How motherhood inspired my life's most giant leap // PART I

From the gum-stained glittering sidewalks of NYC to milk-stained sweats on the couch

I’m cradling my sixteen-month-old, gazing lovingly at him, his heavy eyelids fluttering closed as I nurse him before his nap. My four-year-old is curled up on the couch downstairs, cheeks flushed from this week’s Pre-K plague– a double ear infection and a fever. My dad is here to be with the kids so that I can write. I have five deadlines in the next four weeks, plus other freelance projects immediately following that. (I’m also a freelance knitwear designer) If you had told me seven years ago that I’d have two children, breastfeeding into toddlerhood, and that I would no longer work in the fashion industry, I would have laughed at you.

This life I'm leading is practically unrecognizable compared to the one I lived a few short years ago. 

As a little girl, I dreamed of becoming a fiction writer. I imagined my New York Times- Bestselling novel displayed in bookshop windows (this was the nineties, Jeff Bezos was still in his garage launching Amazon, and it was a very pre-BookTok era). I would write up my stories to be printed and bound in my elementary school’s publishing center (a lone classroom down the hall with a laser-jet printer), only to return to my desk and continue flushing out my ideas for the next book. I loved the “publishing process,” the gratification of seeing my simple words in print (with plenty of space to illustrate my story with colored pencils, of course).

Since those early days, my story has taken several twists and turns, and some days, I wish I was that little girl again, hammering out stories, the girl who had no shame in calling herself a writer. But at the risk of sounding cheesy or trite, I wouldn’t trade the way I got here for anything.

I spent my Freshman year of college at SUNY Cortland, studying Professional Writing, lost in a sea of education majors (primarily Physical Education… one of them being my then-boyfriend, now husband). The classes I truly loved that counted toward my major were the most creative writing courses. Overall, my Professional Writing major coursework was geared toward technical writing, and the poetry and songwriting electives were the primary draw: I couldn’t wait to get to those classes. They inspired me; I could write from a place of honesty and draw inspiration from my the realities of my daily life and the stories that shaped me. I loved writing, but I didn’t feel the major was quite right for me, and I didn’t want to be a “starving artist” (insert laughing emoji for irony here). It was time to make a change. I transferred to another college to focus on a different passion, one that I imagined would take me places: the fashion industry. 

I majored in Fashion Merchandising at Marist College and minored in business and product development. I still took writing classes (and loved every second of them) and figured one day I would revisit my passion for writing, even if it meant it was just for my own pleasure. The product development classes were among my favorites. After interning for a handbag and accessories company during my sophomore year, I worked part-time and then eventually full-time for that same company. This job became more like a home, with a mentor who became more like a second mother, spanning nearly thirteen years. It was so much more than a job; it was an experience that spanned more than a third of my life up to that point. It became a fundamental building block of who I am and my growth as a human being. I will always be grateful for that experience.

You might already know this part of my story, but if you’re new here, this is where I get back to my roots. In the fall of 2019, at thirty-one years old, I found myself married to the love of my life for half a decade, unable to peel myself off the bathroom floor, which was littered with positive pregnancy tests. Depression sunk its claws into me the moment the strip turned pink. It paralyzed me, robbing me of any joy in expecting my first child. 

My lifetime fear of doctors and medical treatments, coupled with a history of panic attacks and anxiety, intertwined with the hormone surges that were quite literally RAGING inside my body. It was the perfect concoction for my mental unraveling.

An uphill mental trudge (proverbially speaking, at least– I still managed to show up to work every day until the world shut down from COVID and forced me to STOP). The urine-soaked pregnancy wick might as well have been the cloth wick of a Molotov cocktail– it surged into the inside of my glass-bottled emotions, igniting and exploding over and over again as I lay in wait for the arrival of my first child.

On Tuesday, March 17th, I dragged my feet that were holding up my heavy seven-month pregnant ass onto the morning train from my town in suburbia just an hour outside of NYC. I sat in a window seat, my pounding head pressed up against the cold glass, and closed my eyes, only to be interrupted by the halt of the train brakes at each local stop. My eyes fluttered open as dozens of young people (or at least people younger than me) climbed on the train in St. Patrick’s Day garb. By the time I arrived at Grand Central, I had awoken among a sea of what I can best describe as a green shitstorm; green leprechaun hats, shamrock sunglasses, beaded necklaces with rainbow shot glass pendants, and every other tacky St. Patrick’s Day parade items you could think of. It was 8:46 am, and the majority of these “kids” were drunk. (Kids….I was one of them not that long ago).

Little did I know it would be the second-to-last day I would ever commute into the city for my job.

TO BE CONTINUED…