Wallflower Writing

“People will be disappointed in me.”
“People won’t need me anymore.”
“People will see I’m not enough.”

That’s what growing up in chaos can do to you. It can make you question yourself in ways you don’t even realize you’re carrying.

When home means yelling, silence, or never knowing what mood you’re walking into, you learn to stay ready.

You learn to keep moving. To overthink everything. To make yourself small, helpful, and easy, because somewhere along the way, that started to feel safer.

I learned early how to listen for the sound of a car pulling into the driveway. Not because I was excited to see who was coming home, but because I needed to anticipate what was coming next.

I learned to read footsteps. The tone of a voice. The feeling in the air. I learned when to be quiet, when to help, when to make myself useful, and when to disappear.

I thought if I could just do enough, be good enough, need less, and cause fewer problems, maybe things would stay calm.

So I became the child who noticed everything.
The child who anticipated needs before I ever learned how to understand my own. The child who cleaned without being asked. The child who tried to make everything easier, no matter what “everything” was.

The child who learned that being helpful felt safer than having needs.

I didn’t know I was learning survival. I thought I was learning how to be loved.

I realize that some of the things I thought made me worthy of love were actually the ways I learned to protect myself.

But I know now, you are allowed to be loved when you are not performing. You are allowed to matter when you are not solving a problem. You are allowed to be needed for who you are, not just for what you provide.

You are allowed to simply exist and still be worthy of love.

For every person whose inner child still cringes at the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, for the one who rolls over when headlights appear outside the window, I want you to know this: You don’t have to brace yourself for what’s coming through the door.

You don’t have to jump up and prove you are worthy of being here.

You are allowed to sit in your own peace.
You are allowed to feel safe in the life you built.

This is your driveway now.

A few years ago, a colleague-turned-friend recommended her OBGYN to me.

Last year, we found ourselves walking parallel paths. We were both trying for our second babies, and unfortunately would both experience the quiet heartbreak of miscarriage.

When I saw two pink lines again last year, I returned to that OB to confirm my good news.

I sat in the waiting room, holding my breath. I wanted to protect this hope and I thought about texting my friend. Instead, they called my name quickly. I followed the nurse through the familiar hallway.

The ultrasound was first, and the technician smiled as she told me to go ahead and empty my bladder before starting. When I did, I saw blood.

Everything shifted. I knew what it meant before anyone said the words.

Through my tears and theirs, we did the ultrasound anyway, and a blood draw to confirm what my body had already begun to understand, which was that my pregnancy was ending.

The numbers were not rising. They were falling. And everything in me felt like it was falling too.

I couldn’t hold back tears at the checkout desk, clutching paperwork I didn’t want.

And that’s when I saw my friend, right there in the waiting room. Her husband sat beside her, my first indication of her good news. Eyes full of hope.

The same office. The same day. Just minutes apart.

I walked over, and we spoke, just briefly. She didn’t know what had happened, not yet.

But I did. I could feel the ending wrapped around me while she was still sitting in the beginning.

And that small moment, I was carrying the *fullness* of the same ache that she had once carried too.

Nothing prepares you for that kind of ache, for miscarrying in the same office your friend is beginning in.

For standing between two worlds at 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday.

For joy and sorrow brushing shoulders in the waiting room.

But what I’ve come to understand is that happiness and heartbreak are not opposites. They are companions.

They often live in the same places, in the same stories, the same silence, the same spaces where life begins and ends and yes, sometimes even in the same waiting room.

And they can only be held and honored when we talk about them and stop pretending that one must exist without the other.

Our joy deserves to be celebrated. Our grief deserves to be spoken. And both deserve care.

Sometimes the recommendation you get from a friend turns into space held for you and space held for them.

There is room for both, and room for every woman in the waiting room.😭💙🙏

Our 5th grader went away for her very first overnight camp, and I wasn’t prepared for how much this would hit me.

Twenty-one days postpartum, still very much in the thick of healing, hormones, and figuring out life with a newborn… and now this quiet where she should be.

It’s her first night somewhere I didn’t carefully choose, with people I don’t know, in a place where I can’t peek in, ask questions, or make sure she’s okay in all the small ways mothers do without even thinking. And that lack of control is loud.

I texted the mom across the street if she was volunteering  and she said yes, and that she had a little struggle dropping her 5th grader off too. I asked if she could peek on my daughter, and she said yes and she did to see that…she seemed to be having fun.

I keep picturing her…brave, excited, probably laughing with friends and I’m so proud of her I could burst. And still, there’s this ache. This deep, familiar ache of motherhood that says, “stay small a little longer,” even while knowing she’s meant to grow.

She’s ready for this. I can see that clearly.
*I’m* the one learning how to be.

Tonight feels like a tiny preview of all the letting go that’s ahead. And maybe it’s hitting harder because everything in me right now is wired to hold my babies closer.

