Hi, my friend. I'm here with a little Friday pep talk in your pocket again. This time with a poem to read to you.

For context, the other night, the program director for my self-assured motherhood program,

Stacey Collins, sent me a text message with a photo of the page from the book she was reading.

All she said in the caption was, late night poetry reading.

On the page was this beautiful poem by Kate Bear. Let me read it to you.

Transfiguration. I dreamt myself into a mother, but when I became her, I had to dream her back into a woman, back into a woman, back into a woman again.

So simple and yet so profound, and the way you read it will be as varied as your unique motherhood experience and journey to motherhood.

I dreamt myself into a mother. Through long and uncomfortable infertility appointments, moments spent crying on the exam table, months of adoption paperwork, and contacts with expectant mothers who were considering us to adopt their baby, but then decided to parent or to place with another family.

One part of my adoption story that many people don't know is that my husband and I were chosen by seven birth mothers who then changed their minds before us and no one was born.

It was the hardest couple of years of my entire life, no doubt. I dreamt myself into a mother, but when I became her, I struggled.

Being responsible for the care and nurturing of a tiny human soul brought up all my insecurities, all the trauma from my past of watching my mom battle breast cancer for 13 years, and then losing her as a teenager, and all my doubts about my purpose in this world, now that I no longer had my career, which gave me such a sense of meaning.

I loved my baby fiercely, but I didn't love myself. I was a mother now, but who was I as a woman? Slowly over years and years with lots of help from therapy, prayer, self-reflection, and self-compassion, I dreamt myself back into a woman, back into a woman, back into a woman again.

There's another way to read this poem as well. Maybe the day-to-day life of being a mother has been dreamy for you. You dreamt yourself into a mother, and it has been everything you hoped it would be.

But things are shifting as your kids are getting older and don't seem to need you as much. You feel a lack of purpose and you sense that now is the time to figure out who the woman inside the mother is, back into a woman, back into a woman, back into a woman again.

I got a direct message from a mom on Instagram the other day, and it said this, motherhood is where I feel confident and content, but I feel lost when everyone is at school.

I'm having a hard time finding what I want and what fulfills me outside of motherhood. Is this covered in your self-assured motherhood program?

The short answer to this mother is yes. Yes, oh yes.

The first two trimesters that the self-assured motherhood program are about you. About getting to know yourself again, figuring out your purpose and learning how to honor your needs.

You'll bring that newfound self-understanding into your motherhood in the third trimester when we discuss parenting strategies and applications to family life.

All of your relationships will feel richer as a result of you being more self-assured.

Typically, when I talk about this program, I talk about how unfulfilled I used to feel within my motherhood and how I was able to dig myself out of that by figuring out who I am.

But you may recognize that you do feel very content within your motherhood. You just don't know who you are outside of that.

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