An August to Remember
Thoughts on motherhood right now, dear ones. Where we've been, where we are going, and how we will CONTINUE to thrive.
Thought #1 -
You cannot hold space for your child if no one is holding space for you. I know this, and I have lived this.
My sweet Wild girl digs into a gorgeous program to augment our homeschool journey this week and she’s already come home beaming, loves! And me? I’m beaming too. So, I needed to drop you a picture from our Meet the Teacher afternoon.
I know better than to plan pictures THE DAY OF anything this big, dear ones. Yet honestly, on her actual big day… our morning was full of epic joy.
I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop because I know how OCD words at this point. Also, I’m totally reveling in the absolute bliss (no pun intended) of the day.
Which brings me to thought #1…
Friend, we wouldn’t be where we are today without community: her therapy (including @treatmyocd & Aimee’s Farm), my therapists, her yoga teachers, Brain Balance, my Celebrate Recovery family (and the step sisters I never knew I always wanted), our neighbors, friends, and family who have jumped in to save my butt over and over again (even through a pandemic), sibling support workshops for her brother, and the thousands of good humans we’ve done life with on social media over the last six years.
Side note: I’m sure I am leaving out some of our support system - insert ugly-happy-tears-here - because it’s become so massive, that I can’t escape it. Even if I tried.
Sigh.
Will you take a moment and think about who is supporting you? And tell us below!
Thought #2 -
I’ve done A LOT of thinking about what’s next as the world opens back up and my little family brings their masked selves back on into it all. And do you know what I realized?
I am so desperately clinging to the idea that there is joy in my life beyond mothering in the remaining months of this year.
After surviving Dengue Fever is 2015, I wrote the words “all I want to be is mom” in my journal. I’ve found over the years that when life gets hard for my physical body and the dis-ease she walks with, I go back to this.
But 2020 got me wondering… would I ever consistently choose life… just for me?
And then, it happened.
Weary to the bone, I started to choose life for me. I still am. It was right around another cancer scare, of course. (Gosh it’s been a ride. Also, why does it take big things for us to make positive life shifts? It continually blows my mind. I guess we’re just still human though, right?)
One last thought -
Did you know that this newsletter - our Hope Notes - is over 10 years in-the-making and has over 400 readers to date?
This now-collaborative effort is a piece of “me retaining me” as much as it’s for you.
(I’m really good at sharing - wink.)
Beyond my work, our Moms for Mental Health team writes for you because SEEING MOTHERS THRIVE in the midst of wildness and wilderness makes our hearts sing.
We have been down the rockiest of roads.
We have limped through days, months, and seasons.
We have whispered I can’t take this anymore to the Universe as our raw knees met concrete and wood and ash for the ten-thousandth time.
We know doubt and dismay and discouragement.
We really do.
And we want to be here with you.
So -
If you desire a community of like hearts, we want to be clear: you are so-very-worthy of being a part of one.
Moms for Mental Health ministry has both local and virtual Mom Pods launching this month. Our first meeting? It begins with a tender-yet-fierce (in all the important ways) mom-versation around “knowing yourself” on this wild, wild path.
Our chat with Shanicka House is going to be one to remember, loves. I can already feel it!
Shanicka is our Even If mini-column writer. She shares her faith-filled, transparent, motherhood journey on social media and in real life. And as mom with experience in surrendering both her fertility and loss journey to our Abba God, Shanicka knows a thing or two about claiming and re-claiming Whose when storms rage forth!
Doubts happen.
I’ve been there.
I might go there again.
Yet, every single time I have a conversation with a woman who has also been through fire and back… it weakens my stance. That God can’t be in this with me, that God doesn’t care, that God might not even exist.
I can’t wait to continue this conversation with you!
We are better together than we could ever be apart, love.
See you soon,
J.
Jennifer Magnano
founder Moms for Mental Health & aka The Barefoot Preacher
follow our maternal-child mental health ministry on instagram and/or facebook for the latest updates, loves