017/365

You know those dreams you occasionally have where you wake up and you have a hard time believing that it didn't actually happen? That it was all just a dream? Then, all day, you stagger along having these bizarre moments of déjá vu while simultaneously struggling to remember every last detail because you want to live that dream over and over? 

Mothering Mo is just like that. 

Being Marlo's mother brings with it a bit of delirium. Day-in and day-out, I walk around in a bit of a haze, having a hard time believing that this beautiful creature with the amazing hair and quick wit belongs to me. I have a hard time believing that this is the creature I get to claim as my own, the kid who makes me prouder, yet, simultaneously more frustrated than anyone in the world. 

At this particular age, every stage seems far too fleeting, far to difficult to scribe to my memory and it is one of my biggest fears that I won't remember every last minute detail of her. 

I want to remember the way her hair falls in her face and how she uses her hand to brush it aside. I want to remember how she emphasizes everything with her hands. I want to remember-- particularly for future teenage purposes-- that there is absolutely no rushing her to do anything she doesn't feel ready to do. I want to remember how she loves to write letters to her family and friends because "you do nice fings for the people you love, mama." I want to remember how genuine she is about everything, including things she isn't a fan of. I want to remember how randomly throughout the day she'll lean into me and tell me that she loves me. 

What I've learned from mothering Mo is that children are our biggest advocates, just as we are supposed to be theirs. Nobody makes me feel more beautiful or more capable than Marlo. Motherhood gave me a new perspective on myself, of my capabilities, of my strength, and of my ability to love and be loved. 

At the same time, nobody makes my weaknesses more obvious than her. She has become my greatest teacher and the person who holds me most accountable without trying. She is my mirror, the reflection of all of the baggage and insecurities I work hard to not pass onto her. She is the guiding force of our family simply by being Mo. 

When I was eight weeks pregnant, I had a dream of an olive-skinned, golden-haired, green-eyed beauty who would rock my world and everything I thought to be true about life. In the dream, her name was Marlo. 

I guess in some instances, dreams really do come true. 

Happy birthday, Marlo Mclean. I love you so much it hurts. 

to the moon but so very much further. 

xoxo, mama

016/365

Mother's Day is a celebration of a single mother who worked her ass off to provide a life for me.

Mother's Day is a celebration of my grandmothers, my aunts, my mother-in-law, my sisters through marriage, and the amazing women I call my friends who I, luckily, get to raise my children alongside.  

Mother's Day is a day to honor the women who may not be mothers by conventional means but are mothers nonetheless: women who have other women to give birth to their children, women who are trying to become mothers, adoptive mothers, aunts, grandmothers, brave women who say goodbye to their babies so that another family may take care of them, and women who lose babies or children. If you love a child like your own, I honor you on Mother's Day.

Mother's Day is a difficult day for many who no longer have their mothers around to hug and take to brunch. 

Mother's Day is a day to celebrate the single dads who step in and do the jobs of both parents.  

Mother's Day is one of the few days a year I honor the job I do as a mother and to marvel at the cool little humans my girls are turning into.

Mother's Day is the day where I take it easy on myself. Instead of the typical criticisms and constant evaluation I lament on myself, I shut my mind off and honor myself with grace. I take off my battle armor and believe that I'm doing everything right. And by right, I mean that I'm doing my best to teach them humility, respect, fairness, and kindness-- especially to themselves-- by showing myself the same courtesy. 

Mother's Day isn't about gifts or breakfast in bed or mimosas by a pool (although those are spectacular touches. ahem.)

Mother's Day isn't a day-off from motherhood because we all know that motherhood doesn't include sick or vacation days (someone else getting up at 2am with the baby doesn't hurt. ahem.) 

Mother's Day doesn't mean that your kids won't be assholes or throw tantrums or that your youngest babe won't take her full-of-shit diaper off in her crib only to experiment with finger painting for the first time.  

Mother's Day is a day to stop focusing on how hard motherhood can feel and to, instead, focus on how lucky we are to be given the opportunity to love and raise babies, to watch them blossom into people with minds of their own and paths to be traveled.

Mother's Day is a day we are reminded how fortunate we are to be their souls' safety net, to be the one whose arms make it all better, to be the one to put Hello Kitty band-aids on imaginary booboos and to kiss hurt feelings all better. 

Mother's Day is a day to, most importantly, be eternally grateful to feel the underserved yet unconditional love that our children provide.   

014/365

It's me and you, babe. Me and You. I trust you. Please, trust me. 

I have never meant any words more than the fourteen I silently and repeatedly recited to myself as I labored on the eve of your birth. 

Beyond what unfolded in that delivery room being nothing short of spectacular, my labor and your birth answered so many big questions I had about life-- the main one being how much can I handle?-- and proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that we do, in fact, possess the ability to heal our own wounds by simply facing our fears.

Before I had you, Edie, I wondered if I had enough love in my being to be a mother of two. It seemed impossible to love anyone else as much as I loved Mo. I feared failing because you're supposed to have enough love and, surely, you aren't supposed to think that you're going to be terrible at this.

