anti-racist homeschool

 If there are two things that have massively shifted in the United States in recent months it’s that the realities of race relations in our country are finally getting the attention they deserve; and second, due to Covid, more families are homeschooling than ever before. I, like many of you, never imagined that I would be a homeschool mom, and yet we are now in our fourth year. What I’ve learned thus far on my homeschooling journey is that my favorite part of being my kids’ teacher is that I have complete control over what they learn and how they learn it. I see homeschool as a golden opportunity to infuse family values into the academic culture of our home, particularly with respect to how we engage race. 

Now before I go any further I just need to put out the disclaimer that we are in no way a precious homeschool family. I use the phrase "homeschool mom" very loosely. I still work full time, I have a million things on my plate and I try really hard to not neglect my kids, which still happens more than I’d like. 

I’m not actually sure we got in 180 days of learning last year. I don’t do cute activities. I don’t teach Latin. There is no morning basket or hymn study because this mama doesn’t have time for that. I am eclectic and minimalist and if you want tips on how to do preschool in the bathtub, I’m your person. 

We do school whenever it's convenient, I delegate tasks to unsuspecting travelers, I multi-task to a fault. It's usually not pretty, and some days I cry, but we make it work. 

 

So with that glowing self assessment to set the stage, hear me when I say that even in the midst of chaos, the things that matter rise to the top, and integrating our values into the academic pursuit is always at the top – our values around racial justice included. 

 

I made an Instagram post about this recently that seemed to really resonate with people and so I wanted to share a bit more about what race conscious home-education looks like for us. 

 

For starters, our free-reading shelves are stocked with books that do a good job of celebrating black culture and acknowledging black struggle. We have acquired as many multi-cultural books as we can get our hands on so that our bookshelves reflect the true diversity of the world and do not perpetuate white exceptionalism. These books are highly curated and screened for content and voice. Our living room books are a reflection of us: we don’t do colorblind; we don’t do white supremacy; we don’t tolerate racist micro aggressions – even in children’s literature. 

 

On our school shelves are stocked with books that I expect to read with them. In this lineup we have the good, the bad and the ugly. The bad and the ugly hold their spots simply because there is value in the debrief. With mom as a guide, we let racism come out of the shadows. These white-supremacist authors might be dead but their proud-boy decedents are still on prime-time television so we engage them. We read of early explorers and talk about the start of the slave trade. We read about the founding of America and the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. We talk about the beliefs that white people had that justified the dehumanization of non-whites. I don’t screen offensive ideas or language. I just stop reading, rest the book on my lap, and call out the racism in every paragraph. We have conversations about how these ideas are equally prevalent today and what we are supposed to do with that. 

 

These conversations are now so common for us that before the word out of my mouth, somebody is protesting, “THEY AREN'T INDIANS. White people should know better – they stole the land from Native Americans.” The mention of slavery makes one child want to punch a wall. These days, the kids rant faster than I do, and honestly, that feels accomplished.  

 

I didn’t grow up racist. Except for the fact that I was taught that Columbus discovered America and that Vespucci and Cortez were mistreated explorers who received an unfortunate welcome in the New World. We read Little House on the Prairie and not once did anyone say the word “problematic.” I was taught that slavery ended with the Civil War and racism ended with MLK. So yeah. I grew up racist. 

 

I want something different for my kids. And that requires not only a different awareness, but also a different response. Like Angela Davis said for all of us to hear and grapple with, It’s not enough to not be racist, you have to be anti-racist.

 

Anti-racism is a matter of acknowledging the status-quo and taking it to task. It's about assessing whether our kids are receiving an education that reinforces white-supremacy or challenges it. The gift of homeschooling, my friends, is that you can sculpt for your children what their anti-racist education is going to look like. For me, this is invaluable. 

 

In addition to the history reading and literature selections, we talk about inequalities in the sciences. We do copy work from Jesuit prayers of lament. Creative writing prompts are meant to provoke contemplation and action. We create art and memorize key scripture. We engage what matters.

