Sometimes I feel like a less-than mother.
This is an important feeling, one that I know isn’t true, but a feeling nonetheless and I think common for parents who have to share their child’s time with another family.
Sometimes I feel like a less-than mother because I get consumed with work, afraid that if I stop somehow the sky will fall, my resources will dry up like the Rio Grande snaking through the desert and fill with tumbleweeds.
Sometimes I feel like a less-than mother because I chose the harder path even though it is the one that gave me wings, even though I know in my bones that this choosing of self creates beautiful ripples, breaking patterns gently over the misleading glassy surfaces of generational patterns.
Sometimes I feel like a less-than mother when I fall into despair after days of not seeing my daughter, even though she is safe and loved my body still craves the cocoon of an animal cradling their little ones safe.
Sometimes I feel like a less-than mother because my time is split with my daughter and this causes me self doubt and anxiety and even though I relish the time to grow like the most robust tree I feel each ring of time echoing inside and I want to make the most of it.
Sometimes I feel like a less-than mother because of how I have been conditioned to think of amount of time = amount of care & love.
And then when she is back in my arms, when I fill my chest and my eyes and my heart and my ears and my nose with everything that is my daughter I remember that what counts is HOW time is spent.
Sometimes when her hands are filled with flowers, sprouted from seeds we had scattered together, watered and watched.
sometimes when we lay in the grass and count peas cracked from pods and line them up on our sun warmed bellies,
I remember that I am a beautiful mother. And in case you needed to hear it today, so are you.