I found this photo from about 16 years ago and it fully stopped me in my tracks. So much stands out to me as the one behind the camera and the one holding all the context and memories.
Other than obvious things like E’s tiny hand and my lack of tattoos, I recalled this was a moment of quiet following a period of hidden post partum (oh but girl all the signs were there). I was probably also enjoying actual quiet time on family vacation, something I never realized i needed until much later in life. In this moment though, I was feeling that my time as an engaged mother, not constantly in fight or flight, was finally starting. I was able to get more sleep, sunshine, and see this tiny person develop a personality, all in one week, due to help from family.
This photo documents a period that was truly the start of so many things: summer, motherhood, marriage, a career, my 30’s. No endings were contemplated at this time other than sleepless nights and eventually, breast feeding. 29 year old me, and the baby in my lap, had no clue of the number of endings and beginnings that would follow in the next sixteen years. How we would change and grow. What and who we’d gain and lose along the way. Who we would become or what we’d truly need.
Being a human is such a tricky thing. Learning to hold space for so many memories in one brain without overloading from all the conflicting feelings is at times too much to bear. But being able to look at one photo and be transported to another stage of motherhood which I can both miss and be SO glad to be done with, is the most beautiful thing about being a human with all these overwhelming feelings. 🥹
4 years later and I’m a different person and athlete than I was then.
2022 me couldn’t imagine five orthopedic surgeries in 3 years, losing my mom, losing my job, moving again, and being the heaviest I’d ever been outside of pregnancy.
2022 me probably didn’t believe she could handle all that transition and loss of identity. 2026 me now knows that life is just a series of starting over when things don’t go “according to plan,” because we have far less control over our life plan than we think. I could lament the changes to my body and my identity as an athlete, or marvel at the ability to start over again and again.
Here’s to doing hard things.
TGIF feat a custom Hello Kitty piece that @projectgworkshop hooked me up with for Coco’s birthday. I found the gently used figures online, gave him some inspo and my exact specifications for what order the figures were to stand in, and the color of resin I wanted…. and he took it from there. Now it has a permanent place on her new gallery wall. 🤩
#hellokitty
