As I sit here drinking tea from a friend in Scotland, listening to music from a Texas born connection, looking through a book sent to me by a close friend from Vermont, watching the garden below me growing like my good friend in Norway and smelling a birthday cake baking for my in-one-day-one year old daughter I can’t help but to think of the village it’s taken to get me where I am today.

Somewhere before I even got pregnant I promised myself I wouldn’t let this space turn into a blog about motherhood. That I would keep it fertility and pregnancy based because, like most other fertility journey blogs they went on to become spaces to talk about cloth diapering and sleep training and first foods for baby. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate that transition, it was that I wanted to honour each and every future person that would be reading my words for months or years to come. I wanted the woman who was on her fertility journey to be able to come to this space at any time and know that there is the chance to make magic happen in our bodies. I feel like a big part of me has tried very hard to stay true to that promise. It’s inevitable that the things which are present for me change over time – what is happening now wasn’t happening then. It’s both the positive and the negative side to time passing.

It’s challenging for me because I truly want to help women – in any capacity, on any part of their very own journey. Lovefestjourney is officially just past the ripe age of 2 and that couldn’t make me happier. Seeing the progression of the way time moves is pure magic. I think as Aggie’s first birthday crept closer I was noticing more and more birthday posts and odes to all the other babes out there from their very own mama’s. I quickly realized that there was this passage of time that some feel they will never get back. And while I guess this is true (I’m pretty sure we still haven’t figured out how to time travel) I would like to honour the living in the moment–ness of this past year for me. I honestly don’t want any of those moments back. Right now, I like them just the way they are.

Everyone told me how good / hard / wild this would be but until I experienced it myself, I really don’t think I could have ever prepared myself for what this year brought. It truly was a year of learning and survival for me.

As I look back at old Instagram posts and read what I wrote ( and most was written in the moment ) I can see very much from a distance how much my world was rocked in having Agatha. It’s in my nature to want to write in the most honest and authentic way, mostly because that is what I craved when I was searching out my own fertility / pregnancy / motherhood guru. I didn’t hold much back. Everyone that has followed along knows just how hard it was for me. The ups and the downs. The moments where I crashed and the moments where I soared. I feel proud to have s u r v i v e d this year. Every day I woke up I tried to make a promise to myself to be in-the-moment. Because if I wasn’t, I might have drowned.

To finish off this wild year, Jeff was offered an incredible position at a dream company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Quite a ways from our big smokey metropolis of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It meant him taking off for a month to train and explore and see if this really was the right move for our family. There were (many) days where I wanted to walk out into the pouring rain, tilt my head up and just scream at the universe – “HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY THINK I COULD HANDLE THIS RIGHT NOW”.

I honestly didn’t think I could. It just felt like too much all at once. It wasn’t that I was finally feeling comfortable having a tiny person. Or that it would mean moving away from my family and would be packing up my belongings for a third time since becoming pregnant. Or that I would be leaving behind this physical space I created for myself through LFJ. It was all of it. At the same time.

The more I started to open up about it, the more I realized that we all have it going on – all the time. My girlfriend in Scotland has her own laundry list of it’s all happening at the same time while she navigates a potential new career. My best friend in Vermont is slashing down branches and shrubs as she walks through what feels like the most wildly overgrown forest while taking care of not just one, but two tiny humans. My friend in Norway is working her way through healing and nourishing her body to make her own kind of magic within her own luscious garden.

We all have our moments of feeling like we can’t possibly take another step.

If this year has taught me one massively amazing thing – it’s that we’re a whole lot more resilient than we thought we were. And that in fact, we can handle it. And not only that – we WILL handle it.

Tomorrow my beloved Agatha Love will turn one and I couldn’t be more proud. Proud to have stood tall, proud to have fallen down, proud to have picked her up and danced through it all.

Jeff flies back to Minneapolis tomorrow night after he puts his one year old baby girl to bed and then later this summer, the two of us will be going to meet him there to start a new kind of adventure. I have no clue what it looks like but if you asked me a year ago what being a mama looked like I’m pretty sure I would have just hugged you and said I have no clue but I’m going to figure it out. And I kind of have. That’s why time passing is so amazing – when you’re in the thick of it nothing feels right but eventually, things do become a little more clear and soon you’re on a whole new kind of journey.

And thank you from the bottom of my heart to each and every one of you who listened and followed along this past year. I  honestly feel (and now know ) it does take a village to be a mama. With love love love from me to you xxx