 

Anti-racism isn’t a topic. It’s not a unity study. Anti-racism is an attitude and an orientation and a lifestyle. Racism is the air that we all breathe and therefore as parents and educators, our response to that fact needs to be commensurate. If I’m teaching my kids to identify faces on coins, I need to also teach them to identify systems of oppression that put those faces there. If we’re celebrating freedom, we need to teach the barriers to enjoying it. Education ought to prepare our kids up to be functional, wise, contributing members of society. If anti-racism isn't a central theme in that, our society is doomed.

 

I know plenty of people are pushing back against such ideas by saying, “it’s not all about race,” but… it kind of is. Unless humanity suddenly becomes translucent, color matters, always. In my experience, it’s only white people who struggle to see that. I want my kids to appreciate that wherever they are, and in everything they do, they need to be consciously aware of who is in charge, who needs defending, and how to make wrong things right. This requires making sense of the story of race. 

 

This is not as advanced as it sounds. My five-year-old who doesn’t even know her days of the week yet (I told you I wasn't precious) gets it. Like she said to me last week, “We stand up for brown people. It’s what we do.” It’s that simple. Racism and privilege and justice and oppression – these are not mature topics to wait for a grad school class in critical race theory. When we talk about them early, and if we unbind them from shame, our kids are equipped to engage their world with confidence and a sense of purpose. It really just takes intentionality and time, and thanks to the routine of homeschool we JUST. KEEP. AT. IT. 

 

There's a million ways to do this and and the anti-racist education will vary by age, grade, personality etc. My goal here isn't to be dogmatic about method but just to promote that it should be happening. The point is that, for most of us, defaulting to the educational culture that we grew up in is just going to produce more of the same culture that we're now trying to dismantle. And so my word of invitation to every homeschool parent out there, particularly the ones who are struggling to see upside of the covid-driven choice: you have the opportunity and the duty to run an anti-racist homeschool. It’s important. It’s possible. It’s worthwhile. 

 

The world needs us to do this. Let’s live up to our potential. 

re-framing the adoption narrative

She came to us on a Saturday night, after lying alone in a room for nearly 48 hours. We hadn’t planned for her. In fact, earlier that morning, I stood together with Jeremy in the storage shed while we debated getting rid of all the clothes our youngest had outgrown. 

We’re done, right? 

Uhhh… I think so???

…

Let’s just hang on to them a little longer, ok?

Ok. 

And an hour later, Bana K was at our door explaining what happened. 

Mom had been on the way to the clinic when baby M came. Somewhere between home and safety, she birthed, bled and died. A neighbor pulled them both into a hut and the funeral began. Baby M was wrapped in a blanket and placed in a back room. With no one to nurse her, the family prepared for not one, but two burials. 

Something in her cries that night must have pushed the family to think differently. Several of the funeral attendees knew us, and a messenger was dispatched. I arrived to find Dad, his seven other children, and the 200 or so mourners typically found at a village funeral. I was ushered into a two room house. The four-year-old on the other side of the brick wall was wailing for his mom who wasn’t coming back. The family sat with me on the dirt floor while other curious bodies crammed in, blocking what little light would have come through the door and triangle windows built into the exterior walls. Dad leaned on the wall across from me, no longer coping with the two-year-old fussing on his lap. The fifteen-year-old next to him was little help. They both looked like they'd been run over by a truck. 

The family asked me to speak, and I asked first to just listen. In turn, old women said the same thing, one after another. “We need help. We can’t manage. Please help us. Please help.” I said, “I want to help. She needs to eat. It has been too long. I can have milk here in a few hours.” 

They had already decided though what kind of help they were looking for. 

“Take her.”

“Uhhh…”

“We just can’t right now. We’re not managing with the other seven. We need you to take her.” 

