Hello everyone! I hope whoever stumbles across this page feels welcomed. I hope you can read my experiences and relate. Growing up, I often felt like I didn't belong, like I didn't hold value. From a young age, I was viewed as an inconvenience. My childhood wasn't the best, but it definitely wasn't the worst. Growing up in a world where you were an inconvenience makes a lot of things hard. It makes it hard to feel stable, to feel loved, or to feel valued.

Becoming a mother has been the best, yet loneliest thing I have ever done. I finally found what it felt like to truly love something. It's not the same as loving your spouse, or the rest of your family. Becoming a mother was so hard because in that moment, I realized I shouldn't have been an inconvenience. In that moment you realize how valuable a child really is, and how much you could no longer imagine your life without them. It can be incredibly isolating. No one warns you that once you have kids your friends disappear. Now your life doesn't align with theirs, so now it seems as if you have nothing in common. After you have a child you return back to work, but no one prepares you to feel so empty inside. Leaving behind your baby is the most heartbreaking thing to experience. Sure, they're safe with a babysitter, or at a daycare, but are they really safe? Does whoever that is watching them view my baby as an inconvenience? In my case, I was blessed with a mother-in-law who loves babies and who was able to watch my baby while I was at work. That never really helped me though. My anxiety was crippling. In the back of my head, I constantly heard a "what if...?". Of course I was always reassured, but it felt like no one understood why I felt the way that I felt, which was even more isolating.

Around the time my daughter turned one, my husband and I decided it was time to try for a second baby. Shortly before my daughter turned two, her great grandfather on her father's side passed away. He was truly an amazing person. He left my husband with his home. My husband and I decided that since we had been blessed with such a beautiful home, maybe I didn't need to work. Shortly after I quit my job... which probably wasn't the best idea at the time. We hadn't sold our current home; little did we know it would sit on the market for almost two years before we decided to just rent it out.

After I delivered our son, I was now outnumbered. My husband usually works five to six days a week, often times out of town. Luckily, he stays close enough home that he can drive to and from work, but the drive time adds to him not being home. Here I am, alone, with a two-year-old and a newborn. I had no idea what to do with myself, or how to juggle their schedules. On top of that, I had to maintain our home. After I had my son, I felt some sort of guilt for my daughter. I had this fear that she thought she wasn't good enough. I feared about everyone showing the new baby all of the attention. I went out of my way to include her to ensure she knew she is enough and always would be. Anxiety is a tricky thing. It feeds you so many lies constantly, it's exhausting.

After I had two kids, I no longer got alone time. If my mother-in-law helped me with the kids, it usually consisted of either just taking one of them or taking them both for short periods of time so I could go to doctor appointments. My husband helped when he could, but he was never home. Once my youngest started crawling it was pure chaos. He seemed to never sleep, so he would be up from 4 A.M. to about 11 to 12 P.M. Of course he took naps throughout the day, but I had to keep an eye on my oldest, so I wasn't able to. Most days I ran on four hours of sleep, no showers, hungry, and alone. I truly am blessed, I couldn't imagine working during that period. Something I didn't learn growing up is that you can't pour from an empty cup. Sometimes you have to put yourself before others, or else it can be truly damaging mentally. Me not taking care of myself lead to me slacking on those around me. I didn't have the energy to go above and beyond; I was in survival mode. I am finally coming out of it, I still don't have friends, or help, but I am mentally in a better place. My hope for this blog is to spread awareness of what mothers go through. I want to help other's feel better knowing that they aren't alone. It might not be great now, but it does get better.