This morning I woke up heavy. It was Sunday and we had plans to go to the lake, and everyone was home, but I felt a sense of tiredness over my entire being. That cloak. The grief cloak that comes out to play just when you really didn’t need it.

“Mom!! Dad!! Acey’s outside!!” Was what woke me up at 8:30. My wonderful hubs had let me sleep in, but there is no such thing as a dull moment with kids, so up I jumped out of bed and downstairs to the boys snuggling on the couch and Dan French pressing away our coffee, and telling us the day at the lake was on.

Happiness. And then sad. And the tears just came up all at once. I covered my eyes with a paper towel and let out the deepest cry.

Dan sat and didn’t say much, because my hurt hurts him too. I feel guilty for even crying sometimes around him because he has to endure so much pain he never even signed up for really. So within the silence of my sobs, Mav climbed right up on the little bit of lap I have left and wrapped his arms around my neck. He said nothing, just a perfect long hug from the boy who made me a mom. Then Ace asked Dan “mama cyin?” And ran over to join the hug.

They clearly got the job done that they shouldn’t have had to labor. They lifted me out of my little pity party, and it was on with the day. We drove up to the lake like we always do, over the mountain, trying to squeeze conversations in between kids asking three trillion questions, for 55 snacks, and one song request after another. We spent the day with family we love and in the most ideal sunny, unplugged, beautiful setting.

But tonight the cloak looms over me. It covers me in an entirely new set of questions and new things to long for…. things I hear in my head just before I lay it down in my pillow.

Mama. I miss you. I don’t know how it’s been 3 years since God took you home. I wish I could hear you in my house. I wish you could laugh at the way Ace makes these hilarious faces and gestures at all the same things you would. I wish you could have Mav overnight for a special big brother celebration. I wish they had you, too.

I wish I knew you when you were a new mom. I wish I could ask you to come over and save me before I lose my mind. I wish my kids really knew you. And asked for you by name. I wish it didn’t come down to angel feathers and framed pictures and a salt lamp I’ve never turned off, not in 3 years. I wish you were here, and I wish you got to live til you were 110. I wish my baby girl to be could be spoiled by you. I wish I could go out with you this summer and enjoy a drink and a karaoke song with you. I’d marvel at how everyone who saw you wanted to know more about who you were. I wish I could ask you if all the choices I’m making are right. I wish I could have your wisdom and guidance. That extra voice always in my corner, cheering me on. I wish I could look forward to texting you all hours of the night when I bring the new baby home and you’d answer immediately like you did when I first had Mav. I wish you didn’t have to go. I still needed you. I still need you today.

On the 3 year anniversary of my mother’s passing, I can only reflect with gratitude for this time. Yes at times the pain is still too much to process and if I really think too hard I’ll scare myself with the images I can recall. But still, gratitude; for all her absence has created within me. I’ve become more of a fighter, a voice, a source of patience and love to the ones I’d lay my own life down for. Because of my mother and everything she was to me, I’m broken and whole all at once, and the vulnerability spills out my most visible cracks. I try my best to live each day by seeing beauty where it doesn’t normally exist, for listening to my intuition before I speak, and to never take a single person, moment, or experience for granted. I will forever be a work in progress, and always be longing for my first best friend, but because of everything she was, I still stand tall knowing no matter where she is, she’s got my back. It’s been too long down here without you Ma. I miss you and I sometimes still can’t believe you’re gone. I love you, I love you, I love you 👑

If you’re a married woman (or man, I doubt you’re reading this. But, if you are, hai) you have probably referred to your wedding vows over the length of your marriage. Like “baby I promised forever I mean it I love you” when you’ve had one too many wines on the back deck. Or maybe you’ve used it against him in an argument like “you clearly just repeated what you heard but you weren’t LISTENING when you said your vows to me” no? Just me and my hormonal self? K.

Seriously though. It’s a warm Thursday night in June, and not reminiscent at all of what my rehearsal dinner night felt like, but the date is there and tomorrow I celebrate 6 years of marriage with my better half.

My better half. The one I promised forever to. The one who makes my heart pound. The one I still love kissing and snuggling and ya know, whatever else you’re thinking, I still love all that too 🥰 because he’s a stud. And he’s a deep down, good and great fucking man. He has an attitude and he has mood swings and two of the last three winters I may or may not have drummed up a text that was less than nice when he was plowing a nor’easter, and I was most likely pregnant and threatening a custody agreement in my very hormonal state 😂 But hey. Better or worse. We are making it. And he knows when to ignore me. And I know when to be a psychotic bitch. Usually the stars align and we have stayed together in our “for worse” times.

