1. It’s ok to love your child utterly and not cherish every moment (even when people offer *helpful* tips like “soak up every minute! Enjoy the easy days while they last!”). Embracing the paradox = the secret to parenting. And life.
2. There is no “getting back” to who you were. Normal is dead. You are at the intersection of a homecoming and a becoming on your way to your favorite self yet.
3. You will have 1 million creative ideas, and no time to execute. Just put them in whatever containers you can find. Your creativity loves you and will wait for you.
4. The memo society gives us: we want your babies, but we don’t want the woman you become birthing them.
5. Thus: you must do everything you can to fight for the woman you came home to when you gave birth. She knows things.
6. Another bad memo: when you get pregnant, you get to feel the hunger you have been prohibited from your entire life. But then you must bottle that hunger back up because it is v. dangerous. Because inside the hunger of women is the map of the new world.
7. Buy yourself every piece of soft clothing you have been waiting your entire life to wear and do not look back.
8. When you are at capacity or holding a wriggling child and someone is trying to explain something complex, say: “Thanks! But I don’t have the bandwidth for this right now.”
9. Your middle-of-the-night thoughts are as valid as your daytime thoughts. Maybe more so. The moon is a next-level thought partner.
10. Why are there no hacks for laundry and dishes? The dishwasher does not count.
11. As impossible as it may seem, do what you can to keep listening to your soul, your body, the little girl inside of you. They need you too.
12. Audio content is the greatest invention in the world. To all the podcasters out there—know that somewhere there is a mother who is carrying on because of you.
13. Your heart will never go back inside your body.
I laugh about 10x more than I used to. Sometimes I am also crying. It’s all so ravishingly tender the way this tiny, incomparable being is rearranging us.
