dear mama,
Motherhood. Simultaneously the greatest challenge and the biggest blessing. Both the hardest and the holiest thing. Overstimulating and stretching and sanctifying. But also bubbling over with effervescent love and laughter. Evoking all the feelings, from "mom rage" to "mom guilt" to deeper love than you ever could have imagined, sometimes all in the same hour. And nothing prepares you for it. No matter how many books you read or podcasts you listen to or how many times you watched your friends become moms or experienced your own mom mothering you your entire life, you never know quite what it's like until you experience this cataclysmic, paradigm-shifting, identify-shaking, completely-world-rocking transition for yourself. Nothing prepares you for the intense experience of childbirth or the postpartum hormones or what it's like to function on only intermittent sleep. Nothing prepares you for the crushing weight of responsibility for the survival of another...