A lot of people know that I found out I was pregnant super late in my pregnancy {hey 27 weeks prego} and it was {clearly} a surprise. Disclaimer: My son is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Period. He changed my life and I love being his mom more than I love breathing.
But I’m going to let y’all in on a little secret: I don’t want him to be an only child. I never have. And it’s been my biggest fear since I found out I was pregnant. Not the fact that I had 3 months to prepare for motherhood, but that I didn’t want this newly-learned-about baby to not have a sibling one day.
It was always a thought in the back of my head, but 2.5 years ago it really hit hard. My three best friends, not casual acquaintances you happen to be friends with on IG, but my three best friends, Callan’s aunties, the women who have carried me through every phase of life…they all had babies in 2018 just a couple of months apart.
And do not get me wrong here. I was and am COMPLETELY overjoyed for them, and oh my goodness, I absolutely love getting to be Auntie Allison. Truly, Aunt Life is the best life because they go home at the end of the night. Just saying.
But…at the same time, I battled with the sadness that came over me within that season.
I was so mad at myself for a long time because I felt that way. I convinced myself that I was being selfish, until I realized what I wasn’t doing… I wasn’t grieving the lost dream of sharing this experience with them. You see, “my plan” was that when they were ready to have babies, I would be ready to have another and we would all have babies together. Clearly, that is not how things went and it started to crush me. So I hid that inside, thinking I shouldn’t have those feelings.
Friends, let me tell you this… IT IS NORMAL. You had a dream or desire or plan that meant so much to you and it didn’t happen, and that is painful. That is acknowledged. But here is what you have to do: you have to grieve the dreams that you lose. You absolutely, one thousand percent, have to, or they will eat you alive.
So that’s what I did. I grieved that lost dream. I sat in it. I cried in it. I allowed myself to feel the depth of that lost dream/desire of my heart.
You must take the time and allow this for yourself. Feel the feels. Grieve the grieves. You’ll thank yourself later for freeing yourself from what you didn’t know you were trapping yourself in.