There we sat, between a rock and a hard place. A shell-shocked family desperately asking for help. Me, rolling over attachment theory in my head. Above the clamor expressing this challenge and that, I blurted out, “She needs her family!” And they upped the volume a notch and yelled back, “We need YOU.” And ten minutes later, someone was shoving into my vehicle a bundle of blankets, at the center of which was a darling little girl. 

Every year when Adoption Awareness Month (November, fyi) rolls around, I get this sinking feeling in my gut as I see the internet filled with stories and pictures of happy adoptive families who would center the narrative around the beauty of adoption. And truly, adoption is beautiful. To choose to love is beauty incarnate. But, truly-truly, it is beauty from ashes. We owe it to the adoptees in our midst to acknowledge that ashes are a bi-product of something being burnt to the ground. 

There is no other way to arrive at adoption other than extreme trauma and loss. A mother dies. A family breaks. Addiction. Disfunction. Abandonment. We can’t manage - take her.

Sometimes I feel like we are so busy celebrating the redemption that we hold precious little space for the tragic. It is both lovely and awful at the same time. Like my favorite Ann says, “Joy and pain are arteries of the same heart,” and intentional orphan care means we handle both well. 

It might seem unreasonably pessimistic to even suggest re-directing the conversation towards trauma. Who doesn’t love a happy ending? What’s wrong with you, Emo Adoption Lady? 

What’s wrong with me is that I grew up in the first world and have lived my entire adult life in the third, and now as a foster and adoptive mother, I see the trajectory of orphan care from two different continental views, and I’m still unsettled. 

In America, we have focused on keeping children safe, and with family when possible, which means we major on two actions: removal and reunification. “The system” is swamped and foster parents, bless them, are doing their best. In Zambia - to our shame - we have largely focused on crisis management which has meant institutionalization. As I’ve written about before (here and here,) the funding flow out of the West fuels the glorification of orphanages and the result is thousands of children in “care” (a misnomer) while their DNA is out there. 

What has my gut twisted in knots and wrapped around my heart is that, on either continent, in any context, when I hear talk about adoption awareness, the thing that I’m NOT hearing people talk about is prevention. 

Every single adoption is the result of a brokenness which we, the community of privilege, have failed to prevent. I think about this for our own son, and for all of our adoptee friends. I cry about how scared my son’s birth mom must have been, and how someone clearly wasn’t there to support her. I think about the parents who sign papers and hand kids over because no stepped in to say, “keep your child, I’ll pay for everything.” I think about the homeless mom and the addicted one and the one with an abusive boyfriend and I feel the burden of responsibility. How many steps along the way were we not there for you? 

Baby M stayed with us for three weeks at which point, I won’t lie, we kind of wanted to keep her. There’s something about waking up every two hours at night to feed a baby and wearing her close to my heart throughout the day – I think any mother would have to be a little off to not feel the bonds of love forming. And truthfully? It would have been easy to make her ours. 

Her family already had asked for a long-term placement. We could have shown off our house and resources and promised her the world and her family would very likely have made a “smart” and terrible decision to leave her with us forever. And we would have been praised by the internet as a beautiful, adoptive family. But thankfully we have super good and reliable friends who snapped their fingers in our ears and just repeated, “She needs her family. She needs her family.” And they were absolutely right. So we set our feelings on the shelf and got serious about getting her home.

Convincing the family to receive her back was easier said than done, but we kept at it because we know it was right. We can never bring her mother back, but we can work to PREVENT the trauma of adoption. 

And work it is.

The first week baby M was home, Grandma called me several times after midnight just to say, “M is crying and won’t stop.” I never slept after those calls. On my first visit to the home to deliver more formula, I was given a list of things they needed. She wreaked of pee and I noticed that the rats had chewed through every one of her bottle nipples. We talked about burping and why babies cry and why laundry soap is too caustic for newborn skin. I taught them what a selfie was because the day deserved some levity. I drove away feeling like the band-aid had been ripped off too fast. 

Driving home, the thought rushed into my mind and I pushed it out the other side – This is a huge commitment. We are paying for everything anyway - it would be easier to just keep her with us. Thankfully the grace of conviction swelled again – prevention is worth the work. 

