In this next season, to love will be to let go. I will miss their faces, miss their hugs, miss what I know of being a mom.

I will miss the pieces of my heart that go with them.

We all lead, we all serve, we all have eyes looking to us for guidance and direction. Whether in little ways or from a big stage, we all long to make a difference in our world. 

It’s time we stop waiting for others to empower the greatness we already carry.

I thought I’d know more by now, thought I’d have more figured out. But yet the journey continues as I hold to one truth - superwoman is still real.

Superwoman is still you.

Losing sight of our intrinsic value is dangerous, comparison absolutely lethal. Our identity is our most precious commodity, but it is often under attack - not just from outside, but from within.

I watched as the photos flashed across my screen, eighteen years of my son’s life passing quickly with each upload. The memories swelled, but so did a realization.

I often felt like I was failing. Looking back I can see that was entirely untrue.

When I turn again they are not so much piles of mess as they are mountains of evidence of a life lived well. Testaments to the beauty of a place where four humans unite.

No, there is not calm in my house, but there is life.

Strength and weakness. Success and failure. Abundance and need. Not one alone defines. Instead, can all be given their space to live and breathe within the life of a genuine super woman?

I hope so.

In the garden of our lives the draw toward growing everything is everywhere. Do more, accomplish more, be more to more people.

But at this pace and with this much crowding, do any of our flowers have a chance to grow?

Humanity is not lost, I thought to myself, we are still driven by love.

Still driven by relationship, still driven by connection, still driven by belonging. 

We have wings yet choose not to fly. Built to dream yet bottled by reality. Made for ‘more’ and yet sometimes self-contained to ‘less.’

What convinces us that we are not worthy of the air? 

We are all the unseen ones, but the truth is that we don’t have to be. May we be brave enough to step out from behind our walls.

I can still remember the ultrasound technician’s face as he relayed the news - there is no heartbeat. Four days later I delivered my daughter and said goodbye to the one that was to make me a mom.

When I look back now I can see the gift of the closed door, but in the middle it felt like anything but. It was disappointing, it was tears, it was not easy nor everything as I thought it should be. 

But there was another open door.

In a wave I realized I missed the little boy.

A simple moment became a closing of a season, the dimming of a once bright light, a shaking of the ground where my feet once felt so steady.

It felt like pain.

When we set aside the isolation of being ‘tough,’ we exchange our fear of being needy for the welcome truth of being loved.

And you are loved.

There is strength in deciding that despite the pain, our freedom is actually our decision. We hold the keys to freedom.

We are the ones that can open our own prison door.

How many times do we look at our need for help with such shame and embarrassment? How many times do we refuse to even seek out the very thing that could knit us back together?

What does is mean to parent a child and then release them to be their own adult? To metaphorically ‘let go’ while at the same time knowing there will always be holding on? 

Always fiercely and firmly holding on.

Life-giving water is beautiful when it surrounds our feet, its reassuring cold reminding us that the sea constantly remains. And at times if pulls back, painfully so, leaving us with labored breaths as we wait for the ocean’s return.

Life is like this sometimes, the rise and fall of the tide. 

All those moments you spend with your mind trailing down random paths, wondering at all the ways you are simply not enough - what an enormous waste of time.

The truth is you will never feel like you are enough, you will only decide it to be true.