By Kimberly Poovey
Hey mama.
I see you there.
In your hole-y leggings, with dry-shampooed hair, re-heating your cup of coffee for the 5th time this morning.
Bleary-eyed. Engorged. Tired.
Doing the very best you can. Keeping your tiny humans alive and clean(ish) and fed and loved.
I see you pouring out every ounce of energy and love and affection in your tank every single day, and still feeling like you didn’t use your brain for more than 7 minutes in the last 24 hours. I see you going through the motions in the dead of night, rocking sweaty babies and offering up your body for nourishment and feeling like a human vending machine. A robot that doles out milk and kisses and meals on demand.
And you’re doing an amazing job. The most selfless acts humanly imaginable, day in and day out. Loving, literally, with your body and soul.
But under all of that, you are still there. Did you hear me? Under the milk ducts and unpainted toenails and old yoga pants, you are still YOU. The You That Once Was. The you who went to grown-up places and wore grown-up clothes and had ideas and read books and created things.
She’s still there. She is right under your nose. You are one in the same. When you became a mother, the old you shattered into a million pieces. A broken bottle heaved into a tumultuous sea.
But while you thought those pieces of yourself were lost forever, they were being tossed by the waves. Ground against the sand. Tumbled and polished and beautified. Turned into glistening sea glass.