Unfortunately, our adoption culture celebrates the exact opposite. How many times have I seen a viral facebook post of a cute couple offering (begging) to adopt some other woman’s baby. We christen them as saints and speak nothing of birth mom’s story out on the margins. And after 6 million likes and 50,000 shares, the words “We’ll take her!” have become more admirable than, “We’ll move heaven and earth to make sure she stays with you!” And just like that, we facilitate loss instead of preventing it. 

Is it possible that the narrative of redemption in adoption has desensitized us to the flaming mess we didn’t address on the front end?  Is it possible that we aren't serious about family preservation because we don't yet believe in the primal wound we are inflicting? Do our meager efforts through pregnancy centers and WIC programs really amount to all that we can do? Are we skilled at putting out fires before they create the ashes out of which adoptees must then rise? 

I don’t think so. Not yet. We’re not nailing access to health care, marriage counseling, education, mentorship, therapy, childcare, job support. Not even close. Smart people have made these lists for us: they have curated research around what destabilizes parents and what kinds of structural and relational safeguards must be in place to support and preserve families. The stats are there: we're not doing it.

It feels like, in November, of all months, when we are supposed to be most “aware” of adoption, that prevention is the message we should be pouring over. Prevention is what we should be discussing and rallying behind and setting goals for. Because we love our adoptees more than life – this is a fact – but we need to get honest and admit that our adoptees wouldn’t have needed the "traumatic blessing" that is adoption if someone – WE – had done the hard work of prevention in the first place. 

Obviously not every person of privilege is in a position to help every mom and family in crisis – for reasons of geography if nothing else. None of us is omniscient and unknown crises are impossible prevent. Which is why I think the overarching narrative around adoption is so important – because while you may not be the neighbor to the newly pregnant woman who needs long-term support to keep her child safe and in her own home, that facebook friend of yours who thinks adoption is all rainbows and sunshine certainly is. It is our responsibility to cultivate a climate that is wise enough to know what needs to be done, and courageous enough to do it. 

For my part, I write words. I hug my son and mourn his loss with him, and celebrate the beauty of our forever family too. Together, we deliver tins of formula and become full-time cheerleaders of families preserved. We pour out, and advocate and hope. We do our best, which is all we can do. And we pray that you will too. 

the mission of motherhood… all you need is love?

Back before I had a life overseas, I attended a missions conference during which the speaker stood on the stage and told us to anticipate three profound keys to making a difference in a person’s life, a region, and the world. His three points were, (1) Relationship, (2) Relationship, and (3) Relationship. When I joined the Peace Corps, we were forbidden from doing any “work” for three full months with our one and only job being to build relationships. Recently, I had a conversation with a local counterpart about how to remedy a sticky situation and over the course of our thirty-minute discussion, I heard the word relationship at least seven times.

Relationship, it seems, is crucial, not just because it makes us feel warm and fuzzy but because relational connection is essential to effecting change. That sing-song phrase – people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care – it’s annoyingly overused because it’s true. In the realm of community development, progress comes hard, and often, not at all, unless whole people are engaged, hearts are connected and friendships are born.

We spend time regularly taking our relational temperature within our community. And spoiler alert, it has nothing to do with dollars spent. We understand that how much we do for people is altogether separate from how well we connect with them. For this reason, we routinely ask for feedback on how well we are loving people. Recently, a friend told us that some of our habits are culturally awkward. “Stop having people over for dinner,” he said. “It’s American and it’s weird. Just go sit with them in the afternoons. Watch football. Shoot the breeze. Love your neighbors the way they love each other.” It’s awkward to be awkward, but we learn. We adjust. If we want to make a difference, this love thing is a non-negotiable. Sometimes I walk around and hum to myself, (especially if I’m hitting a brick wall in a particular area)… All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.

