I got quite sad just now as I realized today is International Women’s Day and I don’t ha

I got quite sad just now as I realized today is International Women’s Day and I don’t have anything prepared. I so love talking about women …

And sadder still knowing that today is one of THOSE days. The kind where I barely got both feet into my three-day old sweatpants, am gulping down the coffee just to get it in me, while making sprints into my daughter’s room to resituate her a thousand-time dislodged pacifier. Apparently napping is so old school, and all the cool kids are now staying awake to see how long it takes to make a parent lose their shizz and spank a rhino.

But as I sit here, listening intently to Hazel’s whimpers so that I might know when to intervene or when to perhaps let her work it out, unable to cogitate anything beyond the most trivial of thoughts, it occurred to me that I have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to be sad about.

THIS is my work right now. This being I built with my blood and bones. This little soul entrusted to me for the time being. I am raising up this child. I am pouring my whole self into her so that I might one day put her into the world, kind and wise and gentle and fierce, someone who listens not only with her ears but with her heart, the kind of woman who carries other woman on her shoulders instead of stepping on or over them. A mover and faller and riser and be-er and hoper, and above all else a warrior for Love.

One day I will put this gift into the world, where she will be your sister, your daughter’s sister, a woman who has been loved deeply and well so that she can love deeply and well.

But not every gift comes ready-made.

Some gifts take a while. Years and years and years. So it is with motherhood. I will be making this gift for some time to come. Many days, this one included, my thoughts and endless gratitude for this community of exquisite women will have to wait.

But only because I am in the process of raising one.

Love on, my darlings. Love ON.