You're allowed to ask "what if"...

I have never had a single minute of adulthood without being a mom.

It’s a strange sentence to say out loud because most people don’t really stop to think about what that means. I do.

It sneaks into my mind when I’m catching up with someone I grew up with and they’re telling stories about backpacking through Europe or moving across the country because they felt like it. It appears when I’m reading some random stranger’s post online about finding themselves in their twenties. Sometimes it arrives in the five minutes I’ve locked myself in the bathroom just to escape the noise of my own house, while somebody is inevitably knocking on the door asking where the ketchup is or tattling about whose turn it is on the Xbox.

And every once in a while, usually when I’m tired enough that my guard is down, I wonder...

“What if?”

What if I hadn’t gotten pregnant?

What if I had graduated, packed my bags, and boarded that plane?

What if I’d become someone completely different?

Sometimes those thoughts last thirty seconds. Sometimes they steal ten minutes and a few tears before I pull myself together, wash my face, unlock the bathroom door, and step back into my beautiful, loud, overwhelming, wonderful life.

The guilt usually arrives before I’ve even finished thinking the question.

Because good moms aren’t supposed to wonder those things.

Right?

My oldest daughter is seventeen right now. She’ll be eighteen soon.

The same age I was when I became somebody’s mom.

She and I haven’t spoken in almost six months.

There are a hundred reasons, but most of them come down to one simple truth. She doesn’t have enough life behind her yet to understand some of the things I’ve been trying to teach her. Every generation thinks they’re the first to discover adulthood. Every parent knows experience is the only teacher that eventually wins.

My heart hurts every single day because I miss her.

Every instinct in me wants to fix it, chase her, explain myself better, somehow find the perfect combination of words that makes everything okay.

But I can’t.

Some lessons don’t belong to me anymore.

So I wait.

And while I’m waiting, I think about the seventeen-year-old version of myself sitting in a bathroom staring at two pink lines while the entire future I thought I was going to have quietly disappeared.

I was in Grade 12.

I hadn’t even graduated.

I had plans.

Real plans.

I’d worked two jobs while finishing high school and somehow managed to save almost four thousand dollars. To most adults, four thousand dollars isn’t life-changing money. To seventeen-year-old me, it represented freedom.

I wasn’t saving for a shopping spree or a nicer car.

I was saving so I could leave.

My mom and I never had what I would call a healthy relationship. From the outside, people probably would’ve said I was the closest one to her. What they couldn’t see was that closeness wasn’t built on love. It was built on survival.

I learned very young that it was often easier to be the errand girl, the emotional punching bag, the child who absorbed everyone else’s chaos, than to become another target.

So I planned my escape.

I dreamed about Europe almost every day.

I imagined graduating, getting on a plane, disappearing into a life where nobody knew me and nobody expected anything from me.

I’ve never been afraid of the unknown.

I wanted it.

Then one little plastic stick changed everything.

I can still remember the feeling.

It wasn’t gradual.

It wasn’t something I slowly accepted.

It was immediate.

The moment I knew there was a baby, I wasn’t thinking about Europe anymore.

That four thousand dollars wasn’t travel money.

It became diaper money.

Formula money.

Emergency money.

Safety money.

My brain instantly shifted from “How do I leave?” to “How do I keep this tiny person alive?”

Looking back now, I almost smile at that girl.

She genuinely believed she was going to save her relationship with her boyfriend. She believed the baby would magically transform both of them into responsible adults. She imagined the happy little family that teenage girls are so good at imagining after life has completely blindsided them.

I mourn her sometimes.

Not because she was naive.

She was.

But because she was so hopeful.

Thirty-five-year-old me knows that life unfolded nothing like seventeen-year-old me expected.

Some dreams died.

Others were born.

Some heartbreaks I never saw coming.

Some joys I couldn’t have imagined if I’d tried.

Today I’m a mom of three.

A seventeen-year-old.

A twelve-year-old.

A three-year-old.

I don’t run a glamorous empire.

I run an empire of dirty socks, sports schedules, forgotten water bottles, bedtime stories, sticky fingerprints on every surface imaginable, dishes that somehow reproduce overnight, and laundry that I am convinced has developed the ability to multiply on its own.

And honestly...

I love it.

Being a mom isn’t just something I do.

It’s who I am.

People meet me and eventually laugh and say, “You’re such a mom.”

