Belated

It’s another crazy week around here (am I sounding like a broken record yet?). I am getting ready for the shower and I have projects coming out the ear. Everything will slow down next week and hopefully I’ll be a better blogger. Hopefully.

I am just dropping in to say a quick hello and to wish all of my mommy friends a (belated) Happy Mother’s Day.

There is nothing quite like motherhood. I didn’t really understand life- the fragility, imperfection, and miraculousness of it all- until I became a mother. I used to think that I knew everything. Then Harper was born and I realized that I didn’t know anything.  

I also realized that I’d been way too harsh on both of my moms. It’s always easy to judge a situation from the outside, isn’t it? It’s easy to feel like your mom failed you in about a million ways before you have a child of your own. Then you have a little Harper girl and you start to understand that your mother was pretty awesome for taking on the most challenging/heartbreaking/awesome/unappreciated job in the world.

I often think about motherhood and about the mothers in my life. In fact, if I write a book (which many of you are telling me to do), it will most likely be about my experiences with both sides of motherhood.

I have two moms and I can honestly say that I appreciate both of them and the things that they have done for me. Both of my mothers did what they thought best for me. Their decisions regarding me have made for a wonderful life. I am who I am because of the combined choices of my mothers. 

Despite the fact that Christianne walked out of my life over two decades ago and I’ve only seen her a handful of times since, she is a huge presence in my life. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her. For a long time, I was so angry with her (there are days/weeks/months when I still am), but now I’m starting to understand that she did for me what many mothers can’t/won't (even though they should). She was brave enough to see that she couldn’t give me what I needed and she was strong enough to give me more by giving me up. In a way, she was selfish and selfless at the same time and I think that, at this point, I can do nothing but be thankful for that.

I love Christianne. I don’t even know her but I love her and that fact doesn’t diminish the impact that Paulette has had on my life. It doesn’t make her any less of a mom to me. It doesn’t mean I don’t love her, too.

You can have two moms and you can love them both and that’s okay. It’s taken nearly thirty years for me to make peace with that fact.

Paulette is my mom and my best friend and even though our relationship isn’t perfect, I love her. Some people don’t understand adoption. They don’t understand loving someone else’s child. What they fail to realize is that an adopted child isn’t someone else’s child. An adopted child is your child. He/she is your child because you love them and care for them and give your whole heart to them in the same way that you would if you had grown them in your body for nine months.

Growing a person in your body for nine months is pretty awesome but caring for and loving person every day for 30 years (well, almost 30) is super awesome. 

Paulette has given me more love (and patience and forgiveness and about a million other things) than I ever deserved. I have been a broken mess for most of my life and in every moment-happy, sad, disappointing, or devastating- she has been there. Her love is the most constant thing I’ve ever known and I know that without it, I would not be here. That's a strong statement, I know, but it's true. Without Paulette I would not have survived the dark days of this life.

If you’re a mother, you are amazing and awesome and you deserve to be revered and celebrated every day of the year and not just on Mother’s Day. Still, I hope that you had a lovely holiday (I know that I did) and I hope you were pampered and spoiled and cuddled and loved all day long. And I hope that you’ll forgive me for being so late in wishing you a most happy Mother’s Day.

Much love, my friends, much love.

Thank you for your patience throughout the move and my recent inconsistency. I love you for being here and I love sharing my life/thoughts/photos/random ramblings with you.

I also love Harper (even when she insists on staying up until 11:30- see the pic below). Harper changed my life, my heart, my dreams, and basically my entire world when she made me a mother.