Okay I need you to understand who I was before all this.
Because I wasn’t out here struggling. I wasn’t somebody who needed saving or figuring out. I had myself together. For real together, not Instagram together, actually together.
My son was a year and a half and I said you know what, I’m going to open a daycare. In my house. While pregnant.
And before you say anything, it worked. A whole year of it working. Other people’s kids at my door before the sun was even up, my son running around, me growing an entire human being inside my body, and I was running it. All of it. And I knew who I was inside of it.
You know that feeling when you’ve figured something out and you can just feel it? Like your feet are under you and yeah it’s hard but you’re solid? That was me.
So when I found out I was pregnant again I was like, okay. I know hard. Hard and I are already acquainted. We’ve met. We’ve had words. I know how to handle hard.
What I did not know, and I really wish somebody had pulled me to the side and said this, is that a new baby doesn’t just add to your life.
She takes over the whole channel.
Like you ever been watching your show and somebody just grabs the remote and puts on something completely different and now you can’t even remember what you were watching before? That’s what happened. My daughter grabbed the remote. And the channel I had been watching, the one where I knew the plot, knew the characters, knew exactly where things were going, just switched.
And I couldn’t find the remote.
So I did what I always do. I kept going. Kept the daycare. Kept my son. Kept my daughter. Kept the house. Kept the whole operation running because that’s just what I do and somebody has to and it was going to be me.
I just didn’t keep myself.
Not on purpose. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to disappear. It was more like, you know when you’re cleaning out your purse and you’re pulling things out and setting them aside and then you get distracted and you never put everything back? And then weeks later you’re looking for something and you realize it never made it back in?
That’s what happened to me.
I got set aside.
And the wild part is nobody even noticed because I was still out here functioning. Still showing up. Still handling everything. The woman disappearing was doing too good a job for anyone to see her go.
Until one day I’m standing in my own house, in my own life, surrounded by everything I built and everybody I love, and something in me just got real quiet and real honest.
Wait. Who even am I right now?
Not a person.
A function.
The one who handles it. The one who stays. The one who keeps going because somebody has to and everybody already knows it’s going to be her.
This book is about finding my way back.
And if you’ve ever stood in the middle of your own life and not recognized yourself, it’s about finding your way back too.