Don't wait till you're ready...
Reflecting on years of refinement
It’s 2026, the year of the Fire Horse.
That phrase and the fact that I even know what the Chinese Zodiac is- stops me in my tracks, because it makes something abundantly clear: I am not the same woman I was five years ago. Horoscope or not, astrology aside, I have lived more change in the last five years than in the two decades before them combined.
For a long time, I couldn’t quite name what happened- only that something shifted. Looking back now, I can see that much of it was postpartum. I have been pregnant six times. I lost my first baby at 28 weeks in 2008. I have since been blessed with five beautiful children, one weighing nearly 10 pounds. What no one really tells you is that postpartum isn’t measured in weeks or months- it can take years. Sometimes five years. Sometimes longer.
And for reasons I still don’t fully understand, the year after my youngest, Charlotte was born felt like an out-of-body experience.
In January 2022, I woke up one morning and realized I didn’t want to live the way I had been living for the last twenty years. Not dramatically. Not angrily. Just… clearly. It felt spiritual. Powerful. All encompassing. As if a small fire ignited inside me, whispering that there was more.
