09/01/2026
It’s the start of school (well for me I still have a week to go 🙃) and I’m playing the usual mom guilt game where I look back and think did we do enough or did I spend too much time out chasing things that didn’t matter. And in the end I always come to the same conclusion, I gave them the summer that they needed, not the perfectly curated one that looks good in these square boxes but the one where we really enjoyed each other’s company and the one where sometimes we didn’t. The one where we laughed so hard my belly ached and the one where we held each other through hard tears. The one where I thought life couldn’t get more beautiful yet it did and the one where life kicked my butt and I wondered how I was going to keep going. I trust the experiences that we all had and the ones we didn’t have, because when I look at my family I see this imperfect joy. The same captured in this pictured family, where no matter what we do it all feels special and moving because we aren’t striving to be our perfect or best selves we just are, and that feels pretty dang good.
