Loves,

I have spent a lot of the last five years measuring up all my failings as a mother.

I worry that I’m too introverted… That I don’t engage enough… That I read too much… That I need quiet time in order to be okay in my body. I think I am less than the perfect mother because I need, I crave, I adore my work, and I take time away each day to do it.

I see so painfully all my failings, my spiky bits, the hard parts and I hope my daughters can forgive me for them when they are older. The truth of parenting is I absolutely do not enjoy parenting every single minute of every single day, and I think it is downright bullshit and so harmful when any person claims to or tells you should to.

I love my children deeply and ferociously. I would choose them again. I was born to be their mother. And still, it is hard. And fraught with the pains of being human, of living in a world with physical and energetic limitations.

I’ve spent a long time feeling anxiety and shame about my inside feelings. I didn’t think they were the right feelings to have. That it make me a bad person to have them. That I wasn’t allowed to feel them. And I sure as fuck couldn’t speak them. I don’t know what changed for me.

All I know is once I started speaking my truth — my full truth — the one that isn’t pretty or easily resolved or inspiring — life got deeper and a little more true.

Wherever you are on this big old path… I just want to send a wish from my heart… That you and I both know we are allowed to have all our feelings. And that we are worthy enough just as we are.

I get it bae. Love you.

P.S. Brutal honesty- I wrote this on the toilet because it is the weekend and it’s the only quiet place I can think. Except they found me within 2.5 seconds and both my 5 year old and 18 month old crammed themselves into the same cubic metre as me until I kicked them out and my 18 month old had a meltdown and I yelled at my husband to let me TAKE A SHIT IN PEACE GODDAMIT.

The End!

P.P.S. “Enjoy every moment! They grow up too soon!” – obviously spoken by someone who is able to take a dump by themselves without an 18 month old trying to peer into the toilet or unroll every damn roll of toilet paper in the place.