I’m thankful for the lessons community development has taught me. My pre-kid life gave me lots of practice in the realm of behavior change and connecting across a divide, which are PHD level skills in mommyhood. After all, we are charged with transforming tantrum throwers with no frontal lobe who can’t even wipe their own bottoms into productive members of society. No small task. I’ve noticed how the relational compass we’ve adopted for the village has also done a good work in guiding our home. I often gaze down at my kiddos while they sleep – all still and for once not talking, and as I pray over their delicate selves, my most constant request is that they would know how much I love them.

There is a common fear amongst ex-pat and missionary parents – we are neurotic about not screwing our kids up. We know too many TCK’s and MK’s who have gone off the deep end, and it’s terrifying. I have googled all the articles, read all the blogs, searching for answers, wondering what I need to do to assure that my children turn out globally-awesome and not wholly-dysfunctional. I’ve made it my duty to ask this question of every parent I know who has raised their children overseas. The data for this topic in my head is fathoms deep and all the answers basically say the same thing: kids need to know that they are loved. Who would have guessed?

It makes sense that loving my kids would look different than loving the lady next door, and thankfully, many wise people have contributed to fleshing out what this special brand of third-culture-love looks like. There are many ways to do this well, but a common theme that arises over and over focuses on this: making sure our kiddos know that they are more important than the work. They need the security to know that they are not second to the mission. They are not extra luggage. They are loved more than all the other things. They are not missionary kids they are Colvin kids. Family comes first because these precious short people matter.

The other day I was playing “phone” with Bronwyn. It’s a good chance to work on her conversational skills, and for me to quiz her on details. What’s your name? (Bronwyn Colvin Bupe) How old are you? (4) Where do you live? (Center Zambia) What are your parents names? (Bashi Winnie Jeremy Colvin and Bana Winnie Bethany Colvin) Who are your siblings? (Beauty, Michael, Timo and Leonie.) (Beauty, Michael and Timo are not her siblings, but I let it go because it’s too cute to argue with.) I held my breath a little when she answered my last question – a stretch for her, I knew. What do your parents do for a living? I asked, and waited while she thought. Her answer went like this:

“Well, you cook my supper… and read me all the books… and walk me to preschool… and… do whatever I ask you!”

My first two thoughts were, (1) remind me to never make her the key-note speaker at a Choshen fundraiser, and, (2) good grief, I sound whipped.

But in the same heartbeat I registered, she thinks my job is to meet her needs… I love that. Maybe it’s my uncompromising, attachment-parent self that is amplifying my ex-pat mom anxieties… but that my daughter identifies that my job is to be responsive is the highest compliment.

Truth is, team Jeremy and Bethany works its collective tush off to be productive human beings, using our gifts and talents for the good of humanity while at the same time raising little people in the knowledge and security that they are more important than all the good things we could ever do. For Bronwyn, that means all the physical affection and book time on the couch that her little soul can handle. For Leonie, it means on-demand nursing and a strict “if she cries bring her to me” policy. It means limited use of the words “I’m busy,” and if I truly am busy, it means communicating how soon my attention will be freed up. It will surely mean different things as they grow older, but it will always imply, “you are the most important thing in my world.”

I can consider it a gold star to hear that my kids don’t know how much “work” I do – not because I don’t work hard but because my hard work is clearly not in competition with my demonstration of love for them.

All you need is love? 

I'm sold.

You?

To my second on her first

To my second on her first, 

I’ve spent the last 18 consecutive hours wiping away tears. You are oblivious and I’m trying real hard not to freak you out. Instead I’m video taping your every move, thinking somehow that if I can capture this wrinkle in time, I can keep it from ending. I was doomed from the beginning, really. I mean, your entrance into the world was basically perfect, and then you slept perfectly, you ate perfectly, you’ve been fussy all of five seconds in the last 366 days (God gave me an extra day by letting you be born in a leap year, bless Him.) You’ve been nothing but smiles, beauty, fun – everything I could have ever wanted. So instead of rejoicing tht you are growing up, changing, getting bigger and moving on, I am in full on mourning. I don’t want you to ever change. In the most selfish way possible, I want you to be my baby forever and ever. And yet, time has little sympathy for a mother’s heart. 

