This post is sponsored by Blue Apron which we’ve been loving for years not only for their creative recipes and fresh meals but for the way they bring our family together. If you’ve never tried Blue Apron, the first 50 readers will get $50 off their first two weeks when you order some farm-fresh meal ingredients right to your home here.

If I had a nickel for the number of times I’ve said, “If I can just get past this month,” I’d buy a time machine and get past this month. But then I take that back, because as demanding as May is–the end-of-year school projects, the class party planning, Lainey’s birthday, the graduation ceremonies–I know that next week, more than once I’m going to be sitting in a crowd holding Brett’s hand looking up at a stage where my kid will be standing–bigger and wiser and more independent than last year–and I’ll be wiping tears, wishing I could just make time stand still. I’ve found the best way to cushion the emotion and avoid a dam break during such a demanding time is to find (or create if you can’t find) pockets of opportunity to connect as a family. While we’ve been doing a whole lot of “Wing-It Meals” this month–scrambling to throw something together last minute because I don’t have the time to plan something more intentional–I was pleasantly surprised last week when the doorbell rang and I found our Blue Apron box on the steps. I had completely forgotten it was coming, and it’s arrival was perfectly timed–like a “Hey Girl, I got you.” And it wasn’t just the fact that it had all the ingredients I needed to make a fresh, amazing meal for my family. It was the invitation–to connect and enjoy the ritual that’s hidden behind making food for our family.

Blue Apron meals for our family have turned into a tradition where Brett and I cook together. We usually trade cooking duties, but on Blue Apron nights we do it together and we get all into it.

“Do you want to get a picture of me chopping?” he asked.

Oh my God, I thought you’d never ask.

Last week, we made Mexico City Chicken Tinga Tostadas together. We’re so used to warming up plain tortillas for our Mexican nights, but we loved the crunch and flavor we got from transforming our tortillas to tostadas with a little olive oil and some “tanning” in the oven.

I’ve written about Blue Apron several times, but if you’re not familiar with it, Blue Apron is a meal delivery service that gives you the joy of cooking in your home with all the hard work done for you. You get farm-fresh ingredients delivered to your doorstep in a refrigerated box, and in exactly the right proportions–no trips to the grocery store and no waste from unused ingredients. Recipes are included as well as everything you need to make chef-designed meals. Ingredients are locally sourced and everything is 100% non-GMO. And while there are several meal-delivery services, one thing that makes Blue Apron stand out is their recycling program, so the packaging the food is delivered in doesn’t go to waste.

We especially love the amazing ingredients (lots of times, things we don’t see at our regular grocery store) and creative recipes that get us out of our same-ol’ things rut. And Brett especially loved this meal because it was Mexican food and because there were avocados.

You can find the recipe for our Mexico City Chicken Tinga Tostadas here.

Pretty, pretty food!

I love “make-it” station meals for families. Line everything up, and everyone can build their own plate.

We piled our crunchy tostadas up with seasoned black beans, seasoned chicken, lettuce, avocados and cotija cheese.

And it’s kid-approved (that half-smile!)

Want to try Blue Apron? Save a little sanity during end-of-school madness but still ensure some together moments with your family at the kitchen table? The first 50 readers will get $50 off their first two weeks when you try Blue Apron here. You can choose 2-Person or a Family Plan, select between 8 different meal combinations, and you can skip or cancel the service at any time.

And one of our favorite Blue Apron bonuses is that we’ve learned a lot about food and creative cooking and have tucked so many ideas and recipes in our pocket to use again.

Now if we can just agree on the right way to cut an avocado.

Our last day of motherhood stories. Thank you for letting me share my friends here this week.

Sukey Forbes
Mother’s Day is perhaps hardest for the women who’ve faced a mother’s unimaginable fear–losing a child. We can expand our sweet and shiny view of motherhood to include paths that are challenging–infertility, single moms, disability–but loss is a hard one to shine light on. It hurts just to think about it. And yet, it is a part of many mom’s stories. My friend Sukey Forbes carries the grief of losing a child–her daughter Charlotte died when she was six. But she also has two children on earth whom she celebrates with Charlotte’s memories. I’m honored to have Sukey’s words about grief, living, and the balance of loving children in two different places on Mother’s Day. You can read more from Sukey on her website and her book, The Angel in my Pocket.

