Parenting doesn’t just grow kids; it reshapes the parent, turning love into a thousand miniature versions of courage. Adrienne always knew her children would come in chapters. The silky-skinned baby would become a chubby-handed toddler, a five-year-old with big opinions, an eight-year-old with a buzz cut, and a teenager with dramatic eye rolls. She expected those shifts, even if they flew by faster than she could hold them. What she didn’t expect was how many versions of herself motherhood would ask her to become. Adrenne became the woman who could function on three hours of sleep, building a bottle by touch in a dark room.
She learned to nap upright in a rocking chair with a feverish child draped over her shoulder because ear infections and reflux didn’t care about the clock. She became the mom who could outlast a tantrum in a store aisle, letting her child flop and wail while calmly explaining why a privacy toy wasn’t coming home.
Then came the version of her who held on with white knuckles for the first five years, only to practice letting go at the kindergarten door.
The hours of that first school day pressed on her chest even while she smiled and waved. Years later, she became the mom who dropped her son at his first high school football game, watched him disappear into a sea of school colors, and sat alone in a quiet car feeling proud and strangely hollow at the same time.
She also became the parent who sometimes had to be the only one saying no to unsupervised trips to big games and long, multi-night sleepovers. She knew her job was to set the boundary and how much it could sting when “ I hate you” arrived on the other side of the door. On those Friday nights when a grounded teen shut her out with a click of the lock, she felt punished, too. Some versions hurt in quieter ways. She watched a child struggle to find a place, be passed over by friend groups, and learn what loneliness feels like.
Social media sharpened the feeling, with everyone else’s plans looping in bright colors while her daughter wondered why she wasn’t there. Adrienne learned that a mother’s heart could break without a sound and could keep showing up, steady as a drum. Through it all, she found herself wanting just one more of everything. One more running tackle-hug from a little kid who still smelled like soap and sunshine. One more middle-of-the-night “Mom?” from down the hall. One more drive with the windows down and the music up. One more exaggerated “MOMMM,” one more couch snuggle with cold toes sneaking under her legs, one more wild weekend crammed with youth sports and snack runs.
Looking back, Adrienne sees parenting as her proudest achievement and most excellent trade-off. It pulled strength from places she didn’t know she had and taught her to hold tight and let go, to be the soft place and the firm line. She was not the same person who first carried a newborn into a quiet house. Motherhood changed her, again and again, until she became all the versions her children needed, and then some.
She also learned that every new version of her kids asked her to develop a new skill in herself. Some days, she was the “I’m sorry” mom who owned mistakes after snapping from exhaustion. The other days, she was the quiet listener who let big feelings spill out without fixing them. She practiced pausing before saying yes and breathing before saying no. She learned to celebrate their independence without taking it as rejection. On the hardest nights, she reminded herself that love is not measured by smooth seasons but by steady presence.
