Tulip Joy - or How to Thrive being a Mom

Love makes your Soul Crawl out from its Hiding Place - Zora Neale Hurston

Tulip Joy

It is amazing that taking care of someone else, for their daily needs, becoming responsible for the life of someone else and for decisions that can affect their health and their death can bring out the very soul of us. Before I was forty, I loved people but at 40, I became responsible for my father, who needed someone in the home so he would not need to go to a nursing home. And at the same time, I became a new parent, a single parent.

First, I got two baby monitors and put one in his room and one in my new daughter's room. Little did I know that the adventure was just starting. After mounds of diapers, crying (mostly mine), pushing wheelchairs, treating my dad's wounds, watching my kiddo learn to walk by stealing my dad's walker, I learned two things. I could do a lot and not have a heart attack. And my capacity to love expanded and grew beyond boundaries I dreamed could exist.

I worried if I might do something and my dad suffer more than he need, especially through amputations. And how joyful when I would see him dance in his wheelchair. And there seemed to be no end to my grief when he died. The well of joy and sorrow seemed bottomless.

And being a new (but with an old body) mom at the same time, that capacity seems limitless. But while I had to let my dad go, now too it is my job to prepare to let my kiddo go as well. Joyful as it is, it's also a lot of work to watch her do things that scarce the begeezbus out of me. Things I thought nothing of before she was born. And it's also sorrowful knowing that things may happen that are life and death matters. Stalkers, hurtful relationships, pain, car accidents. But if I do it right with love and positive discipline, and the right Mom Care to nurture who she truly is, she may just shine with beauty. A beautiful flower in a sea of flowers.



Tulip Joy is available as an 8x10" or 11x14" archival print or 6x6" tile. Send me a message and I will get you what you need!
"Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"     -  Anne Frank