My middle child is an angel. Really. She has been an angel for 13 years now. The other two have their moments.

Charlotte died at the age of six, and Mother’s Day, like all holidays, is now bittersweet.

Ever since my first child was born I have thought that Mother’s Day and birthdays were celebrated backwards. I spent my entire first Mother’s Day reveling in the sheer delicious perfection of the soul encased in blue eyes and and round belly with pudgy fingers and toes and a personality that revealed itself more vividly by the day. I pondered how my sweet boy had changed from a tiny baby with limbs folded in on himself to a gurgling, wiggling, ravenous devourer of pureed peas. Recollections of the challenges, the joys, the firsts, the physical and mental exhaustion filled my heart. The day’s focus for me was entirely on honoring my cherubic child and marveling in all we experienced during the year. And then came the second child. And then the third. Each year on Mother’s Day the highlight reel of kissing skinned knees, building sand castles and jumping in puddles plays through my head accompanied by a cheesy soundtrack. Depending on the year the playlist has ranged from “Rockabye Baby” to “Be My Baby” on up to “Yakkety Yak, Don’t Talk Back” and now even a bit of “Cat’s Cradle”.

Grief, in the softer moments, reminds us to savor the sweet when it presents itself. Mother’s Day has continued to be for me the day to consider what it is to be a mother and to remind my children of how deeply they are loved and appreciated. It is a balancing act caring for two children and grieving for their sister who is now an angel. As a mother, making sure that in a reasonable expanse of time, none of my children gets more attention at the expense of the others has been tested in every possible way. I have worked mightily to not let my grief take up more space than active mothering of Charlotte’s surviving siblings. They needed love, guidance and attention more than ever after the rupture in our family. Equal attention to children and grief was particularly challenging in the early days when I could barely force myself to get out of bed and get the family fed, let alone emotionally nurture anyone. Yet I do believe that my long term commitment to balancing time and attention between angel and earthly children allowed our family to maintain some level of normalcy during a most raw and painful time.

The reflection on motherhood for me is tinged with melancholy for the mothering that I did not get to give my daughter Charlotte beyond her first six years of life. On Mother’s Day I do the best I can to keep the focus on the blessing and experience of each of my children, the two who are living on any given day in various stages of angelic grace and the one who is an angel now and for always. For me, Mother’s Day is about mothers honoring relationships with each of their children. While handwritten love letters and breakfast in bed are a lovely treat, it feels more healing to my heart to be the one bestowing the love and appreciation upon the greatest blessings in my life.

Nici Holt Cline
Nici’s one of my favorite friends to introduce to people, and I like to show her off because having her as a friend makes me look cool. Her life is really beautiful–and not, like, shiny staged beautiful. It’s real life art, and the beauty that pours out often comes from the purpose Nici puts in. She is a beautiful homemaker, raising her two girls in Montana, teaching them how to do all her favorite things–garden and sew and make bread, art, friendships, meaning. Watching her mother, you’d assume she’s dreamed of this role her life. But before she was braiding hair and sewing nightgowns, Nici was an artist whose path to her dreams didn’t involve distractions like kids. And now…here she is. I’m so happy to have my friend in this space again today, sharing how she got here.  You can find more of Nici on her website or follow her Instagram. And hopefully later his year, I’ll be sitting in her kitchen, doing one of my favorite things–talking about motherhood, womanhood and loving people with one of my best friends.

I didn’t want to be a mom. I mean, I was open to changing my mind but I wasn’t like so many of my childhood friends who knew in their bones they’d be a mama. I just didn’t have that unwavering compulsion. And the more I said that out loud the more resolute and defensive I became. Because, for some reason, many take a young woman’s choice to not procreate personally.

