literally. Surgery can be debilitating for both patient and surgeon. It can ruin lives and it can end lives — on both sides of the scalpel.

Surgical residents have one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. Competition within the field isolates individuals. Everyone is jostling for accolades, for fellowships, for attending acknowledgements, and for attending positions.

In no other place in her life has my girl ever felt so very disconnected.

And what makes her situation even more complex is the relationship she has with her occupation. Love-Hate would be an understatement. She loves her job. She feels tremendous pride in her program and her abilities. The operating room is her wheelhouse and her respite. She is cloistered there. Time stops there. Her destiny unfolds there. She feels no pain; only passion. She feels one with her mind and her body and soul. Her hands are trained; her skills are seamless; her mind is taut.

But when she steps away from the cocoon of that OR, all the demons are back at her door. Howling.

It’s comparable to an unhealthy, abusive relationship. It builds her up. It knocks her down. The highs are super high. The lows… indescribably low. And the constant push-pull of it all wreaks havoc on her mental health.

As a mother, this breaks my heart and causes me endless worry.

I know she struggles. But thankfully, her program knows it too. She has not kept it secret. She advocates for herself and for others who may be feeling the same.

She helps lead a wellness committee for fellow residents, working to promote healthy scheduling and healthy dialogue between administration and her peers.

She tutors adult GED students every Tuesday night at a local library, connecting with people outside the research lab and operating room, spreading love and hope even as she so often feels neither.

She is a member of a book club, connecting with colleagues both socially and cognitively on issues more abstract than tissue and tumor.

Most importantly, she has seen a counselor – a mental health provider who has given her tools and techniques to fight the good fight.

Yes, my daughter works hard to stave off the demons, to grapple the dragon, to defeat the disease. As a mother, I would fight it all for her if I could. But I cannot. It is all hers to slay.

And my daughter is capable. I know that. She is kind and loving and genuine-hearted. She is capable and strong and talented and tender.

I just pray every day that she sees it too. That she can see through the darkness.

Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain could not.

People with everything can find themselves feeling depleted and defeated. Suicide knows no demographic. It knows no bounds.

Talk to your loved ones. Acknowledge your loved ones. Make sure they know you see them and you get them. Love on your loved ones. And then make sure they get the help that they need.

June 10, 2019 0

Tom Brady and Her Baby GOATs

I’m sitting on a couch in my basement watching my boys play. One almost-five-year-old son scrambles across the pool table, flinging balls into pockets with his bare hands and making crashing noises. His twin brother croons “Havana na-na-na” into a karaoke mic while pounding a keyboard and perfecting his KidzBop choreography.

Disney’s Ferdinand is playing on the big screen in the background.

I remember the picture book from my childhood, but this is the first time I’ve seen the movie. Ferdinand — a calf seemingly destined for bullfighting. His dad is a fighter. His peers, his friends, even his enemies — all fighters.

But Ferdinand? He doesn’t have a smidgeon of fight in him. Nope, he loves flowers and dancing and all things NOT bullfighting.

I can’t help but think of our twin boys. They were born into football. Their dad played and now coaches football. Their mom loves football. They are the genetic product of a football family. Football pretty much drives our lives.

One son wants to grow up and be a football player. He loves rough and tumble and tackle and touchdown.

And one son wants to grow up and be a one-man boy band. He loves singing and dancing and all things NOT football.

They are exact opposites, my twin boys, despite being sprinkled with the same genetic spices and baked up in the same uterus at the exact same time.

And this ain’t my first rodeo… or bullfight or stage production, or whatever metaphor we’re working with here. I have adult daughters. And they are, likewise, complete opposites.

One grew up to be a surgeon, and one grew up to be a mama. The surgeon, she wanted to be an astronaut at five years old. And the mama, well she wanted to be a mama.

So Lord knows childhood dreams can change at the drop of a hat — or helmet or mic or whatever. Or dreams can remain the same.

Me? I wanted to be a mystery writer as a kid. I wanted to be the next Agatha Christie. I wanted people to die with the scent of almonds on their breath and secrets clutched within their cold fists and storied bloodlines.

Instead, I grew up to be an English teacher and a blogger, the scent of peanut butter on my breath, and while nobody’s died yet, I do clutch a red pen in my cold fist and bleed all over student story lines.

So yes, things could change. Or they could remain the same.

But whichever direction my boys and their dreams go, I will be there to support them. I will be there to believe in them. And to tell them they can be and do whatever they believe they can be and do. Just like I did with my girls.