Like, ok I’ve been thinking about how innocent vows are. You’re all hopped up on your wedding salad diet, some mid-wedding-day mimosas, and the magic that is the day you marry your soul mate. And you then see your future standing in front of you and you are walking toward him surrounded by the people you love the most, and you get to him and you recite these ancient, super special words that have been stated hundreds of millions of times, but today these vows belong to you and to him and as special as they are, you have no idea what they even mean on this very happy day.

I’ll tell you what I didn’t know 6 years ago. I didn’t know my mom was going to die, and affect our lives on a daily basis for the following 3 years and beyond. I didn’t know we’d ever have a baby 10 short months after we were hitched. I didn’t know how selfless we would have to become so quickly after just becoming newlyweds. I didn’t know we’d ever lose a baby. I didn’t know we’d ever have to reformulate plans we made 6 years ago, on what feels like a sometimes weekly basis. I never knew we’d have 3 babies together. I never knew how hard it would be. I never ever knew how much more I could love a person I was so deeply already infatuated and in love with on so many other levels. I didn’t know how hard some conversations would be to initiate. I didn’t know how hard it would be to hear him tell me things I needed to change to help our dreams come to fruition. I never knew how hard it would be to have a conversation over dinner because we have to talk to two other little budding humans who are and will always be a direct reflection of US. I never knew we were already taking each other for granted because it was just him and me and our little dog. There were no plates in the sink at night, there was extra time, there was rested minds and bodies and there was so much freedom in just being the two crazy kids that just recited these coveted words to each other thinking the worst thing that would ever happen was that we wouldn’t know which bar to have happy hour at that night.

And then life happened. That saying? Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans? Holy hell, it is the truest most factual quote I’ve ever pocketed.

Life happened, and here we are 6 years into a beautiful, broken in, respectful, loving, loyal, breathtaking love story. Our very own fairytale. The story of us. Dan and Brianna. And we are here, standing beside each other on our very best and worst days. He holds me up, he puts me in my place. He feeds my dreams. He keeps me realistic. He says the hard stuff. He sees me at my ugliest, most scared and also my best most authentic self. And he loves me anyway. He still laughs at my jokes. He still gives me butterflies. He starves my fears. He is the daddy to my children. He is the strongest man I know. He is smart in ways I never knew about 6 years ago. He is loyal to a fault. He is so ridiculously good looking, and he’s all mine.

He tried to make a surprise date for us this weekend. Asking his mom to take our kids, and he was gonna take me out and ask me to blow my hair out the way he loves it, and ya know what? We have our first born graduating tomorrow and apparently being a 5 year old preschool graduate is big business and our entire day is consumed by festivities for Mav. Fine! Also, I’m like really fucking pregnant, and home girl can’t sit and eat right now because there’s just no room. And Sunday we both have to work. And Saturday will be beautiful and we just wanna spend it with our two favorite little humans and we are one hundred thousand percent completely happy with that. Because we didn’t know it, but we promised eachother a life of balancing and understanding. An anniversary weekend right now is spent getting the house ready for Acey’s second birthday and a baby girl arriving in 4ish weeks. So yeah, we promised each other that even when it’s hard and too busy to celebrate US, we still know that our unconditional love without limits is there, just a little bit on the fleeting not-about-us side right now. We brought life into this world and we are about to do it again because God is so good and is trusting us with more than we ever thought we would have. And we knew NONE of this when we promised it to eachother 6 years ago.

And anyway. I plan on having a date night this summer and I’d like to get a little tipsy and dress in actual cute clothes and go and make a memory when the time is more appropriate for two adults in love without pregnancy or prior engagements bossing us into submission.

So to my gorgeously handsome, strong and steady, wonderful, genuine, loving husband: I love you. Without any limit. More than I ever knew I could. More than I loved you in 2013. More than I loved you when we met in 2009. I love you in layers. I love you endlessly and always. We’ve made it through some pretty rough terrain, and we still manage to laugh in the chaos. Have a sense of humor in the madness. And we love each other through the hardest parts of this life we never knew we’d have together.

Thank you for loving me. For believing in me. Thank you for giving me (almost) 3 beautiful children. Thank you for giving me a life I only thought would be a dream. You have been a real life angel since the day you walked into my life, and I promise to love you in all the ways I know how for the next 106 years. Here’s to US. Happiness, health, abundance and always, L O V E ♥️