This week, I wrote about my motherhood journey. The pain of it still unstitches me.
But this wasn’t a piece only about grief. It was the realization that grief and joy can live in the same house and sleep beside each other every night.
I’ve held grief between my knees, let it bleed into my body until it burned. Despite all the therapy, the self-help books, the prayer — it still lives in me. But it no longer orchestrates the path forward.
Lately, I’ve been confronting the reality of time. The grief of being childless by Mother Nature. The choices I made out of survival rather than aliveness.
There are moments when I mourn the version of motherhood I once imagined for myself. Moments when I have to swallow regret without allowing myself to be consumed by it.
But inside that acceptance, my definition of motherhood has deepened.
I have mentored young women through my words. I have stood on stages telling stories that made women approach me afterward and whisper, “I finally feel seen.”
There may never be a baby in my arms. Still, I will nurture the people who cross my path. I will mother my community. Myself.
I can never get back the time. Some days, I have to let that truth break me open and soften me.
This week was hard to write. Hard to process. Hard to carry without my knees buckling.
But it taught me that on the other side of grief, right around the corner from regret, lives purpose.
Motherhood, as I’ve come to know it, has always been about the creation of life in its many forms. That is where I find the courage to keep birthing stories, ideas, and evolved versions of myself.
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