And I will hang out in their corners encouraging, supporting, and cheering them on. Just like I did — and still do — my girls.

I like to believe I’m a lot like Lupe, the calming goat in Ferdinand:the awkward, rough-around-the-edges, bearded, female life coach of the title character.

I’m definitely in my kids’ corners like Lupe was in Ferdinand’s corner. They’re my kids after all… and technically speaking, kids are baby goats. (Heck, one of my kids even has a beard. At. Five. Years. Old.)

And since Lupe’s my spirit animal… right down to my lack of orthodontia and fondness for bed-bug rhymes at tuck-in (although I don’t have a beard, thank God), I guess that makes me a goat.

But since I’m the age where most mothers have already retired to an empty nest, I guess that makes me not just ANY goat, but THE GOAT.

I am the Tom Brady of motherhood.

I even have my own little personal deflate-gate — lumpy rucksacks that breastfed four babies for a grand total of four years and now appear the worse for wear…

February 26, 2019 0

Struggling Is Not Failing: New Life and the Worries Born With It

I love seeing new things – things I’ve never seen before.

A few years back, I saw my first fox. She was making her way across the neighborhood green space under cover of darkness, but the streetlights revealed her unmistakable fiery fur and trotting stride. She was beautiful.

I was in awe.

And then yesterday, I saw my first great-nephew. He was lying sweetly in a nest of swaddling blankets, tiny paper finger and toenails topping long, fragile fingers and long, slender feet. He is beautiful.

And I am in awe.

He came early. Seven weeks early. And his mama suffered. She was put on hospital bed rest and then filled with the fumes of a hazy, magnesium hell to battle the preeclampsia ravaging her body.

It was not fun. Nor was it effective. He “broke” her belly (as my sons say) via C-section the very next day. At 33 weeks.

But he is 33 weeks of pure perfection. Surprisingly alert, his eyes dance inside a noggin tiny enough to fit in a teacup, his elfin features glow beneath a widow’s peak of dark, twiggy hair.

This newborn child is beautiful. And so is his newborn mother.

She is pure perfection. Her eyes smile through the pain of incision, through the fog of postpartum, her freckled features deceptively serene beneath her halo of glossy, dark hair.

Because she is the perfect newborn mother — full of self-doubt, full of concern, full of fear.

She worries about milk supply and let down. She worries about milestones to be met and schedules to be set. She worries about bonding time and spending time with her twiggy little nestling when she’s discharged and he’s left behind in the NICU.

She worries about nurturing him and guiding him and loving him well enough to one day set him loose in this big, scary world with all the tools and confidence he needs to flourish.

She has so many worries. But those worries make her the perfect mother. Because that’s what good mothers do. They worry. And I would worry if she weren’t.

Really good mothers strive to always do the right things — the best things — for their little ones, no matter how big they get. No matter how old.

But good mothers never do ALL the right things; they never do ALL the best things. Because mothers – even the really good ones like my niece – they’re only human. So they struggle.

But just because you are struggling doesn’t mean you are failing.

I saw that on a meme just yesterday and it spoke volumes to me as a mother, as a wife, as a writer, as a teacher.

Because just like my niece, I am struggling.

Because another new thing I saw this week was a brand new classroom — in a brand new school system. And it has left me full of self-doubt and fear and concern. I am full of worries.

I worry about school supplies and letting people down. I worry about the schedule to be set and the milestones to be met. I worry about bonding time with my students and spending time with my twins.

I worry about nurturing them and guiding them and loving them all well enough to one day let them loose in this big, scary world with all the tools and confidence they need to flourish.

I want to do all the right things, all the best things. And I know I won’t do all the right things all the time. I won’t always do the best things. I have so many worries. But hopefully those worries make me a good teacher.

I struggled a lot last week. My niece struggled a lot last week. But we both have to remember that struggling doesn’t mean we are failing. Humans struggle — we’ve been doing it since the Garden of Eden. We trip. We fall. We get back up again. We persevere. We triumph. We excel.

It’s all about the perseverance. And Grace.

Because thanks to the grace of God, if our intentions are pure, and our efforts are hard, and our passions are strong, we will not fail. Struggle, yes. Fail, no. We can do this hard thing.

So Lauren, you and me — and all the mothers and teachers and humans out there — we can all do this hard thing. By the grace of God.

I am in awe.

August 5, 2018 0

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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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