“Energy cannot be created or destroyed”

It cannot be created. It cannot be destroyed. A law of thermodynamics.

You told me this when I was young, at a time when I didn’t realize it would be the only thing to bring me peace with the ever passing of time after your physical body left this earth. Where does our life force go when the lights go off? And the energy leaves our shell?

I believe it becomes one with the cosmos. And that is why I feel you in the stars.

I like to imagine your spirit shape shifting through the vast universe, making your way to me as often as you can – in my dreams, in my moments of despair, in the little signs that are just too perfect to be a coincidence. Your love for me transcends time and space, as does mine for you.

I love you, and will into eternity.

Our purpose in life isn’t random
Our dreams are made from the elements of
Our soul
Our passions
Our experiences
Our God given gifts

My dream to become a Mother has been in my bones since before I can remember
But it isn’t just biology
My dream was built on my infinite capacity for love
It was built on my naturally nurturing soul
It was built on my caring nature
And compassion I hold for all
The grit I have to persevere in hard times
And the confidence in myself to tenderly raise a human
In this world, that while beautiful, is not without cruelty and suffering
A human who could meet that world both strength
And a heart for love, too

I was in a marriage
That was akin to two puzzle pieces forcing themselves to fit
That made me feel alone, even when in the same room
And as years passed – so did our shared dream of parenthood
He no longer desired children, with me at least
Nothing crushes a soul more than a broken dream
And I questioned; how will I move past this
How will I ever be blessed enough to have a love required
To make my dream a reality

But our soul’s desires don’t fade
I managed the courage to leave
No matter how shaky I was packing those bags
And calling that lawyer
And going on dates: something I never thought I would ever do again

To my surprise
The love I’d been seeking for a decade
Was waiting all along
And the surprise of a lifetime
Turned into my dream of a lifetime
As I type this, watching my little miracle fast asleep
My sonshine will rise again this morning
The light of my dream sitting right in front of me
Will never cease to amaze me

Dear 8.1 billion of you that I share this planet with:

The vast majority of you I will never meet. We walk separate paths that statistically – will simply never cross in a meaningful way. To the one waking up on the opposite side of earth than me today. To the one I see on the news. To the one who made a TikTok that made me giggle but I’ll never remember your name. To the one who took their child to the very same park I took my son to hours later, but never met.

We live in an era where we’re more connected than ever, and also more divided than ever. The media spins a tale that we are so very different from one another. And yes, it is somewhat true – we are different. We have different backgrounds, different privileges, different beliefs; but one thing remains more true:

We are more similar than we are different.

In another life, that girl you look down upon could be your best friend. In a parallel universe, the homeless man you silently judge on the street corner could be your brother. In an alternate reality, an older woman bagging your groceries could be your grandmother. If there was a glitch in the matrix, that infant crying in the seat next to you on the flight could be your own child.

We are all human beings with beating hearts. If you were to sit down and have a conversation with an individual you think couldn’t be more unlike yourself, I bet you would leave that conversation feeling otherwise.

We are more similar than we are different, and that is beautiful.

I am 29 years 6 months and 22 days old.
Yet despite my youth and what I can only hope to be the late morning of my lifetime – I have been a thousand different people.
And certainly, not all of them have been easy to love.
Or really even tolerate.

There is me as an innocent child collecting crabs on the shore.
Then a pre-teen, taking the wheel of the car on the way home from school because he was too intoxicated to safely drive. Sitting on his chest in protest waiting for my Mom to get home from work after he told me in the most loving tone that he was about to commit suicide in our basement because life hurt too much.

Going to Weight Watchers before I got my period, because my body was already wrong.
Going to fat camp, but feeling devastated when I realized fat camp didn’t fix my body.
There is me standing in front of the mirror naked staring at my stretch marks and budding breasts and hating everything I saw.

The adolescent whose Father died on a cold winter day.
A day I refused to hug him when asked, out of anger and teen angst.
There is also the version of me that grew to carry that choice with me as my deepest regret to this day.
The teen who got more angsty after his passing, angry at the universe, who snuck out and dated men over a decade older than me because surely no boy my age could understand me.

I think of the determined college student I became. Starry eyed and falling in love. The bride on her bachelorette party who got a little (okay, a lot) too drunk at a winery. The passionate young adult starting her career. The young twenty something helping her bestfriend move. Me who I would consider a good friend and wife.

Then there is a psychotic version of me, stripping down into a hospital gown for a psych ward stay while male staff sexually harassed me, and a counselor taking me to the “sensory room” to calm down.
Me stuck there for weeks that felt like an eternity as I questioned my reality.
Me whose trauma filled mind and heart became so engrossed in misery that the goodness previously described seemed to dissipate.
There is the me that didn’t believe in divorce.
Me who now does.

Stealing morphine left over from my family member’s time on hospice to numb myself and play Russian roulette with my life, just to see what would happen and if the lights would turn off.
Now there is me who is grateful for faulty light switches.

There is late twenty me who decided to burn the whole house down, metaphorically, to build an entirely new one.
This version of me is strong, resilient, and liberated.
Me who decided to travel where I wanted and when I wanted.
Who fucked a stranger in the ocean and jumped out of an airplane.
Who fucked another person I had just met and got pregnant by surprise, but fell in love with.

Next there is me when I took the form of a Mother.
Watching in awe as my body changed; both in ways I found joyful and in other ways I found (and still do find) hard to accept.
Me who rocked my newborn to sleep while I tried not to fall asleep myself.
The version of me who watches Lion King while I watch my now toddler soak in life.
Me whose heart could explode with love for a little boy I didn’t know I needed.
This is my favorite iteration of myself thus far.

The same me sobbed when I thought my Mom had cancer.
And then when she didn’t – stared at her selfies and glowing effervescent smile in Iceland to see the Northern Lights (because cancer scares light a fire to check some things off of your bucket list).
The me who still grieves her in advance, because I’m all too familiar with the hole that losing a parent leaves.

There is current me who is both empowered and still ashamed to detail all of these iterations of “me”.
I am a living scrapbook.
Some pages are beautiful, and others are hard to look at.
It is striking and messy simultaneously.
When I ponder, “Do I love myself?”, a film plays in my head displaying scenes of the people I have been.
There have been times I found it impossible to “love” the current version of myself, but as I sit here in this moment – I do.
Not only that, but I can find love for the past versions of myself now, as well, for her determination to grow.