It’s crazy to me how the things that once seemed torture – never ending morning sickness, contraction after contraction, birth, exhaustion, fear – now it all seems a priviledge. I would do it over and over again, push that baby out a thousand times more to have you small again, to hold your tiny hands, kiss your soft spot.

There’s a special kind of beauty in this world – the kind that almost always hides behind trial. Its only after we process, after we heal and get our eyes back that we finally see the beauty for what it is and suddenly its all more glorious than if it had come easy. 

And yet, if all this is true, that beauty is birthed from the hard places, then I suppose I have to believe that in this “hard-for-me” thing of you aging and starting to walk and being all not-baby-like, that the beauty is hiding somewhere in there too, eventually to be revealed. 

And so in between watching your birth video 67 times today, and looking at every single picture we’ve ever taken of you and sniffling and eye-dripping and squeezing you extra tight, I’m also going to blow up some balloons and bake a cake and watch you gleefully delight in the wrapping paper around your presents, because that too is beautiful and an anticipation of the good things to come. 

It’s ok girl, not that I could hold you back anyway, but go ahead, party it up. Get all big and sprout that hair and babble those words and I promise to try real hard to cheer you on and not knock you down when you take your first steps. Because as much as I want you to be my baby forever, I love you enough to want you to be you; to become the image of what God dreamed you up to be, which I can already confirm, is just perfect. 

Happy birthday little one. 

Love, 

Your mom

behind every great mother

I’ve been at this mothering thing for four years now… much longer if I get to count all the years I’ve been doing motherly things for all the kids in close proximity who are not my own.

In some ways, the gig has gotten easier over time. I get less flustered when the kids are kids, I've found my mojo, I no long cry over spilt milk (unless its breast milk in which case I cry all the tears).

In other ways, motherhood seems to get harder all the time, mostly because motherhood isn’t the only thing I do. In fact, I wear multiple hats and keep adding more all the time. My mom hat is big and flashy, broad brimmed with pink polka dots and it’s easy to spot from a mile away. My mom job is no side gig; it’s not what I do after hours when my “real” job is done. Nope, it’s a real as the milk stains on my shirt and the dirty diapers in the hamper.

But hats stack, you know? I’m also a missionary, a community developer, a blogger, a thinker, a daughter, sister and friend. I co-lead a missional effort in which my mommyhood gets juggled along with education and health and leadership efforts. After these duties are looked after, I eke out time for writing; I multi-task my deep thoughts during all things mundane; and steal away minutes for family and friends via facebook and e-mail. 

Sometimes, I get overwhelmed. Just the other day, the industrious husband and I were dreaming nd scheming about the future and he asked me if I’d like to take on the market project. Translation: One. More. Hat. Aw lawdy, ima go tip over now.

my favorite reading rainbow book... and sometimes I feel like the main character - minus the beard.

I’m not the most dexterous life balancer. On a regular basis, one or two of my responsibilities falls by the wayside until someone graciously reminds me that I’m neglecting them. Some days, waking up is the sum total of my heroic acts and anything past that is bonus material. That I balance any number of hats at all is owed in no small part to my secret weapon, a fact which on this day, of all days, deserves to be shared.

My secret weapon is neither complicated nor fancy, and its not on pinterest so far as I can tell. Simply stated, my secret is them: the angelic army of “thank heavens you’re here” people who pick up my slack and clean up my messes and give my arms a break to free me for something else. It’s the ones who walk Bronwyn to pre-school and fish legos out of Leonie’s mouth and hand wash the cloth diapers so that I can do absolutely anything else.

It’s freeing to me to sing the praises of all those who circle around me each day. More than once I’ve been told, “You’re really good at multitasking.”  And each time I chortle at the misplaced praise and  clarify: “Actually, I’m only here doing this because Phebby is holding my baby right now.”

