Mother.

When I was a little girl, playing house was a favorite pastime. My poor, unfortunate friends were always assigned the role of “baby” or “child” while I clung to the role of mother. 

Since receiving a Baby Feels So Real in the second grade, being a mom was always part of my future vision, until it wasn’t.

My ex and I tried to have children. Three years and four failed IUI attempts later, we stopped trying to force something that was never going to happen. It felt like a piece of me died. I mourned the loss of a child I would never have and a dream I’d never see realized. Some days I still mourn them.

And then last week, everything changed. 

I was reading The Authenticity Project, a novel by Clare Pooley that encourages us to drop the facade we present to the world and just be real - tears, addictions, broken dreams and all.  

As you know, authenticity is important to me. 

Just like the characters in the book, I spent too much of my life portraying one thing to the external world while my internal world crumbled. Keeping up the facade was overwhelming, exhausting and really depressing.

Monica, the main character in the book, also dreamed of being a mother. She ran a coffee shop, was in her late 30s and wanted nothing more in life than to have a family and raise a child. There were so many parallels between our worlds. It was like looking in the mirror. 

And then, as the book reached its climax, I read the line that changed everything. 

Mother is a verb.

The floodgates opened and the tears wouldn’t stop. It was like God knew just what I needed to hear - Mother is a verb. 

I’m really good at encouraging you, dear readers, to shift your perspective. I preach to dream big and remain open to how that dream shows up for you. And yet, I couldn’t look past my inability to have a child. 

Mother is a verb. 

Every day, I have the opportunity to mother my dreams. To nourish them. To breathe life into others. To birth new projects into the world. To watch my dreams grow beyond what I had imagined.

💛 I breathed life into my love + gratitude journal. 

💛 I birthed Manifesting + Mimosas. 

💛 I continue to nurture my yoga practice.

💛 I mother The Collective.

💛 I mother my clients.

💛 I mother my nieces and nephews.

💛 I mother my plants. 

💛 I even mother you, my sweet friends. 

That one sentence created a massive shift in my perspective. Words are powerful, aren’t they?

And so, I ask you - where are you holding onto a dream so tightly and so precisely that you can’t see all the ways in which it is already realized?

Can you loosen your grip, let the things that no longer serve you fall away while opening your hands so the things meant for you have a place to land?

I have a hunch that when you do, you will be able to see the various ways in which your dreams are already showing up for you. 

Keep dreaming. Keep showing up. Keep mothering even when you want to quit.