We wrote letters for years, regularly in our early to mid teens and then less so as we got older. At 18 I moved to university and then on to varying towns and cities and though our letters became less regular the foundation had been laid.

A stranger at the store or the doctor’s office squealing, “Oh twins! I’ve always wanted twins” as I fail to muster up similar enthusiasm. The feeling of exhausted dismay, as I remembered the admonition to “sleep when the baby sleeps”, but what do you do when there are two of them and one of them is always awake?

It started on a whim: I decided to take a sober month. I didn’t have any specific reasons or concerns about drinking. Or at least I hadn’t acknowledged them yet.

My kids have shown me how the right outlook and a little encouragement can achieve all manner of things someone more closed off might deem impossible.

So, while there are a million more unknowns that will come my way, I will continue to dance. In grief, in joy, in prayer, while I’m folding laundry or putting away dishes. Whether or not the world makes sense to me.

Now that I am a mother, I sometimes think back to that time in my life when things were carefree and easy — when my spunky side was front and center.

I fell in love with a man who has always been comfortable being himself. I think that’s one of the reasons I fell in love with him so quickly. I, on the other hand, haven’t always been able to say the same about myself. I think back to the “old” me who would change her clothes and sometimes even her personality for someone else.

Becoming a mother helped me to become more whole. It helped my broken parts find homes while walking through fire. Fire, the creator of life, ushered my son into this world, but it also formed his mother. My walk through pregnancy was not an easy walk, as it is not for many.

It was a Friday, and we were told to use the afternoon to prepare our lessons digitally for the next two weeks and to get what we needed out of our classrooms. At that point, there was no timeline for our return. All that any of us knew was that we didn’t know.

Only children are easily stereotyped as spoiled, selfish, and socially awkward but also praised for their self-sufficiency, maturity, and independence.

I gave up on my career and myself and turned my attention to our future. His friends told him I was the marrying kind and we got engaged. He got promoted. The mirror told me I was old enough. But at 26, I had stopped growing.

2 of my 3 children are extroverts. They love being social, they love being around other people, and my son could talk the ears off a field of corn. Don’t get me wrong, I love them with every fiber of my being. I just don’t want to be around them sometimes.

I'm angry that all it took was one little pill to make my life more manageable but it took seven years to find it. I'm angry that some of my issues have never been diagnosed and are untreated to this day. I am angry that every movement I make toward becoming more active again, results in a set back.

I was alone, single for nearly a decade, and a middle aged empty nester. The children were off at university. I went home to an empty apartment each night, and I was miserable.

For over a year, I have been working with a therapist whom I have never met. Over fifty hours spent divulging to her my innermost secrets and fears, revealing so much of the rawness of who I am, and I have yet to sit in her company.

Self-care is a popular topic these days. Self-care this. Self-care that. Extravagant vacations are self-care. Luxurious baths are self-care. Buying moderately expensive gourmet ice cream to eat in a blanket cocoon on your couch is self-care.

I always thought that by the time I became a mom, I’d feel confident in my body. In the almost ten years since my first daughter was born, however, I have struggled with body image.

Journaling is such a powerful habit. In my life, journaling has been a constant companion. Writing has always been the tether that connects me to my truth.

Growing up as a mixed-race child in 80s London, the narrative that black was bad seeped into the pores of my brown skin. The racism I experienced was rarely overt, that is not the British way, but it was a regular and insistent knocking against my young identity.

“I have to do what?” Standing in the doorway, wind and altitude doing nothing to help my nerves. They say I’m prepared, that I’ll be okay, that I know how to pull the ‘chute string. I wanted this. But I’m scared. Since when is stepping in harder than stepping out?