Big hugs to you mamas out there.

With Mother’s Day right around the corner, I’m taking a wander back through the years to when I became a mama. And thinking on the ways in which mama-ing and farming are intertwined and connected.

If you’re a mama, you know how everything changes once you have a little one join the family. Your time is no longer just yours, your body is no longer just yours, your dreams no longer just involve you! It’s an exciting, scary, and beautiful time.

The first night Llewyn was with us after an amazing morning birth he nursed continuously from 9 pm until 4 am. At one point I went back into our bedroom (I had made up a snuggle/nursing/area at the top of the stairs that had good lighting and felt cozy and airy at the same time), laid tiny Llewyn on the bed, and said to Jason, “I can’t do this.” He looked at me and said gently, “you have to, you're his mama”

Holy crap! Yes, he was right.

The next morning I relayed to my midwife the nursing marathon in hopes to get some sort of sympathy. None there either. She cheered and said, “Great!”.

Seriously?! Do you know what it’s like to nurse continuously for 7 hours?!

One of many sweet baby snuggles.

As I look back, that first night became good training, and a good metaphor, for parenting, for farming, and for life.

There are always things that come up that seem impossible, that you “just can’t do”. Until you do them. And then, you’re like - OK!

In farming, you’re considered a “beginning farmer” whether you have 0-10 years of farming experience. So after 9 years of farming, you are still a beginner! For some reason, I like this. It keeps you humble and makes mistakes and failures feel more acceptable. Because even though failures happen at every level of expertise, they are especially OK when you’re a beginner.

For some reason, I think of parenting in the same light - at 6 years in, I am still a beginner. Lighten up on yourself! Give yourself a break! You just started this journey! And it is not easy. Though at the same time it is beautiful and tender and joyful and fun.

So to all you mamas out there (beginner, intermediate, and expert): here’s to this incredible journey! It’s OK to make mistakes and to have failures. It’s OK to feel anything and everything about your mothering experience.

When Llewyn was born I was gifted with an incredible community of new mamas. We’d gather weekly in a small room in the back of a baby-mama retail store to talk about some deep stuff, all facilitated by a pre or post-partum professional. They weren’t scared to get us to talk real and open up. We spent two entire sessions telling our birth stories.

We talked about ALL the fears, the self-doubt, the partner frustrations, the loss of self, the nitty-gritty hard stuff. And what I learned the most was that all these feelings were NORMAL. Nothing was wrong with me or anyone else in the class. And by sharing we were helping everyone else feel normal too.

As I grow as a person in my business I’m learning this too - the hard feelings of business and life are normal! It’s not normal to feel good all the time. It’s OK to feel scared, to have self-doubt. As silly as this sounds, I didn’t know this! I thought everyone around me was just cruising through life happy and content and thoroughly self-confident. While I was the only one feeling ALL the feels.

So to wrap up this pre-Mother’s Day ramble, I just want you to know: you’re not alone. In your mama-ing, in your doubt, in your fears, in your dream-chasing, in your disappointments.

It’s awesome to celebrate the joy and love in life. LET’S CELEBRATE!

It’s also awesome to voice the hard stuff. Because it makes it feel less hard and makes us feel more connected. And who doesn’t want that?!

Me and a sleepy new-born Llewyn walking the road by our WIsconsin farm in 2015.