I met my husband when we were 12, we started dating at 19. By the time we married at 27, my grandma had been urging us to get knocked up for a good two years. One time someone asked when we’d get pregnant and I said, “Not sure. When was the last time you had sex?” I was so irritated with the small talk about my fecundity. How are you today? My, nice weather. You look ripe. Are you ovulating? When I did express my thoughts — that I was unsure, that I loved my career, that I wanted to travel, that I just didn’t know like other people know — the response was usually rife with zero curiosity or trust and lots of judgment. You know, “you’ll regret it!” or “what a pity!”

Then our grandparents died. My grandma, Andy’s grandpa, Andy’s grandma. Death softened me to imagining birth. Especially with the passing of my last grandparent. The last time I saw her she pulled her arthritic pinkie fingers across my scalp as she french braided my hair and when I asked her if she was afraid she looked into me and said she was dying a happy woman because of THIS.

It was five years later that I was shocked to see those two lines show up on the pregnancy test. I took five tests. Impossible. We used birth control. I had just gotten into graduate school in Chicago. My world was spinning. I wanted this? I wanted THIS.

I have always known there are lots of ways to satisfied life, an authentic life, a rich life. Early in my pregnancy I made a vow to myself to not let motherhood define me, to not lose myself to motherhood. That line of thinking came from years of trying to make sense of the implications of parenthood on my life path. Years of wanting to say the right thing at the right time for others’ approval. Having it all! I gave up defending my choices, trying to convince others (because, yes, I also got raised-eyebrow earfuls from colleagues and friends about “not letting go of my dreams” when I deferred grad school and then never went). I gave up on that bullshit and I gave in to my very own raw, uncharted, heart-aching adventure. Turns out I am the one in charge of my dreams. And, for me, motherhood released my truest self.

As for not losing myself to motherhood? Truth is I’ve never been much good at resisting the glory of getting lost.

………………………………………………………………..

I’m off to Seattle tomorrow to be part of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking live show.  (Close by? Come!!) So an early Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who’s ever loved a mama and to all the different kinds of mamas loving babies and children and students and nieces and nephews and friends. To embracing all the heartache and love this weekend holds and making something beautiful with it.

The two stories here today are especially close to my heart–not only because they’re from women I dearly love, but because they tell of two paths made beautiful when they weren’t the expected path.

My Beautiful Friend, Anna
I say I’m lucky to be Anna’s friend, but I think to be Anna’s anything is to be lucky–husband, sister, niece, nephew, neighbor, person sitting next to her on a bus. She breathes creativity–intentionally inhaling inspiration from everything and everyone she encounters, and exhaling love back to the the world in her work, in her words, in her actions. It is easy to assume “motherhood next” for a young woman who is so nurturing, but there are so many different wild paths, and sometimes it’s not up to us to choose which one we’ll be taking. Anna recently shared more behind her “Just the Two of Us” story, and I asked her if she’d be up for contributing a little bit of it here–because I know this is many others’ stories too. When I opened the e-mail and began to read, the tears just fell. I love her all the more, and I love this path that she’s choosing to make so beautiful.

Like most couples, my husband and I figured we’d expand our family a couple years after we got married. Admittedly, this expectation was founded mostly upon the common assumption that having kids is simply what you do next. However, when the time came to get more serious, we both realized that we weren’t ready. This triggered years of deep conversations between ourselves and with our friends (both those with and without children) about the joys and realities of that hefty responsibility. The more we talked about it, the more unsure we were that this was an adventure we wanted to embark upon. I was surprised to find myself firmly on the center line, desperately wishing I felt more strongly about it either way.

A decade passed. As my siblings started to have children, I dove headfirst into being an auntie. My nieces and nephews enthrall me – they are the most hilarious, honest, beautiful little souls I’ve met. Fascinated with their wit and curiosity, I started to wonder if they were moving my needle. Yet I was still plagued with a lack of urgency and confusion: how could I love them so much and still be so unsure about having children of my own?