I also feared facing another battle, this time with a toddler who would likely remember it and without my family. I feared resenting you because I knew how hard it was to not resent Mo for what I went through before, even though it wasn't her fault and wouldn't have been yours' either. I feared the toll that another baby would take on me mentally. I feared depression and anxiety. I feared hemorrhaging. I feared the slow recovery. I feared the unknown. I feared feeling lost again when I had worked so hard to find pieces of myself that had been left behind. 

I feared the guilt. 

I doubted myself and questioned why anyone would trust me with not just one kid, but TWO. So many more patient, more maternal, more kind, more everything women wanted babies so desperately and yet I seemed to be given one every time Joe and I stood in the ocean together. It seemed like someone-- the universe or whomever is in control of matters such as these up there-- made a horrible mistake and checked the wrong box beside my name.

*Christine Fadel: Fertile Myrtle, ill-equipped, and up for the challenge*

CHECK. 

After twelve hours of labor, one attempt to sit in a barely-filled bath tub all for you to decide that it was go-time, one hundred f-bombs, and one push later, I pulled you onto my chest as you wailed, so full of life, feeling a high I've never experienced before*. 

In that buzzing birthing room, on Wednesday, April 29th, 2016, only two things existed to me: your face and hope. 

As many women told me it would, it became clear that the love I have to give isn't a finite thing; rather, the more I love, the more love I have to give. The second I saw you, you were no longer just my leap of faith, but you were the destination of a journey ruled by a deeply scarred version of myself. You proved that there was something greater waiting for me: YOU. 

You were waiting for me.

Edie Bee, you not only trusted me to be your mom, but you taught me how to trust myself again. I love you and the light you've brought to our family so much it hurts. 

Happy birthday, baby girl. 

To the moon but so very much further. 

xoxo, mama

(And trust me, I've done the work to test this theory before I had kids. No synthetic or *cough, cough* natural high compares to the pure, unadulterated rush of oxytocin your body delivers to you with after giving birth. I swear to Gloria Steinem it was an out of body experience, one I'd pay an obscene amount of money to feel even a tiny fraction of again.) 

013/365

I remember this photo being taken.

Mo had only recently turned two, still maintaining the chubby wrists and gibberish verbal skills to prove it. Her hair had never even been cut, still slightly resembling a mullet, though neither of us cared. She still looked every bit my baby-- less the little girl I soon came to know and love. I was as madly in love with her then as I am now. 

I was only a few days removed from being rushed to a Brooklyn hospital and undergoing emergency surgery to remove my appendix, only eight months after an emergency surgery in a Manhattan hospital to remove my gallbladder. Fresh in my mind was the reality that my health had too easily been taken for granted.

My veins hadn't yet healed from the IV's bruising each of my arms and hands. I was weak and my morale was low. My skin was the faintest shade of yellow, my shoulder showcasing a bruise, caused by a quite-useless shot of morphine given by a far-too-rough nurse. I was too thin and my face was littered with acne- a direct result of the toxicity I had been living with for months, unbeknownst to me. Hidden beneath my far-too-large silk tank were four new open wounds, the portals which allowed the many machines (and the doctor operating them) to remove another one of my organs. Going under general anesthesia without having spoken to Joe or Marlo or any family for a second time was a reality still too painful to even acknowledge having gone through. 

I was spent. I felt emotionally defeated and my body, physically traumatized. I was going through the motions, as best I could, doing my damnedest to cope and maintain normalcy for Marlo and everyone around me, while somehow slowly coming to terms with how life kept feeling like an undeserved yet, repeated, ass-kicking.   

Ironically, I look like I had it somewhat together, though, that couldn't have been any further from the truth. I had been given strict orders to refrain from lifting Mo or anything over four pounds due to the sutures which had yet to properly close. Not holding my child was altogether a different kind of pain, far beyond the physical laments of surgery. Rather, it felt more like a cruel, let's-add-insult-to-injury punishing wound. I desperately ached to hold her, to comfort her, and to allow her and all of her two-year-old sweetness to soothe and comfort me. 

These photos capture me mothering, something not even surgery or a healing process (that had yet to commence) couldn't-- wouldn't-- stop me from doing. I needed to hold her and so I did.  

And that's really the underlying, intoxicating beauty of motherhood, isn't it? It remains constant no matter the circumstances. The instinct and love is always, ALWAYS, there. No matter where the road leads me or my kids, they will always, ALWAYS, be mine and I will always, ALWAYS, be theirs. Their arms will always be the place where I feel purpose and my arms will forever be their home, even years and years from when I can actually hold them.

Even though life feels less like the complete wreck it was when these photos were taken, my inexplicable love for that tiny human has remained the same. Mothering her-- though it did not come naturally to me as I embarked on it-- now feels as natural as breathing. 

And equally as vital, which often feels like such a double-edged sword-- equal parts comforting and suffocating, providing a grounding center yet disrupting all that I've ever known to be true about independence and balance.

What a wild, wild trip motherhood is... 

012/365

I've only wanted to tell my kids I'm not their bitch forty-seven times today. But we all know that I'd be lying.

So.