Teacher / Mother / Writer - A Portfolio

There are many unfortunate situations where a mother isn’t present in her adult child’s life; she may have never been around or she may not have been know to her child, or she may have passed away. My situation is different because my mom is alive, but she’s not always present.  I know that there is nothing more she would want than to be present in my life consistently. Her granddaughter just turned 3 and is so much fun and she will soon welcome a new grandson in January. She has longed to be a grandmother for longer than she ever let on to me and these should be the best years of her life.  My mother suffers from mental illness. She battles depression, anxiety, and psychotic episodes.  Since 2000, she’s been in and out of hospitals and mental health facilities fighting this illness. She usually goes stretches of years without incident or symptoms and then, usually, out of the blue, we’ll notice that she’s not so talkative, she’s increasingly nervous, and...

If you’re a mom, I’m sure you remember preparing for the birth of your child. You may have written out a list or made mental notes of the necessities you’d need: clothes, a crib, bottles, bibs, toys, teethers; this list goes on. Even as I sit here as a mom of a toddler, I have things I need for myself and my daughter, like coffee, naptime at 1pm (of course I’m talking about her naptime...maybe lol, toilet training strategies, and behavior management and conflict resolution tips to handle tantrums and meltdowns.  When I was pregnant with my first child, most of things or ideas I mentioned above were on my mind as thought about what it would be like when my daughter arrived and what the first few years of her life would look like. But there was one thing I never considered and I didn’t know how crucial it would be until I experienced it. At this point in my parenting journey, with a toddler girl and a baby boy on the way, I have no ideas how I could function without ...