February 26, 2019
Dear Bean,
It’s been two days since I found out about you. I’m not sure how to explain to you with any adequacy the conflict I have felt in the past 48 hours. Because this is not what I had planned. I’m pretty sure that in the three weeks since you started becoming, I have said out loud at least twice, “I really don’t want kids.” I meant it. I did for such a long time, with all my heart, but I closed that door awhile ago. I learned to love new dreams, new possibilities, new ways of creating life and of mothering.
I don’t want kids. But from my very guts, I want YOU. Whoever you are and whoever you become, I want you. I’ve been talking to you since about five minutes after the stick lit up with the last word I expected it to say. Out loud in empty rooms, when it’s just the two of us, I’ve been stringing words together in your direction. Telling you about my day, about the weather, about something fabulous your daddy said or did that made me laugh until I cried.
It’s been a long road here, kid. You’re years late to the party, honestly. You really are my Bean in that way. But the truth is that you’re right on time. If I’d gotten you on my timetable, I wouldn’t have been me. I would have been a really good mama, but I wouldn’t have been me. I needed to grow up first, to become. To find my fire. I found my fire, little love, and as soon as I did—there you were.
I don’t know how to do this next part. But I know this:
From all my brightly lit up places, I will blaze a path in front of you. I will try to show you what it looks like when a spirit leans fully into its force-of-nature-ness. I will grant you permission slip after permission slip to slide into the cozy, worn-in sweater of who you are in your soul. I will not ask you to be small or quiet and if it turns out you just ARE small and quiet, I will celebrate the hell out of you that way, too.
I will not be perfect. I will not even try, or pretend to try. I will be good and lovely sometimes, and an epic disaster sometimes. The only thing I can promise you is that I will keep showing up in my imperfection, I will keep growing as a person, and I will apologize to you when I’m wrong. I will make amends. I will do the work to put things right.
I will love you, in part, by loving me. I will not have you walk this earth without a clear example of deep and relentless self-compassion, grace turned inward. I will give you the gift of not pretending my world revolves around you, so that you will know it’s not your job to make someone else your orbit. I will do you the kindness of letting myself trust that I am enough, in every moment, so that you feel safe to do the same.
I will not shame myself for the size of my body or the size of my soul or the size of my needs, for the moments when I have to ask for help, for how uncomfortably passionate I am, for being deeply human. I will not fill your childhood with a million reminders of all the things I need to be doing better, so that hopefully you won’t fill your adulthood with more of the same.
I will talk to you about God a lot. God as I have come to know God. I will tell you how you’re made of the same stuff, how you’re held by that divine kindness that I am only just beginning to know absolutely nothing about. God is nothing if not a constant unfolding of all the unbearably beautiful things we cannot grasp and wouldn’t have thought to ask for. God is nothing if not the magic of recklessly unconditional love. I will talk to you about God a lot.
Also, I will fuck ALL of this up. I will absolutely do every single one of the things I’m currently saying I won’t do, and not do every single one of the things I’m currently saying I will. I’ll let you watch me crash and burn, watch me stand up and try again. That’s important too, because you’ll need to know that life is forever tries. Nothing, no one is ever outside the scope of redemption.
I will love you with the force of a category five hurricane.
I will love your daddy with the force of a category five hurricane.
I will love our village of people with the force of a category five hurricane.
You are going to see so much love, kid. You are going to feel so very, very much love.
I am already so proud of you my spirit cannot hold it. You are already a full-scale revolution.
Love, Mama