This month we were supposed to set out to repeat last year’s epic road trip.  I am disappointed that we can’t do that anymore, but with Brett’s slow recovery from surgery, it’s just not in the cards.  However, it did work out that the kids and I will be able to head to Michigan for a little while, and I’m looking forward to seeing my family this weekend, feeling soft Midwestern grass again, scouring Northern Michigan for some good adventures and filling my soul cup to the brim. It helps that we are heading out when we’re on around our eighth day of heavy gray skies and rain.  Seattle, how do you do it?

So, there are two suitcases that I’m now unpacking because I am the worst overpacker in the history of mankind.  If I don’t whittle down our stash, I will be the girl unzipping her suitcase in front of the check-in kiosk, embarrassingly pulling out random things to get the weight down.  I once carried a hair dryer and two pairs of boots in a grocery bag on a plane because it saved me four pounds and fifty bucks.  The endless possibilities of spending time with my brother and sister and cousins make it nearly impossible to pack sensibly.  I mean, what if we follow through on our dream of remaking the Thrift Shop music video?  We’ll need props.  And a DeLorean.  And what if we go dancing?  We’ll need dance clothes.  And what if the little kids want to put on a talent show?  We’ll need leotards and boas and click-clack shoes.  Needless to say, I am excited.  And  pre-weighing my suitcases.

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With that said, a friend sent me this quote this week, and it was such a gift to me, I’m throwing some tissue paper over it, taping a new card to it and re-gifting it to you:


“Our life’s work is to use what we have been given to wake up. If there were two people exactly the same-same body, same speech, same mind, same mother, same father, same house, same food, everything the same- one of them could use what he has to wake up and the other could use it to become more resentful, bitter, and sour. It doesn’t matter what you are given, whether it’s a physical deformity or enormous wealth or poverty, beauty or ugliness, mental stability or mental instability, life in the middle of a mad house or life in the middle of a peaceful silent desert. Whatever you’re given can wake you up or put you to sleep. That’s the challenge of now: what are you going to do with what you have already – your body, your speech, your mind?
May we all learn that pain is not the end of the journey, and neither is delight. We can hold them both – indeed hold it all – at the same time, remembering that everything in these quixotic, unpredictable, unsettled and unsettling, exhilarating and heart-stirring times is a doorway to awakening in our sacred world.” ~Pema Chödrön

And a few happies for your weekend – some of your Enjoying the Small Things moments:

More from Michigan soon. 
You know what I’m going to do when I get there?
I’m going to make some flower wreaths for our hair. ‘Cuz it’s summer.
And I’m going to savor some really, really big hugs.

Happy Weekend Friends.

Our new sponsor today saved me toward the end of my pregnancy when comfortable sleep was hard to come by.  I thought two pillows wedged between my legs was great until I used the Bump Nest, and the rest was history–so soft and comfortable, we all still use it three months after baby. 

Although designed specifically to relieve pressure for side sleeping, I can add from experience that the Bump Nest makes a good sleepover pillow, toddler napping pillow, movie-watching pillow as well as throw-on-the-floor-and-hang-out-pillow.  Plus, it’s pretty enough to leave out on your bed.

We used ours in bed watching Curious George earlier this week while the girls weren’t feeling so hot.

The Bump Nest has a whole new line of pretty spring slip covers (ubersoft) too.

A couple Behind the Business Questions with Jessica, the mama behind the design:

Q: How did you come up with the inspiration and design behind the Bump Nest?
A: Bump Nest was born by accident, really. We were working on a product to provide sleeping solutions for people who suffer from chronic acid reflux when we started noticing pregnant women were the most desperate for sleep relief. Sleep is so precious during those 9 months, and from our experiences and the experiences of women around us, we knew that there had to be a better solution than hoarding pillows just to try and get comfortable! We were certain we could do more to get moms a good night’s sleep. Applying what we’d learned about side sleeping from studying reflux to pregnancy, we came up with a great design that made it comfortable for women to sleep on their sides and feel supported all night long. From there we found materials that were luxurious and still durable and easy to take care of, and designed our own patterned fabric for modern body pillow cases – all things we knew would be important to a pregnant woman. After getting the product into the hands of women around us and hearing their sighs of relief, we knew it had to be available to expectant moms everywhere.

Q:  I see there are little newborn hats in corresponding fabrics that you send out to babies in need with Bump Nest sales.  Tell me more!

A: When we realized there would be extra useable fabric scraps after cutting out our body pillows, we wanted to put that excess to good use. With every body pillow we make, the scrap fabric is made into soft baby beanies to be given to one of our trusted charitable partners. We have partnered with two organizations who will see to it that our baby beanies get into the hands of a newborn-in-need both domestically and internationally:

Directed by a volunteer Mom with a heart of gold, Stitches From the Heart provides comfort, love and support to infants and their families to hospitals in all fifty states – 100% through volunteer efforts.

Hope Venture makes it easy to reach out to areas where poverty has a huge impact on lives such as Nairobi, Kenya, and Mumbai, India.

We love stitching up our scraps to be used where they are needed most and knowing they will not go to waste.

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Welcome Bump Nest!

