“And yes it makes me crazy to think that my kids can go days-or maybe weeks-without me.  If I’m not needed, if I’m not busy, if I’m not an overstretched, overwhelmed, underslept, (…) mother . . . What exactly am I?”

I snapped a photo of this quote from Kristin Hannah’s book Fly Away as I thought, “I don’t want to be her.”

I don’t want to be that person so consumed with her kids that she has no sense of self, otherwise.

And then I thought, 

Who am I?

What defines me?

What do I want to define me?

The truth is, they are my muse. 

And I have learned more about myself in the role of “mother” than I could have ever hoped to have learned in a lifetime. 

I thought I knew the depth of Love’s Well once I met Emmett.

But I soon learned it ran much deeper upon the birth of our first daughter, Aurora.

I thought there could be no love greater than that of our first child, 

Until I had my second, then third, then fourth. 

My children have humbled me, sometimes out of sheer necessity.

Because of them, I will always fight over flight. 

I don’t have all of the answers but I do have a greater will than myself to live. 

What am I?

I’m a mother. 

And there ain’t no shame in that.