Today Changed Your Life Forever

Dear Brand-Spanking-New Mama,

Today has changed your life forever. You will never be the same. Your beautiful baby girl has been born.

Feelings have bubbled to the surface that you didn’t even know existed, the very first being

LOVE unimaginable, unexplainable.

But I can promise you that won’t be the only one. You’ll be pummeled by ALL. THE. FEELINGS. every day for the rest of your life.

FEAR that your house will catch on fire or that no one will invite your new 5th grader to sit with them on the bus.

LONELINESS in the middle of a room full of other moms or in the middle of a sleepless night.

CONFUSION about how to feed your baby the right food or feed yourself the best information.

JOY over the first wobbly steps taken across the family room or the last confident steps taken across the graduation stage.

ANGER at the unfair teacher, your sassy toddler, her phone, your out-of-control self, the mean girl at lunch, every form of consuming media, the unhelpful doctor, on and on and on.

GUILT about not being enough or being too much.

SADNESS when the bus pulls away with your kindergartener or when your teen pushes you away, leaving you a heap on his bedroom floor.

THANKFUL for the smile laced across your middle-schooler’s face at the Holiday Chorus concert or the smile on your bride-daughter’s face as she dances with her groom.

28 years later, you will be in the middle of a three-way kiss between your baby and her baby, and that very first feeling,

LOVE, unimaginable, unexplainable,

will swallow up all the others, multiplying itself once again, which you never thought possible.

From my heart to yours,

Filled-to-the-brim-with-love, Old Mama