I have a useless degree in creative writing and am a sort-of stay-at-home mom by day. I say sort-of because the kids and I are rarely at home. (I don't like how my laundry pile taunts me.) I'm a firm believer in a slow, beautiful, messy creative childhood. Childhood is not a race and this is one of our top family mantras along with always be kind. We're about three paces away from being Kumbaya all of the time.
I'm politically passionate and unapologetically left leaning. I wear my Social Justice Warrior badge as a badge of honor. I'm an oversharer by nature which means if you're behind me in the grocery store, you're probably going to hear about my husband's vasectomy or the time pregnancy gave me some really, really unfortunate hemorrhoids and the super handsome OB on call was the one who had to break the news to me.
Our daughter, Wylie, was diagnosed in utero towards the end of my pregnancy with a fatal set of congenital heart defects. Her diagnosis was a shock to us all, as was the unexplained secondary infertility diagnosis I was given following her passing. No parent should ever have to walk through a funeral home trying to select an urn for their beloved baby instead of through a baby clothing store for coming home outfit. My life will forever be spent wondering who Wylie would have been and the ache of not knowing is one that you never shed. Always knowing we wanted to adopt down the line, my husband and I put off all plans for medically assisted conception and instead threw ourselves headfirst into the adoption process. Because my life has a funny way of being all chaos, all of the time, a few months later we received a phone call that we were chosen to parent. This was the same phone call that told us our daughter, Carmen, was unexpectedly born a few weeks early and was here already. I'm open about the ups and downs that we've navigated on our road to growing our family and a walking Friendly Reminder that families are grown in so, so many different ways.
In my spare time (I say that with a wink to my fellow mamas with the unwashed mom buns and torn leggings), I co-run Kids and Coffee Clothing with a friend.
