January 1st, 2026 - Gratitude

Gratitude

There is only one thing that stays consistent in my life and that is being a mother.

Everything else shifts. Jobs end, relationships crumble, living situations upend overnight, promises dissolve like sugar in rain. The ground beneath me has been unstable for as long as I can remember. I've learned not to trust permanence because permanence is a luxury I've rarely been afforded.

But motherhood? That stays.

Not because it's easy. Not because I always feel adequate to the task. But because it's the one thing I can't walk away from, and more importantly, the one thing I don't want to.

When I look at Atlas and Kathy, I see the only proof I need that I'm capable of something real. Something that matters beyond my own survival, beyond the endless cycle of disappointment and rebuilding. They are evidence that love doesn't have to be conditional. That showing up, even when you're exhausted, even when you're defeated, even when you're not sure you have anything left to give, that showing up is enough.

I am eternally grateful that I get to spend time with the kids I have.

People say that all the time. It's the kind of thing you're supposed to say as a parent. But when I say it, I mean it with an intensity that sometimes scares me. Because they are the reason I'm still here. They are the golden thread that keeps me tethered to this world when everything else feels too heavy, too broken, and way too impossible.

They are the best things in this world and the reason I keep trying my best.

Not my best in some abstract, aspirational sense. My best in the most literal way possible. My best is getting out of bed when my body feels like lead. My best is making dinner when I'd rather disappear. My best is interacting with their stories when I'm drowning in my own sadness. My best is protecting them from the cycles that damaged me, even when that protection costs me everything I thought I was building toward.

My best is choosing them.

Always.

Before I had children, I spent years believing that being like me was the flaw. That my intensity, my emotions, my questions, my fire, all of it was evidence that something was fundamentally wrong with me. I carried that belief like a stone in my chest, and it colored every relationship, every decision, every moment of self-assessment.

Motherhood has taught me something I'm still learning to accept: I am already enough.

Not because I've achieved something extraordinary. Not because I've figured everything out. Not because I'm always patient or always present or always managing to hold it together.

I'm enough because I show up.

I show up when I'm exhausted. When I'm sad. When I'm defeated. When I don't know how to solve my own problems, let alone theirs. I show up because they need me to, and that need is the most clarifying thing in my life.

My children will never question whether they are loved. They will never have to twist themselves into shapes to earn my affection. They will never wonder if their emotions are too much or if their questions are too challenging or if their very essence is somehow wrong.

They will know, without a single doubt, that they are loved completely.

And that knowledge? That's not just a gift to them. It's a gift to myself. Because every time I hold them the way no one ever held me, every time I choose patience over frustration, every time I see them clearly instead of through the filter of my own wounds, I'm proving to myself that the cycle can break.

That I am not my mother.

That love doesn't have to hurt.

I'm not going to pretend that motherhood fixes everything. It doesn't. The sadness is still there. The loneliness. The exhaustion. The feeling that I'm constantly rebuilding on quicksand.

But my kids give me a reason that's bigger than my own despair.

When I wake up and the weight feels too heavy, when I'm too defeated to believe things will change, when the quietness is too loud and the future feels impossible, I think about them. About the life they deserve. About the mother I want to be for them.

And I get up.

I make breakfast. I snuggle with them while watching cartoons. I listen to their stories about toys and games and friends and the small dramas that loom large in their worlds. I show them, through my actions more than my words, that they matter. That they are seen. That they are home when they are with me.

Motherhood has given me a purpose that doesn't require me to be fixed or healed or whole. It just requires me to be present. To keep trying. To keep loving.

And on my hardest days, when I'm not sure I have anything left to give, I see their faces and know it’s enough.

They are the one constant in a life full of variables.

And I am eternally, profoundly grateful for that.