Holding Both

Grief, gratitude, and the remaking of a mother

The postpartum season asks much of us —
more than the world often sees,
more than we knew we could carry.

It asks us to grieve
the self we left in the delivery room,
the body that once felt familiar,
the hours of uninterrupted sleep
that will not return the same.

It asks us to celebrate, too —
to find wonder in a milk-drunk smile,
in fingers curling around our own,
in the weight of love
that feels both heavy and holy.

It asks us to rest,
though rest comes in fragments,
in stolen minutes between cries,
in the slow exhale of rocking chairs
and darkened rooms.

It asks us to rise,
again and again —
to meet the dawn with swollen eyes,
to hold steady when our arms are trembling,
to believe that showing up is enough.

It asks us to feel undone,
like a thread pulled loose,
like a heart stretched beyond its seams.

And yet —
it remakes us in the unraveling,
teaching us that becoming a mother
is not about perfection,
but about presence.

Postpartum is the season of holding both —
the grief and the gratitude,
the fatigue and the ferocity,
the breaking and the becoming.

And in this fragile, holy in-between,
we learn the deepest truth of all:

that love, though costly,
is always worth the weight.

Finding her way through this season,
Rose