
Today is significant.
It is the last time that I will be a year postpartum. I will never be able to experience again much of what has happened in the last 366 days. (Through modern science, we can replicate a lot of things but childbirth is not one of them.) I have tried to archive every memory of this past year in technicolor detail but I have already forgotten more than I can remember.
It is no wonder our youngest children always remain babies in our eyes – because we want to hold onto that feeling, always. That feeling when their tiny hand first grasped our finger. That feeling when we saw their first smile. When we received that first drooly kiss. When we saw their first steps. And so on.
The final firsts. How incredibly bittersweet they are.
They are a reminder that motherhood is a constant barrage of beginnings and endings. At a pace unmatched by any other wonderment of our lives. Highlighted with intense highs and lows as joyfulness and sadness gleefully tag each other in and out as they please.
As I mourn and celebrate this final first, I also examine this re-emergence from postpartum.
Today feels very different from the other two times.
Today is significant.
Through a biological lens, this current life stage I am in are my fertile years with puberty and menopause as the bookends. And long ago, this life stage would have been filled with lots of babies. This is the time of life when Woman embodies the power of Creation.
My body, having already returned to its cycles, is overflowing with intense, creative energy, but I have no desire to add to my brood.
Instead, I feel that energy driving me to write again, to coach again, to create projects again. Redirecting my focus to bringing about the change I want to see in the world.
Just as I am clearing my bookshelf of my pregnancy and birthing books for new material, I feel my heart, body and mind re-calibrating, shifting and shimmying about to make room for my next creations and projects.
As I hold white-knuckled onto that first year of postpartum, I also feel propelled forward to a different kind of potential. Such is motherhood, a barrage of beginnings and endings.
Today is significant.
It is the start of the rest of my motherhood.
Inspiration: Every significant moment and milestone of this past year has had an echo sometimes whispering, sometimes SHOUTING, “Savor this because it’s the last time!” Today’s echo is the loudest and one filled with incredible sadness. But at the same time, I feel a need to, an urgency to, create. To create for good, for change, for me and for my family. And so here I am, one foot trying to stand firm in the land of postpartum and the other foot trying to make marks on the rest of the world.