A Mom's Life

I have lived in small, rural northeastern towns my entire life, except for a few short stints in Boston and California and my six-month study abroad in Costa Rica. As a teenager and young adult, I wanted out of small town life. I had big dreams of joining the Peace Corps or a living in Australia, or basically as far away from home as possible. But somehow those dreams didn’t come true and instead I ended up in another small, northeastern, rural town just a few short hours away from my own hometown. I wish I could say that my geographic dreams changed but that would be a lie. To this day, I still wish I could travel the world and experience cultures very different from my own. However, over time I have grown to appreciate, and find contentment, living in a place not that much different from my home. As an adult, my home is an incredibly special place to me and always will be. When I go there, to visit my parents, I realize that, as a kid, I never appreciated how lucky I was to grow up ...

My kids are amazing. They're finally becoming humans. I can't believe that I created these people and, under my parenting, they're thriving, interesting kids. I know in a few years I'm going to be frustrated about this but right now I'm pretty pumped that they have their own ideas and a mind of their own. Charlotte in particular, who has the gift of gab, a way of putting things, and a really uncanny ability to articulate things unlike most seven years old, entertains me daily. My kids are both definitely what I would call "characters". Since I am weird, I am particularly proud that they are, too. A lot of my parenting time is spent considering ways that we, as a family, can better support Caroline with her life goals. While it is hard, I am at peace with having a child with a disability because it has made me a better person, a stronger person and a more empathetic human being. But I'm an adult and I'm able to reflect on my life experience in a di...

When I was growing up, getting married and having kids were never on my to do list. I had lots of professional aspirations, and dreams of traveling the world, but not once did I think, "Oh, I hope I'll get married and be a mom." Then, it might seem like the perfect Hallmark movie plot: I met the man of my dreams. He was tall, dark (haired) and handsome and was also very charming. And being from the Midwest, he was certainly interested in getting married. As a matter of fact he'd already had marriage conversations with some of his girlfriends before he ever even entered college. At first, we were an odd couple because there I was walking around with my personal copy of the Yellow Wallpaper and my membership card to The National Organization for Women and there he was, a hybrid historian/businessman in training, who was definitely still playing the field, whose his first commitment-related question to me was whether or not, if he bought an apartment building, I would ...