I have so many memories of being a kid. First day of kindergarten. First bike crash. Having friends in the Catskill Mountains. A trip to Arizona. A big, loud family at every holiday. Italians will celebrate anything. I think we even celebrated Flag Day 🤣

I remember bicycle rides through the countryside of Saugerties, NY. Riding past a convent with a field nearby that had a very scary bull in it. As an adult, I’m so thankful I live in a timeline where I can say I did that during my childhood.

But anyway, the sweet spot of my childhood started somewhere around 10–12.Where I really remember myself and my experiences.

I remember moving to Upstate NY around age 9, about to be 10. I was becoming a big sister, moving to a new place, and starting a new school. A very colorful opposite of where my kids are currently at.

I remember dressing like a tomboy, having to make new friends and learn a new school, all while some girls were getting boobs and I was struggling to understand what was happening to them. 😂 I remember either slicking my hair back and praying to sleep still for a perfect pony in the morning, or scrunching my hair and never wearing the right top for picture day.

I remember swimming those early summers with my new friends at fancy pools in Saratoga, and becoming friends and enemies with my new neighbors. I remember yearbooks, lockers, and being with my family a lot. I babysat. I went shopping at Victoria’s Secret and Weathervane. I loved hitting the McDonald’s drive through on my way home from school ☠️ I had sleepovers for days in a row when the weather was warm. I grew a great group of friends from all different cliques. We had a nice house with a beautiful backyard, and we went away on a cruise almost every Thanksgiving during my junior high and high school years.

And why am I telling you this?

I don’t know. Maybe just to remember a simpler time myself. For my own peace of mind that it still exists in there.

But I think my point in all of this is – now I’m a mom to three special little blessings, and I can remember being there, exactly where they are now. I can’t believe how far a person can come in one lifetime.

How many lives you live in one life.

And it made me realize how important this time with my kids really is.

It makes me want to tell someone who may be questioning what they can do differently to be a better mom this:

Change the way you speak to your kids. They’ll be chasing this feeling when they’re raising kids of their own. Be the one to give it to them by setting the tone. Their nostalgia blue print.

Let them be the leader of their friend group, even if it’s not always fair to the other kids. They chose him. He’s the leader. So let him lead 💫

Don’t try to shrink them or minimize them now, or ever, because they’ll spend the rest of their lives trying to learn how to be the person they were before someone tried to throw a saddle on a horse that was meant to run wild.

They are exactly, at this young age, who they’re meant to become.

And who am I to stunt their wonder for the world that lies ahead? Their eagerness? Their compassion? Their downright audacity to live a life out loud?

A life robust with measured danger, many firsts, and magnificent little brains soaking it all in.

An unbridled horse runs toward new territory without hesitation or fear. And so many of us want to wrap all of that wildness up in leather and wood, tie it into a pretty little pony package, and call it raising them right.

Maybe we don’t need to tame it.

Maybe we need to channel that absolutely chaotic curiosity toward more.

More direction.

More power.

More love.

More life.

More of who they were always meant to grow up to be, without harnesses 🤍