In my late 30’s, I went in for my routine yearly gynecological appointment. As the nurse practitioner started my exam, her brow furrowed. “Do you feel that? That wasn’t there last year. Let’s get you an ultrasound…”

An hour later, the doctor explained that numerous large fibroids had consumed most of my uterus and fallopian tubes. Hysterectomy was my best option. I don’t remember leaving his office, but I do remember calling my husband and saying, “Everything is ok but…” through my uncontrollable sobs, not wanting to scare him. He sweetly asked if he could come get me, but instead, I sat in the parking lot feeling the pain of the choice I once had being ripped from my realm of possibility.

After collecting advice from doctors across the country, we’ve conceded that my oven is irrevocably broken. At first, the theft of the option to have my own child left me with a tornado of emotions. I spontaneously cried in Target. Felt anger at my indecisiveness. Avoided social media because child-related postings made me jealous. Felt annoyance at my reaction to something I was unsure of in the first place. And experienced the nagging fear of regret. In hindsight, these are all understandable reactions. Now, I’m at peace knowing that I’m traveling the path I was meant for.

I focus on taking every opportunity I can to make memories with the tiny humans in my life. I relish their giggles and wonder – they are addicting little nuggets. I love the privilege of exploring and creating with them, and exposing them to experiences they might not otherwise have. I nurture them in my own way, bringing magic into their life that’s uniquely ours.

During a recent woodland hike to find evidence of fairies, my youngest nephew remarked that he’s glad we didn’t have kids. Bemused, I asked him why. He answered, ”…’cause then we couldn’t spend so much time together.” So true, little one. So true.

My Sister,
Carin Cryderman
My sister will always be my go-to for everything in motherhood, everything in life. She’s share here about her journey to being a single mom (you can read it here), but today she shares one of my favorite Mother’s Day stories, one our family still laughs about today. Every motherhood path looks different, and my sister’s been doing it alone for many years now. She went from broke single mom, struggling to make ends meet, to the strong accomplished woman she is today. She bought a house (and decorated it ridiculously beautiful), raised three amazing girls and proved that sure, it takes a village, but your own strength and will can get you pretty far too. 

Mother’s Day 2018

Seven years ago, I was deep in the trenches of single-parenting while preparing for another week of work and school. This meant making sure everyone had clean laundry, completed homework, and stuff for lunches. It was also Mother’s Day, and I had yet to receive any cards or recognition from my three girls.

I’m not one to make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day or even my birthday, so I didn’t give it much
thought and certainly didn’t spend the day moping. But by the end of the day – as I finished folding a load of clothes and making a mental grocery list – I was frustrated.

“Hey girls, I’m running up to the store to get a few things for lunches this week,” I said. “Because that’s what good moms do,” I added, for extra effect.

Before I left, I rummaged through craft piles to find crayons and paper and set them on the table before continuing.

“And while I’m gone, I’d like each of you to write me a Mother’s Day note. Tell me what I mean to you. Maybe even draw some pictures.”

I barely got the words out and they all burst out laughing — even I struggled not to laugh. This was not my typical MO, but I had been pushing them to advocate for themselves and communicate their needs. I figured I should probably do the same.

“I’m not kidding,” I said, still trying not to laugh. “There better be three Mother’s Day cards on the table by the time I get home.”

This particular Mother’s Day always seems to stand out in my mind. On the other hand, so many of the
surrounding days and years seem like a blur, clouded by the struggle of making ends meet, endless
soccer games, and parent-teacher conferences – all while working full-time and furthering my education.
In between, were less than desirable living spaces, too many pizza deliveries, and perpetual PMS.

I arrived home that night to find a clean house, candles lit, and three Mother’s Day cards lined neatly
across the table. These were quite possibly the sweetest notes I’ve ever received.

The girls and I look back on that Mother’s Day and laugh. My days are quieter now, with two of the three on their own, paying bills, pursuing education, and getting oil changes.

My fear as a single mom had always been that my kids were missing out on something. Yet all three have
become kind, hard-working, good people. I can’t imagine feeling any prouder of each one and our journey – even if it had been different.