I’m happy to welcome my friend Meagan Francis to our space today.  I met Meagan at BlogHer a couple years ago and have enjoyed many e-mail conversations, ideas, advice, etc. through a blogger thread she created about a year ago–connections she’s fostered and deepened because that’s the sort of person Meagan is.  She’s a connector, a nurturer, a thinker and a doer; and I’ve learned much from her experiences and willingness to share them.

Meagan currently writes at The Happiest Home (formerly The Happiest Mom) and has contributed to a number of publications including The Huffington Post and The New York Times. 

Her book, The Happiest Mom, is full of great secrets to enjoying motherhood, expressed in a conversational, relatable tone–a great read, especially for (but not limited to!) new mamas.

Yesterday, Meagan underwent a hysterectomy after a cervical cancer diagnosis.  As she prepared for this experience, she wrote about her emotions of letting go to the organs that have so long defined her.  I might still be in the “trenches,” but I certainly understood the bittersweet finality of the baby journey which she so beautifully expresses.

Enjoy.

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Good-bye, Mama
Meagan Francis

I always knew I wanted to have a larger family. Growing up as the youngest of four siblings with the knowledge of a fifth – who would have been my older brother, lost to SIDS – I wanted either four or five myself. 

And that’s how it worked out. Five pregnancies and births , spread out every two or three years between the ages of 20 and 31. Four boys, then a girl.

Family complete.

For a few years there, it was pretty crazy. Like when I had two young, energetic boys, a toddler, and a newborn. Those were the “trenches” years, when I’d drive around desperately at noon just hoping the babies would fall asleep, when I was hopeless about remembering birthday parties and permission slips.

But wow, has my life ever changed over the last year or two. After more than a decade of being pregnant, breastfeeding, chasing toddlers and changing diapers – sometimes all at once – I now have zero babies, zero toddlers, change zero diapers and haven’t used my breasts functionally in two years. 

Instead of being surrounded by clinging, pulling small children all day, my youngest child is four; an independent, self-sufficient little girl who I’m loving turn into a miniature version of myself.

The boys – ages 7, 9, 13, and 15 – spend their days going to school, playing sports, hanging out with friends. There is nary a sippy cup to be found in this house, and I even, finally, purged my kitchen drawers of all the random lids I used to hang on to “just in case.”

And I have two teenagers. You know what it means to have two teenagers in the house? It means you can go to the store and leave them in charge. You can go out to dinner with your husband and leave them in charge.  They can cook and clean the kitchen afterward! The freedom! The unbelievable freedom!

After being orbited by noisy, clumsy satellites since I was barely an adult myself, I won’t lie: it’s nice to have two arms and a brain to myself sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong, parenting five kids – even bigger kids – is still hard work. But for the first time in a long time, I feel like I have space to breathe, time to reflect.

On the one hand, there are a lot of positives to losing my uterus. No more periods? Yes please!

And absolutely no worries about becoming pregnant again. As somebody who’s got sort of a sketchy history with birth control and a family history of fertility until into the forties, knowing I don’t have another ten years’ worth of ovulatory bullets to dodge is a relief.

But it’s a little sad, too. It’s one thing to decide you no longer want children, but to know deep down that you could probably have another if you change your mind.  It’s another thing entirely for the choice to be made for you.

I don’t want to appear greedy. Yes, I have five beautiful, healthy children already. Many women face this kind of surgery before they’ve even started their families. I’m grateful. So grateful.

And the fact is, I don’t actually want more, and I doubt I would have changed my mind. So why am I having such a hard time with the loss of organs I no longer need?

I think it’s because the loss of my fertility will signal a sudden, complete and irrevocable end to the life I’ve led, and the person I’ve been, since I was twenty years old.

A mama.

Not “Mommy,” as in “Mommy, will you tie my shoes?” or “Mom,” as in “Mom, have you seen my reading folder?” Not even “Mother,” as in “Oh crap, here comes my mother!”

Mama.

A mama rocks her newborn babe for hours. She folds tiny t-shirts and socks. A mama squishes bananas and avocadoes with the back of a fork. She has a baby on her hip, and perhaps a toddler on the back of her legs.

A mama tends to be covered in undefined substances: milk, spit-up, crusty food.  She may look a little disheveled. People understand why when they see the small people clinging to her: she is a Mama. Her life is difficult and wearying, but there’s a simplicity, a singleness of focus, that she will look back on one day with envy.

When you’re a Mama, you know exactly what your priorities are, because babies don’t let you forget.

Truthfully, I found being a Mama addictive. Despite my logical understanding that our family is as big as it needs to be and that I’m moving into an equally wonderful phase of my life that is more centered around holistic family life than the needs of individual small people, I found mama-hood so addicting that I can’t say for certain I would have been able to let my head stay in charge until menopause made it up permanently.

For that reason, my upcoming surgery is probably a blessing. The decision is made for me. I won’t have to let my Mama-heart and my hard-earned Mother wisdom battle it out.

I will mourn these organs that have defined my life for so long. They have given me so much, and have helped make so much of me. Several times I’ve felt betrayed by my fertility, but I now see it for the blessing it really was.

But now I’m ready to look forward to what’s around the bend.

Good-bye, uterus and cervix and Fallopian tubes. You did your job well.

Good-bye, pregnancies and births and babies on my hip. It’s been sweet, if exhausting.

Good-bye, Mama.

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