The surgery I didn't know I needed.

I took my son's 6 month photos today. I feel proud to have kept him alive that long. And me.

Last night as I was trying to sleep, I realized that becoming a mother was like having open heart surgery. That I didn't know I needed.

Again,

"I realized that becoming a mother was like having open heart surgery."

I needed it to survive.
This struck me, I thought about it all through the night so I wouldn't forget it.

I have thought of a million ways to describe motherhood. The changes in my heart. The feeling, the way to describe the sensation of little hands clinging to me daily.

Sounds dramatic right?

Well, to walk you a little backwards to catch a glimpse of my journey here. My heart broke in 2004 for 4 years, as I dated one of those people that you will never quite get all the pieces back from.

In 2009, I left everything I knew and packed up my car to live in the desert. Temporarily, became 7.5 years later to here. In 2012, I opened my heart to marriage and healing and am still letting my heart be fully a sponge to this gift of love and union. (more on this another time).

But my journey is also about the work I stumbled upon for the last 7 years. I helped women. They were from all walks of life and they were broken. I was broken too, but I was in a position to help, so I did. Helping them and walking with them was one of the best things I will have done with my life, for sure. I am proud of the accomplishments we pulled off together. But it was hard. Hard work, dirty work, heart breaking work. The kind of heart break where my heart not only broke for one person, but my heart broke for so many and the pieces will forever be scattered around the country. Literally.

And so, comes in my need for open heart surgery. Whatever repairs I needed, they also needed to massage that heart and stitch it and more. The blood had to be re-pumped in there and all the valves needed some suchers.

Post surgery, here I am, at 6 months post par-tum and I can't hardly describe what it is like to have a new heart. I have so much more hope, I have so much love, and I have so much more growing on top of all those things.

For this journey, I have been on and I am on, I can't imagine life without my son. If I hadn't had him, I think my heart would have continued to break and grow hard and hopeless. I had seen too much.

But in the midst of knowing, that life isn't perfect for so many, for me, and that my story might not even end like a fairy tale, I have hope for my son, my family and my heart is bursting with the joy of motherhood.