This is Phebby. She is at least half angel. And yes, Bronwyn has put stickers all over her face.

The glory of my 'A team' is not mere child care. It’s the ones who traipse around with me, who snag a baby for a quick second, who always show up when I most need them. Sometimes its scheduled, often its spontaneous, but either way it buys me the time to direct attention elsewhere without shafting the ones who are most important, who call me mom.

I love her more than words can express and I never want her to feel like she's coming in second

My “go Bethany go!” gang is vast: Phebby is my right hand woman every morning and Bana Raphael does the same for me every afternoon. Bana Chiti washes and cleans and sweeps. All the aunties take turns ukupapa-ing the babes. Jeremy is my full time stabilizer, sounding board, therapist and friend. The “circus” entertains and, let’s be real, the internet has a bizarre way of lifting us all up from time to time.

How many times has Leonie woken up to my face smiling at her, without her knowing that someone else has skillfully kept her asleep for the last two hours while mommy did her work? I like to call this collage, Proof that God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

I’ve spent four years secretly (or not so secretly) disdaining the Lean In movement that my culture is increasingly touting. I know it’s more advanced than this, but I still feel like the buy-in point is Do More. Make the hard choices. Push. Work. Try Harder.

Boo.

I’ve clicked on every article and listened to every TED talks endorsing the debating over whether or not women can have it all.

Hiss.

I’ve found precious few women who are honest enough to tell it like it is and to admit that they’ve chosen A over B and that balancing is not an option because childcare is stupid expensive or because the thought of staying home all day makes them want to die. Because no, mama, no, you cant do it all, have it all, be it all…          unless… you get backed by a legit crowd of people who are pulling for you.

Moms who want to do mommyhood well, AND who are ambitious in other realms absolutely need people in their corner whose MO in life is to say, hey girl, I’ve got your back. You go do you.

My team is the best, and my life would cease to function without every single one of them. My people make it possible for me to be the best mom I can be AND do other things that fuel my soul and give me a sense of meaning and significance. Every time I think about how many hands are needed to make this little sphere of mine go round, I feel unworthy, and more than blessed.

A wise woman once taught me that we are blessed so that we can be a blessing, and I believe this applies to the mommy support sphere as well. I have my people, and they are for me. So it follows, I must be for others too. Everyone needs someone to fist bump them in solidarity.

The day Junior's mama went into the bush and hoped to be home before he woke up, she got back late and he was hungry (and screaming)... so I nursed him. Mama was maybe a little surprised, but also relieved. I've got your back, Mama. 

T's mom works with us as a nurse at the clinic and we often hang out with T so that her mama can go help other mamas. Go deliver those babies, Mama, we got this.

Mabel's mom has been has been going through a rough patch, which implies that if she shows up at our house... we unleash all the spoiling on this little girl. We all struggle sometimes, Mama, you take care of you.

Jasper's mama had him during high school and she recently made the hard choice to go back to school when Jasper was only 11 months old. It might not have been the choice I would have made, but this mama is doing the best she can to secure a future for her son, and I admire her to the moon and back for that. I've spent  the last several months pumping milk for baby Jasper to make sure he doesn't suffer while mom is away. Keep working Mama, its paying off. 

working double: milk for Leonie, milk for Jasper

These boys don't have mamas anymore, but the best way I can think to honor them is to make sure their sons stay in school and are well fed, clothed and loved. These boys miss you, Mamas, but rest well, they are doing ok.

I’m not the only mother who hustles. I know so many admirable women out there, raising babies, working overtime. More mamas than not are in this boat and it's pretty clear, we all need each other. It’s the way it works. The only way any of us works. To get a helping hand and lend one out…

When you see a working mama, leaving her legacy in more realm than one, congratulate her and her team. Because behind every great mother is an army of help, those who are actively championing her cause.

Who’s got your back? Whose team are you on? Who are you fist bumping in solidarity?

To all, I hope you've had a happy Mother’s Day.