Life as Art

I can’t talk about the things that I love and bring so much beauty and complexity to my life without talking about family. Even the word “family” can mean so many things.

September 19, 2026

I was pregnant for the first time at 19 years old. I dreamt of my baby from the moment I learned I was pregnant until the day I went to the bathroom and realized I was miscarrying. While the realization itself was so painful, the physical and emotional torture of miscarriage was so agonizing I’m unsure I understood that actually giving birth and parenting were even more terrorizing.

Wow. My account likely makes it sound like I hate being a mom. I don’t. But I won’t lie – this shit is the worst, most painful/expensive/confusing/humiliating/pluck-my-eyeballs-out-please experience I have continually had in my entire life. And I don’t regret it! ::someone please call 9-8-8::

I had G when I was 20, about 18 months after I miscarried with my first pregnancy. Her dad and I were 20 years old and we got married 2 months after she was born. Then he left on a deployment and I nosedived into addiction for the following year. That’s just the truth and I won’t lie about it because the complexity of the human experience is what’s missing from mainstream content creation. Fuck that. The truth is that life is messy, we’re all imperfect and wrought with experiences that illicit shame. This happened. To glaze over that would mean I’d be embellishing and invalidating the experience my oldest child had in her early development. These truths shaped her sense of identity. I am in part responsible. I will own it publicly.

Her dad came home a year later, I figured my shit out, and then at the tender age of 21 and when G was just over a year old, I promptly became pregnant with my boy/girl twins, B and W. In 2009, I became a 22-year-old housewife with a 22-month-old daughter with newborn twins. What. The. Fuck.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked, “How did you do that?!” When I look back at that time, I often ask myself the same question. I remember the first time this question was posed. I was in the parking lot of my favorite Mexican restaurant – the restaurant my children’s father used to run to for flan and fried ice cream while I was pregnant with my first – and I was loading 2 newborns in carseats into my old Tahoe while G was screaming, writhing, and strapped into the middle seat. My ex was deployed and I just finished dinner with a group of friends. One of them was chatting with me while I was loading up the kids in the truck and she asked me, “How the fuck do you do it,” referencing the 3-ring-shit-show of keeping a number of babies alive independently. I remember looking deeply into my friend’s eyes and saying, “I don’t have a fucking choice”. It might be the most honest statement I’ve ever uttered. I also remember having that conversation resonate in my skull for days afterward and sobbing in solitude while my kids watched Yo Gabba Gabba and Backyardigans. I’m glad I’m not there anymore, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t equally existential moments currently.

Being a mother is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. After earning college degrees, buying homes, going through a couple divorces, and doing other “adult things”, I realized parenting is the one endeavor you can pour your heart and soul into without a guaranteed or expected return. When I was pregnant with G, I had fantasies of what it’d be like to be a mom, what my kids were going to be like if I did A, B, and C, and assumed if I was a really good mom that would mean my kids would turn out exactly how I expected. The reality is our children are actually just autonomous entities you are responsible to and biologically/spiritually/emotionally/neurologically attached to. Everything they do matters to you and you have zero control over how things turn out for them. What in the actual fuck. Seriously! It’s so fucked!

Woof.

So, anyway, I have a biological mother and father. My father died without me knowing him. My mother and I are not close. I have a range of closeness with my various siblings, 2 ex-spouses, plenty of folks I have devoted myself to throughout the years (most of whom have come and gone)… but I feel untethered to most people. I might get into those dynamics later. I might not.

Our biology as mammals dictate the reality that we depend on a pack; we cannot thrive in isolation, without being nurtured, without the support of a community. This can be difficult when you have unreliable pack members or when devastation has interfered. My pack is my children. G is now 19 and the twins will be 18 in March 2027. I cannot express the gratitude I have for my relationships with them enough. Throughout their lives, there have been periods of tension, misunderstanding, times where I have prioritized other relationships or have been headstrong in my objectives when those objectives have been antithetical to the connection I have with them. I’ve been a fallible and imperfect mother. But eventually, my humility and willingness to be transparent about my transgressions have earned me strong relationships with my pack. My people. My family. My children. There’s probably nothing I’m more grateful for. This page is for them. You might see and hear about other members of my beautiful family but when I talk about “family”, it’s mostly about G, B, and W.

One last thing – my children all share various traits of myself and their father. Sometimes I will have an experience with one of them and my brain makes the association between what’s in front of me and a moment or an expression their father or me have made in the past. I might not pause in a way that’s observable to others, but my brain takes a snapshot. My brain goes, “That’s familiar. That’s me. That’s him. I know this.” It’s the strangest fucking thing. My family is an extension of my existence. My family is the thing that’s made me feel so close to death I can’t believe I’m still here, and my family is the only reason I’m still here. G, B, W – as long as I’m alive, you’ll always know you are the most important people in the world to someone.