So I’m sitting in it. The pride. The worry. The quiet. The love that stretches across distance whether I like it or not.

She’s out there becoming a little more of herself.
And I’m here learning, again, how to let her.

But I know if I do it right, she will always come back to me.

-W.W🌼🌻

Mesh panties. Cold pack adult-sized diapers. Pads and peri bottles…things no one puts on a baby registry. The quiet fear before the baby arrives, or the immediate aftermath of labor and delivery. This is the side of having a baby no one really talks about.

The fourth trimester begins before you have time to process what just happened after 9 months of aversions or cravings, morning sickness, and no sleep. People talk about the nursery, the clothes, the car seat, the tiny fingers and sleepy snuggles. Not as much about the rebirth of a mother.

Day and night started to blur around month 7 of pregnancy. There is physical pain and mental rage. Only sleeping on your hips because your body is housing a little being and back sleep is forbidden. Charlie horses waking you from the little sleep you do get. Waiting until you stop hemorrhaging after L&D to lay on your belly. Sitting on stitches and fighting the “bounce back” culture.

The anxiety hums in the background of everything, reminding you not to eat that sushi, to double-think Tylenol. The painful, strategic rolls to get out of bed.

Praying daily that your baby makes it.
Holding gratitude and fearing the unknown in tandem.

It’s not just preparing the home for the new arrival of a baby. Or my heart. Or my arms. It’s preparing my body for the metamorphosis of me. For soreness, bleeding, or exhaustion that lives in your bones. For the strange, uncomfortable work of healing after bringing life into the world. The fog that comes from broken sleep. It’s becoming the person who would take all of that in stride just to be a mother.

Birth doesn’t end when the baby arrives. Because you don’t just give birth to a baby, you birth a new version of yourself. One who is stretched and tender. One who is learning her limits while somehow expanding beyond them. One who heals while holding someone entirely dependent on her healing.

It is discomfort and devotion living side by side.
Sacrifice wrapped in love.

The part no one really talks about is that somewhere between the mesh panties and the pain, you don’t come out of this the same.

And you’re not supposed to. ⚡🌼🦋

Wallflower Photos and Wallflower Writing

Wallflower Writing

You deserve better love.

My mom and dad met at alcoholics anonymous. Not exactly a Cinderella story. But I survived.

Eventually, my dad died from the long-term side effects of a drug overdose. Or an actual overdose. There is a fine line between the truth and his truth. And honestly, I never want to know the difference.

Before I was 16, my mother became estranged from me and by the time I was 18, I was estranged from her.

Sometimes even when the world says the opposite, our life experiences will chain us to a life sentence.

When I was going to middle school there was a guidance counselor who always had her eyes on my family. Weekly visits to her office which I always thought was counterproductive since I was being pulled out of class.

But, when you’re in a bad situation you don’t always know it.

You can’t always see for yourself that the hand that feeds you sometimes doesn’t always have your best interest in my mind.

Or even, that the hand that feeds you is not the only way to survive.

When you’re from a broken home, you search hard in every nook and cranny for goodness. Almost hard-wired to be better. You hold tighter to nuances of hope wherever you can get them. You stitch them up in your soul so you can be the one to wrap goodness around everyone and everything that comes your way.

But putting a blanket over a problem doesn’t make a problem go away.

Not even one that’s stitched in goodness.

There’s so much to be said about getting the help that you need. So much humility in admitting that it takes more than years of being strong to survive.

There is just much more to living than just repeating techniques which we used to survive. 
There is love to be had, if only we let love in.

We can do better when we know better,
but we are not always taught to know better.
It is up to us to re-wire. To get better.

Healing is not forgetting where you have been. Healing is taking back the love that didn’t get in.

So much of who we are was decided for us, but it is up to us to choose differently.

You don’t just inherit the chains you are given.Eventually, you set yourself free.🌾

-Wallflower Writing

#vulnerableshare #ptsd #recovering #bekind #mystory #wallflower #healing #freedom

Listening is truly a rare artform. Do you listen? Or do you just wait for your turn to speak? Do you listen to my eyes? Read my wrinkles? Hear my tones? Feel my cadence? Study my beats? Are you listening? Or are you just waiting for your turn to speak?

It’s probably time to toggle off the automatic rebuttal. Put your phone down and pick your head up. Push aside your “self”. Quit putting mental energy into forming a response. Meet and greet with grace. Listen with compassion and intention at every encounter in between. Look into my eyes, don’t just read my lips.

Be an active listener. It is only when you listen that you hear the cries that call us to change the world. Because when you take the time to LISTEN, you will see that someone having that intense and vulnerable experience of being heard, looks just like love.

We are only human. We are hard-wired to care about ourselves and to serve ourselves. It does not make us bad people, but it does mean we could probably use a little fine-tuning. And maybe we could all use just a little bit more of that love.

So I ask you to take it with you and think about it. Are you truly listening or are you just waiting for your turn to speak?