So how do we make peace with our “sister lives”? How do we salute them from shore, and then enjoy the one we received? Nataliya offers us sage advice. “We must focus on what we do have," she says, “and not what we don’t.” In her case, she focuses on the blessing of having a daughter to share conversations, board games, TV shows, and laughter with. As well as the capacity to pursue her own talents and skills (she’s an incredible photographer).
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Into Motherhood: A monthly photo + poem series inspired from authentic interviews with everyday moms.
Meet Lindsay
Lindsay and her husband welcomed their darling daughter, Jo, in the spring of 2020. It was an anxious time for many of us, but especially so for Lindsay, who had to face the unknowns of a pandemic while caring for a newborn.
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“To pull back the curtains and give an intimate window into the true inner workings of a home.
Into the domestic. Into the motherhood.
Into the real and relatable and everyday drama and romanticism of the kitchen table, the floor mat, the bedroom, the yard.”
I started reading The Color Monster, In My Heart, and My Many Colored Days with Rufus when he was very little. As he became more verbal, I would pause after each page or feeling and tell him of a time or a situation that made me feel that way and then ask him if he could think of a time. I really think that reading these books this way made space for us to talk about feelings, and name what he was thinking. Now he still loves those three books, but the Star Wars Search Your Feelings book brought the topic up in a category that he is super interested in. The Boy with Big Big Feelings is incredible and I love how it highlights that people with big feelings will also feel nostalgia and happiness in big overwhelming ways as well.
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The Struggle to Get in Front of the camera
When Rufus was almost a year old I scheduled family photos to be taken with the ever lovely Lora Grady. I ended up postponing those pictures for a week. One week turned into two, turned into three. Suddenly it was a month later and I still didn’t feel ready. I was waiting to lose weight, see if my thin hair would thicken back up, have the perfect outfit. I was waiting for a magic day when I would feel great about myself. I am lucky my photographer was also by bff, and she gently encouraged me (ie forced) me into photos. I haven’t looked back since.
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Motherhood is wanting to read books and cuddle my almost four year old forever. To press his little face against mine and kiss him and listen to his wild imagination. It is pride at a new word, a new friend made, a new song sung. It is wanting him to grow no bigger so that I can always hold his weight in my arms and feel his body fit against mine. Motherhood is also losing my patience when he asks for one more song, one more story, sixty-nine more minutes of cuddling before shutting his eyes and giving me a respite from the demands and questions that his quick little mind supplies endlessly. It is impatience and frustration at shoes not put on, meals left untouched, being told “no one loves you and that’s the truth.”
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