I always smile.

Because that’s one of the nicest compliments anyone could give me.

I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to become the exact opposite of the mother I grew up with.

Where she was cold, I wanted to be warm.

Where she was critical, I wanted to understand.

Where she withheld affection, I wanted my children to never question whether they were loved.

I haven’t been perfect.

No parent is.

But I think I’ve done alright.

So maybe that’s exactly why the guilt feels so heavy whenever those “what if” thoughts creep in.

Because if I love this life...

If I love my children...

If I wouldn’t trade them for anything...

Why do I sometimes wonder?

Maybe because those are actually two different questions.

Wondering isn’t wishing. Curiosity isn’t regret. Mourning a version of yourself that never got to exist doesn’t mean you want to erase the life you have now.

I think we’ve somehow convinced parents, especially mothers, that once children arrive we’re supposed to stop being people.

We’re supposed to be endlessly grateful.

Endlessly patient.

Endlessly fulfilled.

But we’re still human beings.

We’re still tired.

We’re still overwhelmed.

We’re still carrying dreams that didn’t happen while trying to build new ones that did.

Sometimes the “what ifs” aren’t even about escaping.

Sometimes they’re about quiet.

Sometimes they’re about sleeping in.

Sometimes they’re about getting dressed up without arranging childcare three weeks in advance.

Sometimes they’re about drinking a coffee while it’s still hot.

Sometimes they’re about remembering who you were before everyone needed something from you every five minutes.

That doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you human.

Being a parent is one of the greatest sacrifices a person can make. Whether your children were meticulously planned or arrived completely unexpectedly doesn’t change that.

There isn’t a manual. There isn’t a checklist. There are certainly no guarantees.

There are opinions, of course. Plenty of those….

But mostly you’re just figuring it out as you go.

You’re raising tiny humans who genuinely depend on you for everything.

It’s terrifying.

It’s exhausting.

It’s beautiful.

Your hair might go grey.

You might lose yourself for a while.

You’ll probably gain weight, lose weight, cry in grocery store parking lots, laugh until your stomach hurts, question everything, celebrate tiny victories, feel grateful beyond words, and then become completely overwhelmed before bedtime.

Sometimes you’ll experience every one of those emotions before lunch.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, your mind might drift toward a different life.

I don’t think that makes you a bad parent.

I think it’s one of the most honest parts of being one.

The important part isn’t whether you have those thoughts.

It’s what you do after them.

I don’t want this to become one of those girl-boss speeches about abandoning your family to “find yourself.”

That’s not what this is.

It’s not permission to chase some fantasy because parenting became difficult. It’s not an excuse for a midlife crisis. It’s certainly not an invitation to walk away from the people who need you most.

I know people do.

And every time I hear those stories, my heart breaks.

Not from judgment.

From sadness.

Because despite every hard day I’ve ever had... Despite every moment I’ve hidden in the bathroom for five minutes... Despite every exhausted fantasy about quieter mornings...

I couldn’t leave this life. I don’t actually want another one.

I just want permission to admit that sometimes this one is hard.

I’m watching my oldest become an adult while grieving the relationship we don’t have right now.

My middle daughter turned twelve last week, which means I probably have only six summers left before she starts building a life that doesn’t revolve around home.

My little boy somehow became three while I was blinking.

Time is stealing them from me one ordinary Tuesday at a time.

Maybe that’s really what the “what ifs” are.

Not a desire to go backward. Not a desire to leave. Just a reminder that every version of our life asks us to say goodbye to another one.

The girl who dreamed about Europe.

The young mom who believed love could fix everything.

The woman with toddlers.

The mother packing school lunches.

The mom waving goodbye as another child grows up.

They all disappear eventually.

Maybe it’s okay to grieve every single one of them.

Because grief and gratitude can exist in the same heart.

Love and exhaustion can sit at the same kitchen table.

Joy and sadness have always made surprisingly good roommates.

If you’ve ever wondered what your life might have looked like... If you’ve ever sat in your car for an extra five minutes because you just needed silence... If you’ve ever loved your children with everything you have while quietly mourning the person you never got to become...

I hope you know you’re not broken.

You’re not ungrateful.

You’re not a bad mom.

You’re simply human.

Wholly, beautifully, imperfectly human.

And maybe we don’t hear that often enough.

Let me know in the comments if you feel me on this one.